Posted on 09/17/2025 10:49:42 AM PDT by Paul R.
Oh, boy. My Dell Win 10 Pro desktop suffered a MS Update last night, and won't reboot. None of the Dell repair / restore options have worked so far: I'm holding off on a complete "recovery" which would involve repartitioning the boot SSD & losing all the data on it, then reinstalling the OS, etc. Luckily, all my documents, images, etc., are saved to another HD, but, I would lose the programs on the boot drive and have to reinstall them, which means losing lots of settings and so on. So far as I can tell, I may be able to pull the boot / OS / programs drive and extract my Brave and Chrome bookmarks (I have a ton of them), and, I MAY be able to retrieve the Windows and Libre Office dictionaries, which would be hugely helpful.
Meanwhile... It appears the USB (flash) boot drive I'd made ages ago has become corrupted. No problem, I'll just download a fresh copy of Win 10 Pro and save it to an unused USB Flash drive, using my Win 11 laptop, right? Well, wrong. The process hangs at the actual download step where the little progress notification shows up. Progress shows "0%" and stays there, for over an hour.
I tried reformatting the flash drive to exFAT, no dice. I tried a different (new) flash drive, no dice.
What the heck? Microsoft says nothing about this support already being ended, and all the steps up to this point work fine.
Is there another legit source besides Microsoft? Should I try the download on yet another computer (basically, make sure wifey brings home her hot shot Win 11 laptop from work.)
Thank goodness I'd just completed some very critical work -- mostly tax stuff, and all that is saved to the data drive.
Suggestions (besides dumping Microsoft - maybe that can come next year, but right now I need to get things running!
How far into the boot cycle does it get?
Past the bios post, but not into windows?
Is there a BSD or 0x000 code?
Maybe try a temporary boot drive and run a check disk on that HD
That happened to me 3 or 4 days nights ago. I have a newly installed Windows 11 and figured they were just working out the kinks. I turned the darn thing off and went to bed. The next morning everything was fine and dandy.
If you want to save important stuff there is an easy way to do that. Borrow or access another computer to make a Linux Mint “live CD” stick. then you can use that stick to boot into, and use it to send stuff off onto another USB stick to save it.
You do not have to install the Linux, you are just using it from the stick temporary to rescue your data to external storage. Everyone should have a Linux stick just for this reason alone... To save personal MS files before being forced to completely reinstall MS and lose them all...
You will need to first install Rufus into the borrowed compter if it is a windows system. Then you download the Linux ISO and use rufus to make the stick. Then using your boot manager boot into the Linux stick. It will let you access and manipulate your MS files as needed.
https://github.com/pbatard/rufus/releases/download/v4.9/rufus-4.9.exe
https://www.linuxmint.com/edition.php?id=322
The desktop can't take Win 11 Pro, according to Microsoft. Other downloads from the web (on the laptop) are working fine, if a bit slow - sometimes even the fiber optic lines from my ISP get bogged down a little, mid-day, but, Speedtest says I still have ~16 Mbps download speed (and, curiously, 45+ Mbps upload speed). Normally these are ~ 75 Mbps, but, even so, the darn download should work... Is there another legit source besides Microsoft? Should I try the download on yet another computer (basically, make sure wifey brings home her hot shot Win 11 laptop from work.)
And you do not create system backups, such as via Macrium (for non-commercial)? Get a 240GB HD for under $20 and a USB SSD adapter for under $10.
Meanwhile, this may help: How to Do a Repair Install of Windows 10 with an In-place Upgrade. This tutorial will show you how to do a repair install of Windows 10 by performing an in-place upgrade without losing anything.
Forgot to add that 16 Mbps download speed via fiber optics is very puzzling.
Backups can be your friend in these situations
The ill machine’s 1st screen is the Dell logo, then the Dell logo again, then something smallish flashes by too quick to read (might be that BIOS screen), then it goes to a “your device ran into a problem, we need to restart” screen, then it does an auto-restart, then the Dell logo comes back up, then it goes to a screen about “Auto-repair”, then it goes to a blue screen with multiple repair options, but none help (except potentially a complete reinstall of the OS, which I’ve not done yet, hoping to recover some of that stuff off the OS / Programs drive if I have to.) Everything else eventually dead ends. There IS a check of system components including drives and BIOS, which says all is well. However, attempting a Restore, I’m told there is no restore point to go back to, which seems impossible, because I’m sure restore points have been created for major updates in the past.
So, I’m pretty baffled anyway, and then I ran into this problem with the saved USB boot drive (flash drive), and the even weirder problem trying to make another one off my laptop by downloading Win 10 Pro from Microsoft.
Have you tried booting into safe mode?
Go to this link, it is a download to create a bootable Win10 disk:
https://www.easeus.com/backup-utility/winpe-bootable-disk.html
The ill machine’s 1st screen is the Dell logo, then the Dell logo again, then something smallish flashes by too quick to read (might be that BIOS screen), then it goes to a “your device ran into a problem, we need to restart” screen, then it does an auto-restart, then the Dell logo comes back up, then it goes to a screen about “Auto-repair”, then it goes to a blue screen with multiple repair options, but none help (except potentially a complete reinstall of the OS, which I’ve not done yet, hoping to recover some of that stuff off the OS / Programs drive if I have to.) Everything else eventually dead ends. There IS a check of system components including drives and BIOS, which says all is well. However, attempting a Restore, I’m told there is no restore point to go back to, which seems impossible, because I’m sure restore points have been created for major updates in the past.
So, I’m pretty baffled anyway, and then I ran into this problem with the saved USB boot drive (flash drive), and the even weirder problem trying to make another one off my laptop by downloading Win 10 Pro from Microsoft.
I can’t get to a point where I can do a restore from backup or a restore point.
Oh, golly, is THIS weird. I pulled out an “old” Win 10 Pro laptop and it WILL download the Win 10 Pro files to make a USB boot drive for the desktop. Download in progress.
Meanwhile, this 11 Pro laptop also fails to download Win 11 Pro files (to make a Win 11 Pro USB Boot drive.) It hangs up the download at the same point: “0% progress” forever, evidently.
Interesting...
But, I do now have a Win 10 Pro USB boot drive creation in progress — I think. See my last post above. With a boot drive to work from, I won’t have have to get, um, more creative, for now, anyway... But, I do have to figure out where some of those files in programs themselves are. Working on that too...
Well, the restore points are supposed to get me back to where I was, system-wise, but they seem to have disappeared!
Again, all* my data such as images and documents are saved to a separate data drive, and that gets copied regularly to a 3rd drive, too, for backup.
*Very sensitive data like tax records go separately onto yet a 4th and 5th drive (both external) that are physically disconnected except when in use.
Had a similar thing happen to a Linux install. Problem eventually traced back to an odd-ball Dell video driver that Linux didn’t support. Eventually got around that by editing the Grub line to allow Linux to substitude a default driver.
My system appeared to lockup when is simply lost video output.
Thanks, but, see:
https://freerepublic.com/focus/chat/4341085/posts?page=13#13
I’ll try that link too! :-)
I can’t fathom why THIS machine (Win 11 Pro laptop) doesn’t download (from Microsoft) the files to make the boot drive or disk. The exe that’s supposed to do it downloads just fine, and works on the Win 10 Pro laptop.
THIS machine has been basically flawless in operation for over a year, IIRC, up to this point...
I think my rural telco that ran the fiber lines out here may just be bogged down, or have some other problem. Why download would be so much slower than upload is REALLY odd, but, downloads are still working in general.
I’m betting your system update ‘broke’ your video driver. Windows 10 is back there. Some of the older Dell Video Cards dont have drivers for the later OS’s.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.