Windows 10: PC keeps booting to recovery

I upgraded my PC with a new Storage drive. After cloning my original drive to the new one, I began booting off of the new Drive and everything was normal for about a day. Then the next day whenever I turned my PC on it would boot to the blue screen saying my PC needs to be recovered. I tired everything to fix it and tried to diagnose it but nothing worked. I ended up needing to completely wipe the drive and reinstall Windows. I lost everything on the drive. I then reinstalled Windows off of a USB and everything seemed to be back to normal. After about a dozen times of turning the PC off and on

:)

 

Unable to boot the PC, stuck in recovery mode screen​

Hi Joe,



Thank you for writing to Microsoft Community Forums.



I understand that you are unable to boot the PC normally as it is stuck in recovery mode.

1. Were there any recent updates installed on the PC?
   
2. What is the exact make and model of the PC?
   

I would suggest you to follow the steps mentioned below and check if that helps.



Method 1:



Boot the PC into safe mode with networking and check if you are able to login. Refer the article to

Start your PC in safe mode in Windows 10, refer the section
From a black or blank screen.



Method 2:



Perform a system restore to revert the PC back to the state when everything was working fine. Refer the article

Recovery options in Windows 10, refer the section
Use installation media to restore or reset your PC.



Note:
Do not reset the PC; resetting the PC will remove all the data and installed programs from the PC.



We await your response.



Regards,

Prakhar Khare

Microsoft Community – Moderator

 

PC shows Automatic Repair screen after booting

Hi,

Thank you for replying.

Refer the steps mentioned below to restart the computer in Safe Mode:

1. On the Choose an option screen, click on Troubleshoot.
2. Click on Advanced options.
3. Click on StartupSettings and click on
   Restart.
4. After the device restarts, you will see list of options. Select option
   5 or press F5 to boot the computer into
   Safe Mode with Networking.
   

After restarting the computer in Safe mode, refer the steps mentioned in my earlier response to perform clean boot and see if the PC boots normally.

If the computer doesn't boot,
I would also suggest you to refer the troubleshooting steps mentioned in the section
Use installation media to restore your PC from the article
Recovery options in Windows 10.

Let us know how it goes.

Regards,

Nikhar Khare

Microsoft Community - Moderator

 

How does Windows boot to advanced recovery option e.g. command prompt?

- that gives me a 454 'Unexpected error' This tells me that the BCD is partially corrupted.

The commands: shutdown.exe /r /o /f /t 00
or: %SystemRoot%\System32\Cmd.exe /c reagentc /boottore&shutdown /r /f /t 00
should boot into Recovery if everything is configured correctly.
FYI, If Windows is configured correctly:

1. If Reagentc is disabled, you still can get into Recovery but with limited options.
2. If Reagentc is enabled, you'll get all options.
3. If you boot Windows using Recovery USB stick, You'll get into Recovery with couple of options missing.

Here's my suggestion if you want to try:
OPTION 1: Will save the trouble of re-install Windows.

1. Download the image of my first 3 partitions (450MB Recovery, 100 MB EFI partition, and 16MB unformatted primary)
   EFI_Boot-00-00.7z - Google Drive
2. Run Macrium and restore the image from step 1, overwriting your existing 1st three partitions, leaving C alone.
3. Delete the 490MB Recovery partition.
4. From Macrium, run fix boot problems.
5. Reboot. Open Admin command prompt then run Reagentc /info to make sure that it is enabled. If not, enable it.
   if failed to enable, reboot and try again.

OPTION 2: Assuming you've already had Windows backup with Macrium.

1. Wipe out the first 5 parttiions. (450MB, 100MB, 16MB, C Drive, 480MB)
2. Fresh install Windows 10
3. Restore C drive from backup image, run fix boot problems
4. repeat step 5 from OPTION 1 above.