Windows 10: Power outage corrupted hard drive. Can't repair or reinstall Windows 11

This is my sister in law's Dell Latitude E7440 laptop which had been running Win 11. After a power outage / surge it would only boot to a black screen with a blinking cursor. I tried booting from an external DVD with Win 10 [I think I had to change the BIOS to legacy boot from UEFI to get this to see the external DVD] and was able to get to a restore point. After an apparent successful restore the computer was showing a Windows 11 screen. I was able to open a window or two, but it was late so I shut it down for the night. The next day it wouldn't boot although it got into multiple Windo

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Power outage caused programs to disappear and/or become disfunctional

Hello,

There are few factors that can contribute to the issue you are encountering. Power outages can result in data loss, corruption of folders/files, and programs not functioning.

To assist you further, kindly provide more details by answering the following questions:

• Which browser are you using to check the passwords and favorites section? Provide the list of browsers where you encountered the concern.
• Have you tried using another account to verify if the programs are still missing on your program list?

There is a possibility that the drive index has been corrupted. We highly suggest that you check your hard drive and scan for errors by following these steps:

• Open This PC on File Explorer and locate your hard drive.
• Right-click and choose Properties.
• Under Tools tab, click on Check Now button.

After scanning the hard drive, hidden files and folders, as well as lost data can be restored.

Additionally, we advise running the System File Checker as another way for us to check or scan for data corruptions in Windows system files that can be affected by the power outage. To do so, follow the steps on this article:

Using System File Checker in Windows 10.

Let us know of any details pertaining to your concern.

 

Major Windows 10 corruption after power outage

Major Windows 10 corruption after power outage

After restarting my PC after a power outage, Windows 10 has a multitude of issues. Those issues are as follows:

- cannot type into start menu, and generally cannot use start menu.

- no internet connection (except sometimes in Safe Mode with Networking). When trying to see why there is no internet, things just hang or load to a blank settings page.

- many Windows 10 settings hang on accessing it, and just never stop loading.

- cannot launch certain programs.

- task manager will crash.

- Device manager shows all devices are fine.

- hangs on loading into windows on a black screen with spinning dots for > 10s (abnormal).

- Using windows will eventually lead to unresponsiveness.

I can confirm is it windows, and not another hardware problem, as I have put this ssd into another PC, and windows has the same issues, and that PC's ssd into this machine yields no issues.

Its also not just a one off thing, as around 3 weeks ago, I had a power outage that resulted in identical symptoms. Formatting the drive and reinstalling Windows 10 solved it. I really don't want to do that again. After that first failure, I bought an expensive
surge protected power bar, which did nothing. As well, my PSU has surge protection, and the outage was from wind. I can confirm there was no surge. All the things I have tried to no success:

- system restore from a week earlier.

- repair install from a Windows 10 USB (install Windows 10 over the existing Windows 10)

- sfc /scannow (returns with "did not find any integrity violations")

- DISM /online /cleanup-image /scanhealth (returns with "no component store corruption detected")

- start-up repair from recovery mode

- Disk error checking and chkdsk on all drives.

- uninstall/reinstall devices in Device Manager

- clean boot (via msconfig and startup cleanup)

- all troubleshooters don't find any issues

- 3rd party registry repair software

- ran rkill, malware bytes, windows defender scan, nothing found.

I am certainly going to buy a UPS to prevent hard shut offs of my computer, but there must be some solution better than everytime my computer doesn't shut down safely, I have to reformat a hard drive.
Can anyone please help me out, I can't find any issues. The fact that this has happened twice now has to mean something. I've had this computer for a few years now, and it's never done anything like this. Thanks in advance, I'm at the end of my rope.

 

CANNOT DELETE A CORRUPTED FILE ON MY EXTERNAL HARD DRIVE ON WINDOWS 10

Hi Leenus,

Hard drive and other external memory storage can be corrupted on account of bad sectors which are no longer accessible or writable due to permanent damage. Your device or hard drive could also be infected by some type of malware. These are some of the possible
causes why you are experiencing the error "ERROR 0x80070570: The file or directory is corrupted or unreadable". To address this concern, we suggest performing the following troubleshooting methods:

Method 1

Check and repair disk errors or corrupted file system. This process can fix "The file or directory is corrupted and unreadable" error caused by bad sectors, virus infection or file system corruption. To do so, follow these steps:

• Back up all of the files on the hard drive (except for the corrupted file).
• Using Search, type CMD.
• From the search results, right-click on Command Prompt and then choose Run as administrator.
• On the Command Prompt window, type chkdsk /f h: (h stands for your hard drive) and then hit the Enter key.
• Delete the corrupted file and check if you'll experience the same error.

Method 2

Format the hard drive. You can manually format the hard drive to permanently remove "The file or directory is corrupted and unreadable" error. These are the steps on how to format an external drive:

• Plug the hard drive into your computer.
• Back up all of the files on the hard drive (except for the corrupted file).
• Open File Explorer and then click This PC.
• Click the external hard drive's name, click on Manage tab and then click on Format.
  
• Click Start and then click OK.

Keep us updated with the result.