Stumped as to what just happened!

[Rogue Leader]

Background:

Approximately 8 year old Gateway i3-530, Windows 10 Home (upgraded in place from 7) 6gb ram, Last year I installed a Sandisk 240gb SSD. Its just a basic machine that was my mothers, and now my father uses it for literally web browsing since my mother passed.

So dad somehow got caught up in Microsofts verification system today, when i fixed that I noticed the start menu wasn't working right, he said it started today. Basically if you click the start button it appears then disappears after about 3 seconds. The settings and power buttons do not work, nor can you click on any apps. The cortana search bar does work.

Figuring there may be some windows file corruption after doing some searching, I try sfc /scannow and it keeps erroring out at 29%, I don't remember the exact error, something about Windows Resources.

Next I try chkdsk /f system reboots, chkdsk runs in like 2 seconds. I think thats a bit weird so I do it again. This time its running and takes about a minute or so to complete, then the screen turns black and I see the spinning windows wheel and the mouse pointer. The mouse if you move it shows the spinning data access wheel. The hard drive light does flash.

I left it like this for 3 hours and it never got to Windows. If I hard reboot the system it does the same thing.

So next up, I go into the repair menu. I try a System Repair. It fails, says it can't be repaired. Then I try System Restore. That cycles through, gets to finished, then gives me an error saying not only did it not work, it damaged the restore files! Great Thanks! (tried other restore points to the same result).

Next I'm thinking ok maybe I can get this thing to boot to safe mode, so I restart and pick safe mode, nope I get the same mouse pointer and spinning circle. So at this point I'm straight up stuck. I also tried repair from a bootable USB. Didn't work.

Next I'm going to try to do the "Keep files and apps" and reinstall windows. My concern is that my deceased mothers profile is on there and I'm hoping we don't muck up her applications (which I don't have the discs for). We just need it for a little longer as she had it, to do their taxes, then her profile no longer matters anymore.

Yes I know I should have backups, and I do not. At this point, worst case I can pull the drive and get her data off so I'm not totally concerned, but its still an annoyance and time consuming, when it would be nice if the system could just boot back up again.

Anyone have any idea what the heck happened/is happening, and why?

 

[aquielisunari]

What do you mean by caught up in?

Are there any programs on there that take care of his PC automatically? 3rd party programs.

Was Cortana's folder ever moved or modified? I know that will break the Start Menu. Well, sorta. The user can still access the start menu and its apps but can't type in any search queries or commands. The first time they click it it won't work at all.

 

[Rogue Leader]

What do you mean by caught up in?

Are there any programs on there that take care of his PC automatically? 3rd party programs.

Was Cortana's folder ever moved or modified? I know that will break the Start Menu. Well, sorta. The user can still access the start menu and its apps but can't type in any search queries or commands. The first time they click it it won't work at all.

I think he entered his password wrong a bunch of times so Windows asked him to verify his identity. Rebooting cleared the issue, and then I did the ID verification so he won't run into that again.

I have Bitdefender running on it, thats it.

Nothing OS wise was ever touched. The search part works fine, its the start menu that didn't. However in the end the failing start menu is a moot point. At this point the system when booting is stuck just after the windows logo with a black screen, spinning circle, and mouse pointer. Its a brick. System repair does nothing, system restore does nothing, safe mode locks up into the same loop.

I'm in command prompt right now, tried sfc /scannow again, it gets to 100% verification and then says "Windows Resource Protection could not perform the requested operation"

Ran it in verification only mode and got "Windows Resource Protection found integrity violations", generated a big log file with a ton of failures.

Unfortunately reset this PC does not save the apps, only the personal files. I guess better than nothing but still creates a lot of work for me.

 

[aquielisunari]

What do you mean by caught up in?

Are there any programs on there that take care of his PC automatically? 3rd party programs.

Was Cortana's folder ever moved or modified? I know that will break the Start Menu. Well, sorta. The user can still access the start menu and its apps but can't type in any search queries or commands. The first time they click it it won't work at all.

I think he entered his password wrong a bunch of times so Windows asked him to verify his identity. Rebooting cleared the issue, and then I did the ID verification so he won't run into that again.

I have Bitdefender running on it, thats it.

Nothing OS wise was ever touched. The search part works fine, its the start menu that didn't. However in the end the failing start menu is a moot point. At this point the system when booting is stuck just after the windows logo with a black screen, spinning circle, and mouse pointer. Its a brick. System repair does nothing, system restore does nothing, safe mode locks up into the same loop.

I'm in command prompt right now, tried sfc /scannow again, it gets to 100% verification and then says "Windows Resource Protection could not perform the requested operation"

Ran it in verification only mode and got "Windows Resource Protection found integrity violations", generated a big log file with a ton of failures.

Unfortunately reset this PC does not save the apps, only the personal files. I guess better than nothing but still creates a lot of work for me.

Good to know you can still get the info you need. I'm surprised by USAFRet hasn't stopped by, I saw him out in the hallways.

 

[USAFRet]

Hey, I was creating and consuming dinner.
Brats on the grill. Warmed up and then slow simmered in a bed of beer (Guinness Extra Stout) and onion, over lump charcoal and applewood chunks.

But I digress.

"Keep files and apps" usually works. However, the critical thing is the data.
Possibly a LInux USB to copy the data off before you try it.

 

[Rogue Leader]

Hey, I was creating and consuming dinner.
Brats on the grill. Warmed up and then slow simmered in a bed of beer (Guinness Extra Stout) and onion, over lump charcoal and applewood chunks.

But I digress.

"Keep files and apps" usually works. However, the critical thing is the data.
Possibly a LInux USB to copy the data off before you try it.

"Keep files and apps" is not an option, it actually will only do "keep files".

Been trying to fix it with DISM and getting errors of all sorts

 

[USAFRet]

oooo, not good.

 

[Rogue Leader]

oooo, not good.

DISM /Image:E:\ /Cleanup-Image /StartComponentCleanup

completed successfully, for some reason its reading the boot drive as E which is weird, C is the recovery partition.

DISM /image:E:\ /cleanup-image /restorehealth /source: D:\sources\install.esd

Bombs out at like 8 %, points me to an 8 meg log file, no thanks.

I just don't understand how the system can go from functional to completely borked from running CHKDSK

 

[Colif]

Age of CPU could explain its speed plus there might be a lot of fixes it needs to do... the fact dism fails could also mean its not getting anywhere but as you just get a blank screen, we cannot tell what percentage it is on

When the F switch is set, chkdsk's activity is divided into three major passes: checking files, checking indexes, and checking security descriptors.

If it is still going after you leave it all night, you can try to cancel it on start up

During Windows startup, you will be given a couple of seconds, during which you can press any key to abort the scheduled Disk checking.

this shows two ways to cancel it so it doesn't run on the next startup: http://www.thewindowsclub.com/how-to-cancel-chkdsk-in-windows-8

 

[Rogue Leader]

Whats strange though is Chkdsk on startup usually does show that its running and a certain percentage complete. That finished, unless another part of it runs without that % meter.

We will see as its been running for about 4 hours now and is still not done yet.