Stuck in Automatic Repair (bad sectors?)

James_442

Commendable
Dec 11, 2016
9
0
1,510
Please help me to get my PC (MEDION Akoya P5348) out of Automatic Repair nightmare and back into windows 10.

PC has been running well for years. I changed settings in BIOS to enable onboard graphics so that I could have 3 monitors, namely: Initiate Graphic Adapter and DVMT Total Gfx Mem. This worked well and after getting the drivers I was able to run all 3 monitors. 2 GFX and 1 Onboard.

I was having problems with a program in windows with a clipboard program not copy and pasting properly. The problem with the Repair happened when I was trying to get into BIOS to change back these settings to see if that would fix the issue.

For my PC BIOS is F12 but I forgot this and was hitting F11 and Del to try to get me in and now I'm stuck.

All drives seem to be listed in BIOS.

When exiting BIOS I get:

Intel UNDI, PXE-2.1 (build 083)
Copyright (C) 1997-2000 Intel Corporation

This Product is Coveredby one of more of the follow patents: *Bunch of numbers*
Realtek PCie GBE Family Controller Series v2.53 (02/19/13)

Client Mac Addr: *Bunch of numbers*
PXE-E53: No boot filename received
PXE-MOF: Exiting PXE ROM.

Reboot and Select proper Boot device or insert Boot Media in selected Boot device and press a key.
Press any key repeats this, reboot bring me back into Automatic Repair

When inside repair I have few options if I click continue it just brings me back into it.

System Restore didn't fix the issue.

Start-up Repair: couldn't repair your PC.

In command prompt which is where I think I might be able to get some results it shows x:\windows\system32
I read a post on selective boot up with bios that suggested

get cmd to open and check
bootrec /fixMBR
bootrec /Fixboot
bootrec /rebuildBCD
and also
chkdsk /r c:
chkdsk /r d:
chkdsk /r e:
chkdsk /r f:

all I get is The system cannot find the file specified I guess because I am in x:\ rather than c:\
not sure what to do to get it to switch back to my SSD drive to run most of these.
I did manage to get chkdsk on c to work and left it running overnight, it seemed to have found bad sectors but said it was fixed.

I upgraded my PC from windows 7 a while ago online so have no Windows Disk.
Not sure what to do or try next maybe something in the command prompt?


I am using my laptop to troubleshoot this. The problem PC is my main desktop PC. I have burned a windows 10 DVD disk on my laptop from:

Media Creation Tool.
with option: Using the tool to create installation media (USB flash drive, DVD, or ISO file) to install Windows 10 on different PC.

I booted to this DVD and options are Install now or repair your computer. Tried a repair which just brings me back to the Automatic Repair options.

The only thing I can think of trying next is Reset this PC: Keep my files (Removes apps and settings, but keeps your personal files.

Is there anything else I can do or try before resorting to this?
 
the pxe commands are your intel network adapter attempting to find a remote network boot image. Most people would not need this and would just disable it in BIOS so they would not have to wait for the network adapter to timeout looking for a remote windows boot server.
--------

the problem described is not likely to be a sector problem. It is more likely a usb thumb drive was inserted into a USB port. This can cause your driver letters to be reassigned in certain cases.

I would boot on to the windows repair disk, start a command prompt and run
diskpart.exe
then run the following commands
list disk (will show the list of drives the system can see)
select disk 0 (selects the first disk for then next commands to operate on)
list partition
This should show each partition on the drive, in my case I see 3 partitions
partition 1 type= primary size = 350 mb offset 1024 kb
partition 2 type= primary size = 464 GB offset 351 MB
partition 3 type= recovery size= 450 MB offset 465 GB

I would think that partition 1 would have the master boot record,
and would have the link to partition 2 which would have the c:\windows directory on it.

partition 3 is listed as a recovery partition. I think it is left over from a previous windows setup.

run
list volume
and it should show all of the drive letter assignments.
in my case I have 4 volumes (0,1,2 and 3)
volume 0 is assigned a drive letter e:
volume 2 is assigned a drive letter c:
the volume 1 and 3 do not have drive letters assigned.

what you are looking for is your drive letter C: to be assigned to your drive that has windows installed on it.
the size should be large (in GB) rather than a small size that would be in MB.

