# Black screen after auto repair on boot



## pupsubs (Nov 13, 2015)

Turned on my laptop this morning and it went to a blue screen, saying I had a problem. It then restarted and said "preparing automatic repair", after that it's just a black screen. Haven't found a fix to this browsing the web. Some pages said go to safe mood or bios, but upon searching how to do that, all the guides I found showed how to do it when windows was working fine.

I'm using windows 8 and not 8.1 I had a similar problem to this once before, when I tried to update to 8.1, thus why it's just 8. Somehow, that's completely slipped my mind, I did a sort of refresh that fixed and windows and didn't remove all my files. It uninstalled things, but gave me a list of the programs and their versions.


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## Stancestans (Apr 26, 2009)

Hi! :wavey: Welcome to Tech Support :smile:

Do you have a Windows 8 DVD/USB media? You can access the recovery options by booting from such media and refresh your system.


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## pupsubs (Nov 13, 2015)

Not sure if I got a disc with it. Looked around a bit today, found the papers that came with it but no disc.


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## pupsubs (Nov 13, 2015)

So I manged to get a win 8 disc, but when I try to refresh it says "the drive where windows is installed is locked. Unlock the drive and try again."


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## Stancestans (Apr 26, 2009)

pupsubs said:


> So I manged to get a win 8 disc, but when I try to refresh it says "the drive where windows is installed is locked. Unlock the drive and try again."


That message can be quite misleading, its cause often has nothing to do with drive encryption and a lot to do with Windows corruption. Seeing as this is not the first time you are having corruption problems, HDD failure is highly likely, so let's start with checking the drive for bad sectors and filesystem corruption.

(1) Boot from the Windows 8 media and launch *Command Prompt*. 

(2) Type DISKPART and press enter.

(3) Type LIST DISK and press enter. A list of attached disks will appear, with disks numbered from 0 (often the internal HDD). Take note of the internal HDD's number.

(4) Type SELECT DISK # where # is the disk number noted in 3 above and press enter.

(5) Type LIST VOLUME and press enter. Identify the partition on which Windows is installed and note its drive letter.

(6) Type EXIT once to quit DISKPART (and to return to command prompt).

(7) Type CHKDSK X: /R where X is the drive letter noted in 5 above and press enter. This will check the system volume and takes quite some time to finish depending on the size of the volume, amount of data therein, number of bad sectors and general drive health. Give it time to complete, even if it appears to be stuck. *DO NOT* interrupt the process, so make sure the laptop is *plugged in to AC power*. After the check completes, a summary of the results is displayed. Take note of the line that mentions bad sectors and post it here, or take a clearly-focused photo using your phone or camera and attach it.

(8) Type SFC /SCANNOW /OFFBOOTDIR=X:\ /OFFWINDIR=X:\WINDOWS where X is the drive letter noted in 5 above and press enter.

(9) Once the scan completes, take a photo of the results and attach it as well.

(10) Finally, type BCDBOOT X:\WINDOWS where X is the drive letter of the volume containing Windows, noted in 5 above, then press enter.

If ANY of the steps above results in an error, please take a photo and reply with it attached before proceeding so that we can advice further. If you encounter no errors and the steps are completed successfully, reboot and let Windows try to boot. Report back how it goes.


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## pupsubs (Nov 13, 2015)

When I do list disk it says "There are no fixed disks to show."


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## Stancestans (Apr 26, 2009)

pupsubs said:


> When I do list disk it says "There are no fixed disks to show."


Check if the disk is detected in BIOS and if it's not, the drive is most likely dead. Alternatively, you could hook the disk to a desktop internally (SATA ports) or externally (usb) using a hdd enclosure and see if it's accessible.


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## pupsubs (Nov 13, 2015)

Not sure how to check it in BIOS. When I connected to this computer with USB it doesn't show in my computer, but it shows in device manager and computer management.


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## Stancestans (Apr 26, 2009)

pupsubs said:


> Not sure how to check it in BIOS. When I connected to this computer with USB it doesn't show in my computer, but it shows in device manager and computer management.


Please post a screenshot of Disk Management so we can have a look at what's going on.


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## spunk.funk (May 13, 2010)

Maybe this will help?: The drive where Windows is installed is locked Windows 10


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## pupsubs (Nov 13, 2015)

@spunk.funk: chkdsk /r says:
The type of the file system is NTFS.
Cannot lock current drive.
Windows cannot run disk checking on this volume because it is write protected.

@Stancestans: It's not showing up now when I plug it in.


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## Stancestans (Apr 26, 2009)

pupsubs said:


> @spunk.funk: chkdsk /r says:
> The type of the file system is NTFS.
> Cannot lock current drive.
> Windows cannot run disk checking on this volume because it is write protected.
> ...


Well, you can't perform a disk check, sfc scan or boot files repair if the offline system drive (Windows) is not specified in those steps, and to do that you need to find out its drive letter (using diskpart), but diskpart doesn't even detect your hard drive, neither does Disk Management. If you have access to a desktop computer, plug it in to one of the SATA ports and to the psu then boot into Windows and see if the drive is detected in device manager and disk management.


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## spunk.funk (May 13, 2010)

Follow the instructions Stancestans posted about starting Disk Part. After *List Disk *type these commands and press enter after each one: 
*select disk X *(Where X Is the Disk Number in *List Disk* you want to work with)*
attrib disk
attrib disk clear readonly
*If the drive is not showing up under *List Disk*, then it has failed and needs to be replaced. 
* 
--------------
diskpart
list vol
sel vol X 
attrib vol
attrib vol clear readonly *


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