Maintenance :: Stuck In Automatic Repair Loop - System Restore Not Working
May 12, 2014
My Toshiba laptop/Windows 8.1 installed a VLC Media player & Malware bytes today. I was instructed to Restart as 'drivers not working properly' & since then have been on the Automatic Repair loop. It says it cannot fix it - log file: C:WINDOWSSystem32LogfilesSrtSrtTrail.txt, & I tried a few System Restore points but that just says -
System Restore could not access a file. This is probably because an anti-virus program is running on the computer . Temporarily disable your antivirus program and retry System Restore. You can try System Restore again If you continue to see this error, you can try an advanced recovery method.
Thing is I can't get into Windows or my laptop to disable the antivirus program.
I don't have any CD or DVD & no product key as the disc has been misplaced.
I accidentally removed a usb cable from a powered usb hub , and a volume slider of some other program appeared superimposed and floating above my music making program , so I restarted the pc. From then on , it wouldn't start , and kept saying preparing automatic repair, then reached 40% and wouldn't go any further.
I unplugged my 2 external drives because they weren't showing in the bios , and plugged them into my laptop to check they were ok , and I am relieved to say they are.
Since i removed the drives , my desktop ( asus ) will eventually arrive at the blue recovery screen , but all these things that are supposed to fix it , aren't working.
When I try to refresh , it says the drive where windows is installed is locked. I've tried to do a system restore from 3 different restore points and none of them have worked ( one actually cited a mozilla profile as being the cause )
Re-image wont work because it cant find the image file , which is on one of my external drives which are now unplugged. Automatic repair diagnoses , but then says it cant repair. It also will not boot into safe mode.
I can use command prompt, and was hoping I could rename the system hive name , but the command prompt says X=windowssystem32.
I've tried cd%windir%system32config , but it says " the drive , the path, or the filname is not valid" . I have successfully ran regedit from the command prompt .....
I had no reasons to expect anything untoward before yesterday. The automatic repair thing happened before , about 4 months ago , but i was always able to get out of it by switching it off at the wall. Now that doesnt work and its in an endless loop .
I have hirens bootcd but there are a lot of things on it that i dont know how to use. I was able to get mini xp working via hirens but couldn't access system restore.
Recently was running a backup program and suddenly I get the Windows 8 blue error screen (the one with the mocking '' icon) and system dies. I turn on and it seems to booting very slowly then it proceeds to do the pre login screen installation of updates. After half an hour or so and with updates on around 70%, system dies again. Now when I turn the machine on it appears to alternate between either hanging for ever on the Windows 8 loading screen or attempting to run an 'Automatic Repair' which invariably results in a blank screen and no fix.
Having read several 'Automatic Repair loop' posts on the net, it appears I need to load the recovery disc and run repair or restore programs from there. Of course the CD I made failed (crappy disc?) so I had to search my original licence email and use the provided link to download and create a new installation disc from a working machine. This disc loads and gives me the option to install Win 8 (presumably a fresh install with loss of files) or a troubleshoot menu. Running the automatic repair option results in a rather inane 'Couldn't do it' message and gives a blank path to a log file. The system restore option prompts me to 'Restart and select operating system before trying this' and i'm not sure how to do this as no such option is given at boot.
Since upgrading to windows 8/8.1 x64 i have twice had this situation when during boot up windows tries automatic repair & fails , every time i restart same repair fail happens , its stuck in this cycle , neither "Refresh" or "Reset" option works , . I have to do a fresh format & install , loose all my files stored in the OS partition , I even tried to recover the files using linux boot cd but the folders were inaccessible/corrupted .
I tried every solution i could find to make it boot including Unable to refresh or reset PC after Automatic Repair fails in Windows 8 but nothing worked .
This has happened twice in the one year since i have been using Win 8 , Is there any way to avoid this from happening i future ?
Acer Aspire V5 is the PC I am using. I turn it on, the boot fails and the pc restarts. Then begins an automatic repair, which crashes and the PC turns off. It is a loop I cannot get out of. I don't have a Windows 8 Disc or anything like that.
I was playing WOW the other night on my month old PC and all of a sudden I got a full red screen. I restarted the comp and this auto repair screen popped up and it freezes and just same thing over and over. the bottom of the screen is cut off and the only other window i can get into is the bios setup utility window. Cant get into any kind of safe mode nothing.