Sometimes when you add a disk or USB drive or thumb drive it can conflict with drive you have installed. In these cases window will re assign the drive letters for you and it might assign drive c: to the wrong device. if this happens your system will not boot until you reassign the drive letters.

for example if volume 0 was assigned drive c: by mistake, you would have to assign it to a unused drive letter, to free up the c drive assignment, then you can assign the correct partition to c so the system can boot again.
here are the basics of the diskpart.exe commands you would need.
you can use help to get help, and help on each command to get further help.

select disk 0 ; selects the first disk
list volume ;shows all of the volumes on the selected disk and their drive letter and size
select volume 0 ; used to select the volume on the first disk
assign letter=e ; changes the drive letter assignment to a new drive letter e in this case.
list volume ; use this to show your changes are what you want them to be.
select volume 2 ; this is the volume that has windows on my machine and needs to be set to drive c
assign letter=c ; this assigns the drive letter to that volume
list volume ; use this to confirm your changes=
exit ; use this to exit the diskparm.exe program

at this point you would reboot the machine and see if your machine boots correctly.

 
thank you so much for your reply this is really helpful and I think you have found my exact problem.

I have a lot of drives so its a little confusing and want to be sure on my next step.


I see volume 3 set to C and my SSD is volume 8 set to E (I think this is my windows install?).
From what I remember C was SSD with OS, D was Raptor, E was Medion, F and G was Backup or Medion Temp (not sure which way around on this one).


a little confused on what to do next to get these in the right order.
 
you only have to get one drive assignment correct to be able to boot. The one for drive c and it should be the drive that has your windows directory. After it is correct you can boot and use the windows disk utilities in control panel to set all of the other drive assignments using the normal windows user interface tools.



 
Sorry still kind of lost the select disk part. Please can you tell me what I need to enter to get this to boot into ssd as drive which has my os on it. I need to move my C medion to K (unasigned)? then move my SSD E to C right?
 
well you should boot a repair disk and start a command prompt.

I would try running
bootrec.exe /scanos
bootrec.exe /fixmbr
bootrec.exe /fixboot
bootrec.exe /RebuildBcd

and see if you can boot your system. if that fails you would then boot the repair disk command prompt and try to find where your windows is currently located (on which drive)
just do something like
dir c:
dir d:
dir e:
basically do a directory of each drive until you find the drive your windows directory is located on. Then you need to make that drive letter drive c
by using the diskpart.exe commands
 
Took out cables to my 2 extra monitors so I could work on 1. Unplugged SATA cable from my 3 none SSD drives so I could start work on making a cmd notepad backup.

Started pc and BOOM! Back into windows :) Good times.

Then connected my other drives 1 by 1?

First drive was fine and when I started got back into windows. Second drive and back into recovery.

One immediate problem I am facing inside windows is start menu isn't working (clicking it does nothing) (maybe because it needs one of my other drives?)
 
I would put your drive that worked ok on your primary SATA controller, the one supported by the CPU chipset. I would but the other two drives on different ports on the secondary (faster sata controller)
just to see if you can get the drives ordered correctly.
one of the two drives you added has its own boot loader in a reserved partition and it is causing the problem.

often it is better to add drives as a subdirectory of your main c: drive rather than as another drive letter.



 
I think maybe messing with cortana caused these problems as per https://forums.techguy.org/threads/stuck-in-automatic-repair.1182347/page-3
feel like I have made a lot of progress on this but not out of the woods yet. Going to try backup as much as possible before proceeding but still quite lost. But yes I think you have been right from the start that these drives have been mixed up somehow. The drive that is giving me the problems is the drive that was the original os hd before I upgraded to ssd.
 
"I would put your drive that worked ok on your primary SATA controller, the one supported by the CPU chipset."

Not sure which one this will be. The cable that is connected to the drive that is giving me the problem? So I connect this to my SSD instead of the problem one?

