Windows 10 Laptop powers off at first windows icon

[crapula]

Hi I have a problem which googling hasn't provided an answer too. It's not really a BSOD but a startup issue.

If I start my laptop normally (from powered off), it only gets as far as the first windows logo (no rotating icon) and then powers off.

If I start from a recovery USB and continue to windows from there it usually boots ok (especially if I wait a while).

If I restart rather than shutdown/start it reboots ok
Sleep wakeup is ok

Steps I have taken:

1 Fast boot on/off (makes no difference)
2 Hibernate on/off makes no different
3 Rebuilding BCD. I don't know if this is a red herring but using the recovery disk and command prompt I performed the following:

attrib -r -a -s -h c:\boot\BCD
del c:\boot\BCD
bootrec /rebuildbcd
attrib +r +a +s +h c:\boot\BCD --- is this correct?
bootrec /fixmbr
bootrec /fixboot

At first this looked like it had worked but the problem always comes back so I don't know if the BCD is the problem but before deleting the BCD bootrec /scanos gave 0 windows installations (is that normal if the os is already in the BCD?)

Any other things I can do?

Cheers
John

 

[Neemobeer]

The BCD database that is used during boot isn't on the C drive it will be in the EPS or System partition. Have you tried running SFC /scannow from Windows, you may have corruption in Windows.


If you're computer is getting to the logo it's getting past the boot mgr and is at the loader or already to the init process. You may also want to try safe mode and see if that loads fine which could indicate a problematic driver.

 

[crapula]

sfc /scannow does not find any problems

"The BCD database that is used during boot isn't on the C drive it will be in the EPS or System partition. Have you tried running SFC /scannow from Windows, you may have corruption in Windows."

I'm not sure what you are saying here. The system has two drives
Disk 0 has 2 partitions a system,boot, primary partition (which is drive C) and a small (2GB or so recovery partition)
Disk 1 has a single primary partition which is drive D
Where is this EPS or System partition if it isn't the C partition?
BTW I reverted to legacy boot a couple of years ago (set in bios) when I had to do a full reinstall and I couldn't get the UEFI boot to work.

It seems strange that it can boot from a restart i.e. by booting into recovery (using a USB stick) then restarting or restarting from windows but powers off from a cold start without really trying.

 

[Neemobeer]

It will be on the system partition.

 

[crapula]

So the C drive ie c:\boot\BCD.

Doesn't matter anyway as rebuilding it doesn't fix the problem. Unless there is some other BCD database somewhere else?

I am trying a full system reset as there was nothing important on the machine.

I thought it might be hardware but the built in diagnostics (dell) finds nothing.

 

[Neemobeer]

No The C drive is the boot partition, the BCD database is on the system partition. It will be the 100-300MB parttion

 

[crapula]

There is no such partition on that system. The C drive is the system partition. As I said the drive only has two partitions the C drive and a recovery partition.

I think systems which use UEFI have a separate partition for system. and legacy boot uses the C drive as the system partition (but it isn't my area of expertise). In fact my other laptop has such a partition which is identified as (EFI System) by the windows disk management tool.

Anyway it doesn't matter resetting the PC seems to have resolved it (at least for three complete shutdowns and startups). I'll hope it doesn't reappear.

I'm guessing something got corrupted but non of the normal windows fixes resolved it so it would be nice to have a solution in case it happens again.

 

[BIGBEARJEDI]

Well, glad you got it fixed! But, in the future Bro', you should never be troubleshooting boot issues with MULTIPLE physical hard drives connected. Whether 2nd drive is internal SATA/eSATA or external USB; that's part of what was causing your problem no doubt. Just an FYI. This will prevent that from occurring in the future.

P.S. Did your Dell come with W10 pre-installed from the factory or did you upgrade? I suspect you upgraded from W7/W8X or earlier since your hardware is pre-UEFI; that indicates it's at least 5-6 years old or older. Did you remember to run the W10 COMPATIBILITY TEST prior to your W10 upgrade? As here: Get Windows 10 app - Check Compatibility Report for Windows 10
This will tell you if any of your internal hardware, drivers, or apps can cause problems post-upgrade, and they either have to be remediated or removed. If the Test report shows your Hard Drive is an issue, you should test it and replace if found failing or faulty. Test diags are here: Link Removed
Lots of people fail to perform this step. It's worth checking out. And, by the way, we recommend a W10 Clean Install after you test your hardware and run the Test.

...<<<BIGBEARJEDI>>>...

 

[crapula]

Thanks for replying, I hadn't thought of removing the other drive as I could get to the desktop via another route but I take your point.

The laptop is about 3.5 years old and originally came with windows 8, a single hard drive and an optical drive. About 2 years ago I removed the optical drive, slapped the hard drive in the optical bay in its place and put an SSD as boot drive.