A couple days ago, I was casually playing Warframe. Tried to alt+tab out to check an IM and my screen went black. Not sure what happened as I could still hear the mouseover sounds as though Warframe were still active. Fiddled around for a few minutes and couldn't get Task Manager to come up, so I decided to just hold the power button on my laptop until it shut down. No harm done, right?
When I booted back up, Windows greeted me with a "Diagnosing Your PC" message under the normal Toshiba boot logo. After it hung there for a few seconds, it moved on to the "Attempting Repairs" screen. Didn't take long for it to decide it wasn't too happy with me for suddenly shutting it down.
Since then, I've been stuck in an auto repair loop. So far I've googled everything I could think of, but it seems my efforts were in vain. Tried putting Hiren's on a thumbdrive and booting from there, and for some reason, Windows just boots right back into the auto repair screen. I've even wiped my 1TB external and put the recovery image from my work PC on there. That didn't work either. I've gone through every thread google's given me and I feel like I'm banging my head against the wall.
I should probably note that formatting is not an option for me. I'd try installing Ubuntu on my external, but since the recovery won't even boot, I feel like that'd be in vain.
I have a Dell laptop Inspiron 15R 7537 that came with Windows 8. Yesterday I upgraded to Windows 8.1. Everything seemed to work fine after the upgrade. I shut down and re-booted several times with no issues. When I turned the computer on as usual today, I got the log in screen, then it briefly went to the desktop, then came a gray screen that blocks 99% of the desk top. This gray screen says "please wait" and has a cancel button at the bottom. It hangs forever and the cancel button doesn't work. It gives no other information.
I read several threads on the Microsoft Windows forum and this seems to be a common problem. How to boot using the Windows 8 recovery media disk that came with the Dell computer. I selected Troubleshoot, then Advanced Options, then Automatic Repair. I got a message that it couldn't do an automatic repair, so that didn't work. Next I tried System Restore, but I got a message that there were no restore points available from which to restore. Just to clarify - the Recovery Media Disk I have from Dell is for Windows 8 - not 8.1 - so maybe that's the problem.
The computer is totally worthless the way it is now, so unless there is some fix for the hanging gray screen in Windows 8.1, I would be happy just to reload the original Windows 8 Operating System. At least that worked.
Just reinstalled windows 8, loaded everything up and had it perfect. Then I installed a windows update (could it have been 8.1?) and then my computer would not boot. It got stuck on the windows 8 logo with the circle just spinning. After I restart it tries to automatically repair but that doesn't work. I popped the Windows 8 disc in and tried to do a system restore using a restore point but it said "You need to select an OS. Please restart the system and select an OS". ??? I'm not dual booting! Windows 8 is the only OS installed!
Tried safe mode but the windows logo just hangs. Any possibilities to salvage this before doing yet ANOTHER reinstall or refresh or whatever.
It's only been two days since I got windows 8 Pro on my alienware. Recently I force shut down because it was not shutting down. And when I open it today it gives an error message saying that Automatic repair could not fix the problem.
The error code is: "D:WINDOWSSystem32LogfilesSrtSrtTrail.txt
I have tried everything. I have used command prompt and the following commands have also been tried.
Nothing has worked so far. I have tried everything except a fresh installation of windows. I have already taken a backup previously. I am a little apprehensive about formatting again.
I initially had a different processor and motherboard, but after changing both of those due to failures, everything is now working fine, until I do a restart. The main restart issue is that it gets stuck in an automatic repair loop until I can get to Safe Mode and then restarting from there somehow undoes the updates from Windows Update. If I keep those updates off, though, and just try to do a general restart, I get a BSOD Watchdog error. I'll include that log, just in case. It'll be in CBS.zip since I'm including the whole CBS folder from WindowsLogs. I'm really not sure what's wrong here.
Working as a Mainframe programmer, I am automatically assumed to be an expert in all things IT and so a friend of the family has passed me a laptop to repair
What we have is the common Automatic Repair loop. The computer restarts, states "Preparing Automatic Repair" and "Diagnosis..." etc etc, and then does it all again. I cant get to the recovery menu or bios having tried different combinations of Shift F8, F12, F2.
I have found so far recommends booting from disk. Unfortunately, the owner of the laptop has no manual or box or any record whatsoever of the product key.
The laptop came with windows 8 preinstalled. I have tried to boot from a Windows 7 DVD, but it does not appear to be recognised and continues to do the automatic repair loop.
About a week ago I had the same exact problem. When I would turn on my pc it would try to diagnose my computer, repair it, and then fail and find no problem. I didn't find any solutions so I did a fresh install. Now its happening all over again. I originally thought the problem was my OS and re installing would fix my problem. Now I think that my SSD (OCZ Vertex 450) might be the problem.