"I would but the other two drives on different ports on the secondary (faster sata controller)"

Unsure which ones are which

"one of the two drives you added has its own boot loader in a reserved partition and it is causing the problem."

yes I think so too

"one of the two drives you added has its own boot loader in a reserved partition and it is causing the problem."

something I will look into in future



One of these are a combo of are what has led me to my current state:

1. I think more likely I pressed something my pc didnt like when booting when trying to get into bios.


2.
I think this could have caused some of the problems is related to me not having my start menu in windows. I do not think however this is the reason I am having boot problems with my drive but unsure.



Before I started having these problems I tried to remove cortana.

Disabled the searchui service and renamed c:\windows\SystemApps\Microsoft.Windows.Cortana_cw5n1h2txyewy

I also ran

https://www.hwinfo.com/misc/RemoveW10Bloat.htm

The problem was it removed the photos app so I installed Windows Photo Viewer registry:

https://www.tenforums.com/software-apps/8930-windows-photo-viewer-gone-2.html#post290818

Copy the following code into notepad and save it as a .reg file then merge it. Should fix the issue.

See also: Windows Photo Viewer - Restore in Windows 10
 
Tried changing the SATA cables around but same result.
Still wont let me connect the medion drive without giving me startup repair.

DISK 0 Problem Drive that causes the repair loop
DISK 1 SSD with my working os



I tried running 3 separate startup repairs from DVD with only my SSD connected which is meant to (re)create the Windows System boot files. It failed on the second repair.





 
So I ran the commands with only SSD drive connected



bootrec /fixMBR
Sucessfull
bootrec /Fixboot
Sucessfull
bootrec /rebuildBCD
Identified installations : 0
bootrec /Scanos
Identified installations : 0

Still boots into windows



Connecting problem drive pushes my SSD to Disk 1 and makes itself Disk 0

By process of elimination, when Medion drive connected:

Volume 0 = G DVD drive
Volume 1 = C Medion
Volume 2 = D Medion
Volume 3 = Medion
Volume 4 = Medion
Volume 5 H Medion? (not sure on this because 450mb same as Vol 8
Volume 6 = E SSD
Volume 7 = Recovery SSD? (not sure on this because 450mb same as Vol 5
Volume 8 = SSD
Volume 9 = F Removable
Volume 10 PRC_RP (?)
 
I looked in the C:\Windows\System32\LogFiles\Srt folder and thought the disklayout file had some interesting information

Samsung SSD 850 EVO 250GB
Type : SATA
Status : Online
Path : 4
Target : 0
LUN ID : 0
Location Path : PCIROOT(0)#PCI(1F02)#ATA(C04T00L00)
Current Read-only State : No
Read-only : No
Boot Disk : No
Pagefile Disk : No
Hibernation File Disk : No
Crashdump Disk : No
Clustered Disk : No


Volume ### Ltr Label Fs Type Size Status Info
---------- --- ----------- ----- ---------- ------- --------- --------
Volume 1 C SSD NTFS Partition 174 GB Healthy
Volume 2 Recovery NTFS Partition 450 MB Healthy Hidden
Volume 3 FAT32 Partition 99 MB Healthy Hidden

Partition ### Type Size Offset
------------- ---------------- ------- -------
Partition 1 Recovery 450 MB 1024 KB
Partition 2 System 99 MB 451 MB
Partition 3 Reserved 16 MB 550 MB
Partition 4 Primary 174 GB 566 MB

SrtTrail

Startup Repair diagnosis and repair log
---------------------------
Last successful boot time: ?18/?12/?2016 21:51:27 (GMT)
Number of repair attempts: 2

Session details
---------------------------
System Disk = \Device\Harddisk0
Windows directory = C:\Windows
AutoChk Run = 0
Number of root causes = 1

Test Performed:
---------------------------
Name: Check for updates
Result: Completed successfully. Error code = 0x0
Time taken = 0 ms

Test Performed:
---------------------------
Name: System disk test
Result: Completed successfully. Error code = 0x0
Time taken = 0 ms

Test Performed:
---------------------------
Name: Disk failure diagnosis
Result: Completed successfully. Error code = 0x0
Time taken = 0 ms

Test Performed:
---------------------------
Name: Disk metadata test
Result: Completed successfully. Error code = 0x0
Time taken = 0 ms

Test Performed:
---------------------------
Name: Target OS test
Result: Completed successfully. Error code = 0x0
Time taken = 31 ms