There were problems with the migrations which resulted in a complete wipe of all drives and re-installation of windows 8 from dell's installation disks. This worked but, because I had never come across UEFI before, when given the option I selected legacy or something and I ended up with a system which would only boot in legacy. Rather than repeat the whole install process since it worked ok, I left it at that.

I upgraded to Windows 10 at the earliest opportunity (and yes I did run the compatibility test with no issues). This laptop is on the fast insider track. The issue to seems to arise after an insider upgrade. That is it has occurred before and the BCD fix I mentioned in the original post resolved it. This time (with the build before 15002) it didn't, resulting in a full factory reset. I guess if it happens again I'll switch the laptop to the last stable build and turn off any future automatic updates.

Thanks everyone who helped
John

 

[BIGBEARJEDI]

Glad to help! It's interesting that my reply stimulated you to reveal you are running W10 Insider Edition, versus RTM-pre-AU or RTM-post-AU version. This is one of the reason why we ask folks for their EXACT version of W10 (current is v1607 b14393.693) for example as of this week's push update on Tuesday 1/10/2017. It's certainly worth mentioning to you know that several of us here including most of our Admins and myself are long-time W10 Insider Testers. Myself I've been one since Sept. 2014; 2 yrs. 4 mos. now. This question now seems quite obvious; in addition to REMOVING that 2nd physical drive while troubleshooting your booting problem; you should make a Backup Image file of your C: drive (the SSD), or purchase a 2nd SSD drive of at least the same or better capacity. Then, wipe out everything on that SSD drive and reinstall using the latest version W10 Post-AU (post Aug. 2nd 2016) version on the wiped 1st SSD boot drive, or swap out drives with the newly purchased 2nd SSD (now the new boot drive: C:/) and restore the Image file onto that drive using the RTM-post-AU version. Retest your boot options. Try this with the existing legacy option first. If it works, I suggest you repeat that whole process; wipe out the original SSD with the W10 RTM-post-AU build, but this time attempt it with your UEFI BIOS Enabled. If it works, great!

If it doesn't work, then it's most likely due to some inherent flaw in your hardware. Of course, you realize that being a W10 Insider means that you are essentially running BETA software, and that means there could be bugs with your version of W10 that manifest themselves in weird ways: UEFI conflicts and booting problems are both symptoms of that? Is this laptop your "daily-driver" machine; one you use for browsing, E-mail, online banking, bill-pay, etc.?? If so, that's really not a good idea to run Beta software on a production computer!
You should pick up an old refurbished desktop PC or laptop and use that as a test machine to run Beta software. That's how most of us Insiders do it here. I have 7 machines I have W10 on for testing purposes besides my "daily-driver" desktop PC. That machine is running the latest RTM-post-AU version which is Activated and 2 others as well. The rest are running combinations of RTM and Tech Preview versions for testing purposes, and get broken regularly. No big deal. They are all Imaged backed-up as well.

The other thing you didn't mention was that since you upgraded from W8 to W10, did you remember to perform a Motherboard BIOS update to the latest BIOS version? Most machines running W7/W8 that are between 6 and 8 years old now. That's old enough to need a BIOS update to make your UEFI BIOS options compatible with W10! Several of my test W10 machines are 8-11 years old and ALL have their BIOSes updated. This is important, as the W10 COMPATIBILITY TEST doesn't really pick this item up; so you wouldn't know from the Test report that it needed to be done; but it is. You should also know that if you've never done a BIOS update before, it's VERY HIGH RISK TO ATTEMPT TO DO YOURSELF!! About 98% of my Students and Customers who do so fail on the 1st attempt and BORK THEIR MOTHERBOARD!! If you haven't done it, you should pay a professional Tech to do for you. BIOS updates, especially on UEFI machines are often needed in order to get W10 to run; and that's true for the Tech Preview editions as well as the RTM (Live, licensed) verisons too.

Don't know if you are doing Image Backups or not, but the 3 Backups softwares we tested here for both Tech Preview and RTM editions for W10 are:
1.) Macrium Reflect (I mostly use)
2.) Acronis TrueImage (rarely use)
3.) EASETodo (occasionaly use)
Most of use are using multiple drives in our Test machines (for Tech Preview installs), as well as RTM installs. Running Beta software requires multiple machines *if you have them or can afford them*, or at the very least multiple hard drives ALONG WITH making Image Backups: regularly!

This might help you sort out some of your boot problems with that laptop in the future. Do your OS builds on a secondary machine (especially with Tech Preview editions), or at the least a secondary HDD and check if your UEFI BIOS has been properly updated to manufacturer's latest version from their support website.

Best,
<<<<BBJ>>>>