# Automatic Repair - Restart Loop



## rick.applegate (Dec 14, 2016)

I am having an issue with my Dell Latitude 6530 laptop, running Windows 10, going into a repair/reboot cycle. It just started this morning. Prior to this morning, I have been experiencing at least one "freeze up" per day where in I would be working and have one of my programs just freeze up. I could switch to another program and it would freeze up until eventually everything was froze. I could still move the mouse, but nothing would respond. There has not been any hardware or software changes on this laptop in quite a while(except program/windows updates). There didn't seem to be any rhyme or reason to the freeze up's. The last time the computer was running, it started freezing up and I held the power button to force a shutdown. When I powered it up the next time, it started this cycle of (immediately after the bios screen): 



> Preparing Automatic Repair
> Diagnosing your PC
> Automatic Repair - Your PC did not start correctly. Press restart ...or Advanced options.


I got into the bios diagnostics and ran the Dell PSA and found a hard drive error "Fail PSA V4220 Error 2000:0142 Hard Drive 0" error. After researching I see that Dell says this is a hard drive failure and recommends replacing it, but I have also seen where other people have recovered their systems when they received this same error message. All other tests in the PSA pass okay.

I have also tried going into the command prompt (via the advanced options on the repair page) and running chkdsk /f/r/x, but that didn't seem to fix anything. In the command prompt, I am able to to open notepad and browse through my files on the computer (although the drive letters are different than normal), so I know the hard drive is still functioning, but the computer won't boot into windows. Any other ideas how I can get this computer to boot successfully into windows?

This computer was purchased with Windows 7 and I done the free upgrade to Windows 10 around July this past summer. 

Thanks.


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## rowdyyates (Oct 10, 2013)

Freezing could also be due to bad ram. If you can't use F8, try this.
https://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/2008.09.utilityspotlight.aspx

To make a Windows Memory Diagnostic cd. the download link is on this page.
Make sure your boot order is to your optic drive first.


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## jenae (Jun 17, 2008)

Hi, you say you accessed the cmd prompt from the advanced options on the repair page. Notepad showed different drive letters, and you ran chkdsk /f/r/x however this did not help.

When you ran chkdsk what message did you receive? Was it something about the drive being write protected?

It appears you may be in the RE (repair your computer) virtual ram drive, created as a diagnostic util for windows ten, similar to the RE in vista Seven and Eight.
Is the drive letter you see in notepad D:?

Chkdsk is the best util to run at this stage, it will run in the RE, you need to change to the correct drive (in this mode the OS is not always on the usual drive C.

Please confirm, so we can correctly advise you.


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## rick.applegate (Dec 14, 2016)

Yes, I am in the repair environment. When first entering the command prompt, it shows I am in drive X. I can enter diskpart then list volume and it shows:

Volume 0/ Drive F/ Type DVD
Volume 1/ Drive C/ Recovery/ Partition
Volume 2/ Drive D/ OS/ Partition (location of all files and windows)
Volume 3/ Drive E/ Partition
Volume 4/ Partition (no drive letter)

When I run chkdsk D:, it says:
Stage 1: Examining basic....
0 bad file records processed
Stage 2: ...
0 unindexed files scanned
0 unindexed files recovered to lost and found
Stage 3: ...
Usn Journal verification completed
Windows has scanned the file system and found no problems. 
No further action is required.
...disk space
4 KB in bad sectors
...allocation
Failed to transfer logged messages to the event log with status 50.

If I run chkdsk D:/f, it asks me to dismount the drive first because it is in use by another process. I say yes and it returns the exact same messages as above.

In notepad, if I browse up to "My Computer", I can see the drives C (Recovery), D (Local Disk), E (Local Disk), F (CDROM), and X (Boot). I am able to browse through each of these directories.


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## rick.applegate (Dec 14, 2016)

I tried running the command chkdsk D:/f/r/x again. Apparently I didn't run this exact command properly last time (I probably forgot the drive letter D), because this time, it took about 3 hours to run. Most of that time was spent in "Stage 4: Looking for bad clusters ...". The result of stages 1-3 were the same as above, stage 4 and 5 said:

Stage 4: Looking for ...
File data verification complete
Stage 5: Looking for bad, free clusters...
File space verification complete
Windows has scanned the file system and found no problems.
No further action is required
...
4 KB in bad sectors
...
Failed to transfer logged messages to the event log with status 50.

After this scan/fix, I tried rebooting, but it went back into the automatic repair loop.


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## rick.applegate (Dec 14, 2016)

I also tried running the memory test as mentioned by rowdyyates. It gave me a message that said it can't run a full test because my memory exceeded 4GB (I have 8GB), but it passed all 6 tests that it performed.


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## rick.applegate (Dec 14, 2016)

Some more info...

I was able to open up the text file generated from the startup repair option within the recovery environment. It said:

"Root cause found:
Root critical file e:\windows\system32\ntoskrnl.exe is corrupt."

"Repair action: file repair
Result: Failed. Error code = 0x570"


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## rick.applegate (Dec 14, 2016)

I have now also tried renaming and rebuilding the bcd and creating a new bcd (all through the command prompt), but to no avail.


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## rick.applegate (Dec 14, 2016)

Anyone have any other suggestions....???

I pulled the HD out and am able to connect it to another computer and browse through all of the files and folders. I am working on copying off the files I need. 

Any help would be appreciated.


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## rowdyyates (Oct 10, 2013)

Hi,at the e:\windows\system32 command prompt type sfc \scannow note the space after sfc

Also, if your laptop has two 4gb ram sticks test one at a time.


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## rowdyyates (Oct 10, 2013)

Whoops typo, Its sfc /scannow


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## jenae (Jun 17, 2008)

Hi, it does appear your HDD is on the way out, with luck it could last for some time, although I would plan on replacement, up to you. Repair runs a checkdisk (shows bad sectors) and an sfc automatically, so this is not repairing your problem, you could try a regback restore to see if the problem was a corrupted registry, although this is usually flagged as such, if it were the problem. Back up your data (to be safe) and select the option to "Reset This PC". See how you go.


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## rick.applegate (Dec 14, 2016)

I had to reinstall windows and reload all of my data. Thanks for the help.


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## Rich-M (May 2, 2007)

Though reinstall seems to have saved the day at this point I would be planning to replace the drive. While it is running properly cloning the drive to a new drive is easy and quick saving a lot of work later and avoiding the risk of losing whatever is important on the drive.


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