Windows 8 Reboot Loop after WIN-U during boot, cant even refresh

[Louy]

Fixing a neighbors pc who's husband reciently passed. Currently it reboots a second or 2 after the blue windows logo appears. Alternates between attempting auto repair and no text. So now I can not even get into the refresh option and she has no install media besides the restore partition.

I had just done a refresh through the advanced options. It booted normally 3-5 times up to the login screen, but all attempts were invalid, though it should have been blank password. I'd reboot to another os, then when she thought of another possible I booted that disk and tried. I was going to use another os to copy cmd exe over utilman to reset password from command line but first wanted to test that win-u hotkey currently worked in bringing up original utilman ok, as I couldn't find instructions on when to hit it. So during a boot, I hit Win-U a few times after logo appeared but still got login screen. Used shutdown option, and during next boot starting hitting win-u at 1Hz even during bios. Windows logo appeared and then not long after black screen, turns out it rebooted. I continued hitting win-u and again it rebooted. I stopped hitting any keys and now it reboots every time the windows logo appears, in a loop.

I did a refresh because I was getting fatal error C000..00279 applying update operation.

HP ENVY h8 PC Series
Model: H8-1445
Serial: MXX24207Z1
PN: H4A24AA#ABA
Windows 8.1

Thanks!!!
Louy

 

[Louy]

Resolved. Do not know how or why.
All I can say is after many reboots and even full power cycling it did nothing but reboot at the windows logo. Leaving the drive in I used bios to boot a slave drive w/ linux and did
sudo ntfsfix /dev/sdb1
sudo ntfsfix /dev/sdb4
sudo ntfsfix /dev/sdb5
sudo ntfs-3g -o remove_hiberfile /dev/sdb4 /mnt/7604BA1704B9D9F7
Then used Offline Windows Password & Registry Editor tool on a usb stick to set my main user's pw to blank on the windows install
A boot or 2 later I fogot to use a hotkey during boot and so it tried to boot the widows 8.1 master and it loaded to windows login screen to my surprise.
My problems continue, but boot loop resolved!

 

[kemical]

Thanks for sharing Louy.