I think that disabling automatic repair could also fix the problem, but I don't want to turn that off and cause another potential problem if it wont stop the boot loop. I also have a hard drive which I could install windows on if I need to, but I am not sure my SSD is the problem and if it cant be fixed. I haven't been downloading anything lately, and I formatted both my SSD and hard drive when I did a clean install so I don't think the problem is a virus.
My computer is custom built. I have a Windows 8 DVD but when in try to boot from it the circle spins and sound then just shows a blue flash quickly and restarts into the loop.
My Gateway machine was performing a windows update when the neighbourhood power went out. It was off for four hours. When I went to turn the computer back on, it said automatic repair the diagnosing your pc.....that lasted about 5 hours! Then a blue screen with options came up. When I went to pick the advanced options, I clicked accidentally on the first one and it rebooted into the repair loop again. Since it takes so long for the diagnostic part, when the blue screen came up again it was likely the middle of the night.
I saw it at 7:00 am and tried to click the advanced options but the computer had gone to sleep by then and so once again it got rebooted into the loop. Gateway refused to support since the warranty is up. I can't find a Recovery disc image for 8.1 to put on a usb stick, and I'm back to trying to find answers on my 12 year old machine running XP. I tried the boot to safe mode with alt+F10 but can't get that to work either. If I knew how to force a reset to factory defaults without being able to get into windows I would. I've been doing this for 3 days now and I was just starting to like 8.1 too...
I have read several times now that system restore creates a daily automatic restore point, I had a script to do this in 7 and I added it to win 8 , now I am thinking I don't need it.
I would guess it does it at start up. Having looked at the restore points going back to the 6th when i first got this laptop i dont see any instant restore points that look to have been created automatically(daily), and I don't see points for each software installed either (i read it does this also) as its a new laptop I have installed quite a few things and there ought to be quite a few restore points if this is the case.
When I turn my windows 8 pc on it shows the Windows icon with the little thing swirling around it, however if I click go to set up it sends me to the same page but says preparing automatic repair. This page has been up for over 2 hours with no progress, any support? When I try to boot off a disc it does the same thing just comes to the black screen with the light blue colored windows icon and shows it loading but makes no progress.
It is a Toshiba satellite L675 and the stickers indicate it is a windows 7 model. However, when I open the machine and turn it on, I am welcomed by the windows eight logo. Past this, I get an endless wait time. It alternates from no message to preparing automatic repairs from boot to boot. I have tried to go into its preperscibed setup mode (f2 at startup) and the boot menu (f12 at startup) neither of these have taken me to a bios or any other interface. I have tried ctrl+f8 and have gotten no success. I have also tried every function key and ctrl plus every function key individually.
My laptop is stuck on preparing automatic repair! I've tried shift+f8, I've tried them separately. Nothing is working! I have no windows 8 install disc. The only thing I have access to is the laptop. Can I in someway fix the laptop
Computer was running slow so I did a reset of windows. It worked but the problem still existed. My computer froze so I turned my laptop off and back on only to find it stuck in that automatic repair loop. I tried system restore, no luck. I made that bootable usb for repairing and that didn't work either. Straight repair won't work either. I have tried every option and am completely lost as to how to proceed. I need the files off the hard drive but don't have a way to connect it to anything to be able to access the files.
A month back I accidentally deleted the wow6432 node from my registry under system_user. I believe this is the root of all my problems. Once I did that, my toshiba c885 D 64 bit would not boot. I forced the computer to shut down and pressed f12 to get to the system recovery options. I then restored to a point before my blunder. Well, my laptop worked for a while and then magically the screen goes black and will not reboot. I did sestem restore a few more times since I could get a little bit of work done in between restoring and the screen turning black again. After I was fed up with having to run system restore every other day, I decided to run system refresh to keep my files but reset everything else. After restoring I am getting the same problem and find myself again running system restore every other day just to keep working.
My questions are if I completely reinstall windows 8 and start from scratch, will this definitely solve the problem? I thought system refresh would have worked, so I'm not sure. Also, are there any other available options for me to fix my computer without starting from scratch?
Last night I was playing League of Legends when I got a BSoD. I didn't think much of it, and just waited for my computer to restart. However, as it restarted, I saw that it was auto repairing and then diagnosing. After that it said auto repair failed, giving me the directory c:windowssystem32logfilessrtsrttrail.txt. I tried system refresh, which shoot me back system refresh failed straight away. The same happens with system restart, but it takes much longer for it to say the restart failed. I have no system restore points to choose from and I have no recovery disks as Windows 8 came preinstalled on the computer. I've troubledshooted for hours and come to opening SrtTrail.txt with the command prompt. It says:
Root cause found: The operating system version is incompatible with Startup Repair.