Test Performed:
---------------------------
Name: Volume content check
Result: Completed successfully. Error code = 0x0
Time taken = 47 ms

Test Performed:
---------------------------
Name: Boot manager diagnosis
Result: Completed successfully. Error code = 0x0
Time taken = 15 ms

Test Performed:
---------------------------
Name: System boot log diagnosis
Result: Completed successfully. Error code = 0x0
Time taken = 0 ms

Test Performed:
---------------------------
Name: Event log diagnosis
Result: Completed successfully. Error code = 0x0
Time taken = 16 ms

Test Performed:
---------------------------
Name: Internal state check
Result: Completed successfully. Error code = 0x0
Time taken = 0 ms

Root cause found:
---------------------------
Unspecified changes to system configuration might have caused the problem.

Repair action:
Result: Failed. Error code = 0x32
Time taken = 110 ms

Repair action: System Restore
Result: Completed successfully. Error code = 0x0
Time taken = 80172 ms

Repair action: System files integrity check and repair
Result: Failed. Error code = 0x490
Time taken = 388203 ms

---------------------------
---------------------------
Session details
---------------------------
System Disk = \Device\Harddisk0
Windows directory = C:\Windows
AutoChk Run = 0
Number of root causes = 1

Test Performed:
---------------------------
Name: Check for updates
Result: Completed successfully. Error code = 0x0
Time taken = 0 ms

Test Performed:
---------------------------
Name: System disk test
Result: Completed successfully. Error code = 0x0
Time taken = 0 ms

Test Performed:
---------------------------
Name: Disk failure diagnosis
Result: Completed successfully. Error code = 0x0
Time taken = 0 ms

Test Performed:
---------------------------
Name: Disk metadata test
Result: Completed successfully. Error code = 0x0
Time taken = 0 ms

Test Performed:
---------------------------
Name: Target OS test
Result: Completed successfully. Error code = 0x0
Time taken = 31 ms

Test Performed:
---------------------------
Name: Volume content check
Result: Completed successfully. Error code = 0x0
Time taken = 47 ms

Test Performed:
---------------------------
Name: Boot manager diagnosis
Result: Completed successfully. Error code = 0x0
Time taken = 16 ms

Test Performed:
---------------------------
Name: System boot log diagnosis
Result: Completed successfully. Error code = 0x0
Time taken = 0 ms

Test Performed:
---------------------------
Name: Event log diagnosis
Result: Completed successfully. Error code = 0x0
Time taken = 0 ms

Test Performed:
---------------------------
Name: Internal state check
Result: Completed successfully. Error code = 0x0
Time taken = 0 ms

Test Performed:
---------------------------
Name: Boot status test
Result: Completed successfully. Error code = 0x0
Time taken = 0 ms

Test Performed:
---------------------------
Name: Setup state check
Result: Completed successfully. Error code = 0x0
Time taken = 94 ms

Test Performed:
---------------------------
Name: Registry hives test
Result: Completed successfully. Error code = 0x0
Time taken = 812 ms

Test Performed:
---------------------------
Name: Windows boot log diagnosis
Result: Completed successfully. Error code = 0x0
Time taken = 0 ms

Test Performed:
---------------------------
Name: Bugcheck analysis
Result: Completed successfully. Error code = 0x0
Time taken = 172 ms

Test Performed:
---------------------------
Name: Access control test
Result: Completed successfully. Error code = 0x0
Time taken = 5093 ms

Test Performed:
---------------------------
Name: File system test (chkdsk)
Result: Completed successfully. Error code = 0x0
Time taken = 0 ms

Test Performed:
---------------------------
Name: Software installation log diagnosis
Result: Completed successfully. Error code = 0x0
Time taken = 0 ms

Test Performed:
---------------------------
Name: Fallback diagnosis
Result: Completed successfully. Error code = 0x0
Time taken = 0 ms

Root cause found:
---------------------------
Unspecified changes to system configuration might have caused the problem.

Repair action:
Result: Failed. Error code = 0x32
Time taken = 110 ms

Repair action: System Restore
Result: Completed successfully. Error code = 0x0
Time taken = 80172 ms

---------------------------
---------------------------