# Asus 200E Stuck in automatic repair loop, won't recognise external DVD-ROM



## PeteYoung (Dec 13, 2014)

Hi,

I have an Asus S200E laptop which started life as a Windows 8 machine and was subsequently upgraded to Windows 8.1 about 3 months ago.

It's now stuck in the 'Diagnosing your PC - Automatic Repair' loop and I can't force it to break out.

I have a recovery thumb drive that was created when the machine was new (running Windows 8). I have enabled Launch CSM and disabled Secure Boot Control in the BIOS and eventually the BIOS will recognise the recovery drive. I can then select it as the first boot option (as USB 2.0 DISK PMAP, not the UEFI option) and it boots.

So far so good, but the recovery options don't seem to give me any useful options. It can't find any system restore files (though I'm certain they exist on the disk). I don't know how to locate a system image to recover, and the Startup Settings option doesn't appear so I can't get to Safe Mode.

I'm guessing that the 8.1 upgrade has wiped the recovery partition that the thumb drive is looking for.

The command line option is accessible.

I am also unable to get the BIOS to recognise an external DVDROM drive, so I'm unable to re-install windows or boot into Linux.

Since it's a laptop, removing the hard disk or the battery is not straightforward.

My last resort is to try and create a bootable linux thumb drive that would at least allow me to recover the files before it goes into the skip. 

If anyone has any other comments, or suggestions for other things to try, I'd be very grateful.

Kind regards,

Pete


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