I have a windows 8.1 dell laptop ,for some reason system restore is not creating points manually or automatically, when I try to make a restore point manually the working bar just keeps moving at the sane time though I noticed in the device manger a generic volume shadow copy entry will show up with a yellow mark beside it ,I have tried maybe 10-15 times to uninstall this and try system restore again ,but this keeps repeating itself,
I have also went into safe mode but system restore points can't be made under safe mode, I did the repository thing where I rename that folder to old and reset repository in safe mode ,same result .
I have an Asus laptop running on Windows 8 that starts up to the initial Asus logo for a minute and then restarts over and over. I've already tried pressing f8 and it does nothing so I cannot get anywhere to attempt to fix the problem.
Unfortunately I do not have the Windows disk so I'm looking for a solution outside of having to buy another one and wiping the hard drive to reinstall.
I installed the latest version (3.0.0.9015) of Secunia software to my new Win 8.1 desktop. The PSI Setup looked OK.
I got a screen at the end that said: PSI has been installed on your computer. Click Finish to Close Setup.
While I was reading this message and it was still on the screen I immediately had a message pop-up from "System Restore" that said: System Restore completed successfully. System has been restored to 11/11/2013 4:35:46 PM. Your documents have not been affected. <Close>
I wasn't anywhere near the Restore screen. I had just turned on the machine, searched to see if Secunia was available for 8.1 (since I used it on my Win 7 machine), and started the download. The download was successful and I was able to run a scan....but this whole System Restore completion screen has freaked me out.
I realize I should have manually set a restore point before loading new software
When I look at my current possibilities for doing a restore, I can select from 11/23 or 11/30 - both auto set (so why 11/11?. I'd assume there should also be one for 12/7 since they are being set weekly, but it's not there. Nor are any other restore points, though I really had been setting them quite frequently as I was "configuring" this new machine.
The allocation is set at 30. Is this typically sufficient for a set-it-up-and-leave-it-alone user?
I have build a new pc, went to turn on File History and set it up and it began to restore from an old build. It is not restoring (and i don't need it too) but it is stuck. It won't turn off, or finish or fail. Been weeks now.
The location does exist, but regardless, I have deleted the files already.
how to force it to be clean config w/o re-installing Windows?
Well, yesterday night, everything was going good until I tried to download League Of Legends on my laptop. I was multi-tasking on facebook, youtube, and a whole other stuff while my laptop was downloading League Of Legends, and then the whole laptop frooze and then I panicked and pressed the power button a couple times. When the laptop booted back up, it was all black and nothing happened.
I was searching online and pressed the F11 button to try and restore the laptop and it did work and I also got into windows 8. It was lagging and very slow when I booted into windows 8, and so I just decided to shutdown the laptop and try to refresh and reset the laptop from boot.
However the automatic recovery didn't work and couldn't repair the laptop. When I was refreshing and reseting the laptop, it wouldn't finish all the way, because it would stop at like 60% and then just stop and freeze. Now, I think I messed up a bit and now I can't boot into Windows 8 or even RESET,RESTORE,or REFRESH. Also I just dod a diagnostic check on UEFI, and my Hard Disk Short DST has failed, so I think that I need to replace my hard disk.
RIGHT NOW, MY LAPTOP BOOTS THIS SCREEN DOWN HERE RECOVERY Your PC needs to be repaired
The operating system couldn't be loaded because the system registry file is missing or contains errors.
You'll need to use the recovery tools on your installation media. If you don't have any installation media(like a disc or USB device), contact your system administrator or PC manufacturer
Press Enter to try again Press F8 for Startup Settings Press ESC for UEFI Firmware Settings Press F9 to use a different operating system
All these options won't work because it will just loop back to this screen that I just showed you.
Ok, So, I started up my laptop this morning and the screen was all wonky, It was light blue and there were swiggly white bits, I waited a bit and then restarted it.
The Auto Repair started up when the computer started back up so I left it alone for a bit
"Automatic Repair couldn't repair your PC"
I was like Ok, I checked the logfiles "Boot critical file c:/ci.dll is corrupt"
It won't let me refresh or restore my computer.
Forgot to say, If I restart it just loops back to the auto repair.
