Catastrophic windows 10 failure

[Jray4]

Hi Linus Tech Tips community!

 

First post here so please excuse any non conforming things I do with this post 

 

My wife is in her masters program and has her thesis project due this month, and of course it is saved on her desktop and not in the cloud anywhere.  Ooops.  On to the failure:

 

Yesterday my wife got a good ol' blue screen on her Acer Aspire V3-372T laptop. Upon reboot and its best attempts to repair itself we got a notice that said it could not repair.  Subsequent attempts to reboot led to hours of looking at the acer logo and some little dots spinning forever or a picture of an hdd saying "no bootable device".  Acer has a reset button under the laptop that would start this process over again.  I finally got it to let me in to advanced startup so I assumed I had some progress and let it reboot to no avail.  After rolling back a quality update it now "loads" windows.  Login screen functions as normal and I can get to desktop.  That's where it all goes to crap.  No start menu function, no network (wired or wireless), no USB functionality, cannot open most settings (network settings opens for 0.5 seconds and closes), cannot transfer via Bluetooth and audio does not work. I'm honestly surprised the keyboard and track pad work.  Any direction you can provide would be greatly appreciated!  Here is what i've tried thus far:

 

1. Repair from advanced startup.  

-Reaches 90% and fails, then spends equal time "undoing changes"

2. Refresh from control panel

-Same, fails at 90%

3. Roll back windows updates

-I believe windows update was the cause of all of this, however I was unable to roll back a feature update but I was able to roll back a quality update.  This is likely what let windows even boot again at all

4. Chkdsk c: /r /x as administrator in both advanced startup and from task manager.  

-Cannot dismount the volume because it is a system drive or there is an active paging file on it.  Would you like to schedule this... next restart blah blah.  I choose Y but it never runs on reboot.

5. sfc /scannow

-windows resource protection could not perform the requested operation

6. Would LOVE to update Bios to newest version (currently on 1.08, newest available is 1.12) but no option to update UEFI/BIOS in bios menu.  Acer only provides .exe file for update which is useless to me now.  Tried extracting the exe and using bootable usb, but laptop won't recognize any usb at any time

 

We took literal pictures of what she has done so far on her project as our only backup for now as we cannot even get files off of the computer without network access, bluetooth, or functioning usb ports.

 

If anyone has any ideas on what to try next I would be eternally grateful for the direction!  I know if anyone can help its this community (and certainly not Acer or Microsoft lol)

 

Hardware Specs:

 

Acer Aspire

Updated from Windows 7 to WIndows 10

i5-6200U

256GB M.2 ssd

6gb DDR3

 

Thanks everyone!

[TheGlenlivet]

Did you get her files off the machine?  If so, fresh install with new media.

[WkdPaul]

The  Windows install is broken, or the drive is dead, boot from a live USB Linux distro and pull the documents that way.

 

I would also advise against booting or trying to "repair" the drive, because, if the drive is damaged, this could potentially make things worse and could completely kill the drive making recovery very difficult if not impossible.

[Jray4]

Hi @TheGlenlivet

Unfortunately no, we cannot get the files off as the computer has no working means of communication with the outside world.  No USB, no network, no bluetooth

 

Thanks!

[TheGlenlivet]

2 minutes ago, Jray4 said:

Hi @TheGlenlivet

Unfortunately no, we cannot get the files off as the computer has no working means of communication with the outside world.  No USB, no network, no bluetooth

 

Thanks!

Do you know how to get into safe mode?  Try and reboot into safe mode and see if you get USB and/or networking to work.  

[Radium_Angel]

5 minutes ago, Jray4 said:

Hi @TheGlenlivet

Unfortunately no, we cannot get the files off as the computer has no working means of communication with the outside world.  No USB, no network, no bluetooth

 

Thanks!

If the files are important, take computer to any local computer geek and ask for data recovery.

[samcool55]

4 minutes ago, Jray4 said:

Hi @TheGlenlivet

Unfortunately no, we cannot get the files off as the computer has no working means of communication with the outside world.  No USB, no network, no bluetooth

 

Thanks!

Going the USB Distro route does not care about the current W10 installation.

You boot straight from the USB, it doesn't need the drive in any way to work.

Once it's booted from USB you can just explore the broken windows 10 hard drive and copy everything to another USB drive (or internal drive, whatever you have to put the data on)

 

As long as the USB drive is recognized in the BIOS of the system, you are good to go!

You need another PC to prepare the USB drive tho (and have a spare usb drive)

[Jray4]

Hi All,

 

The important factor that most seem to be missing is that it refuses to recognize a USB at ANY time.  I tried creating a bootable usb (used Rufus if anyone is concerned) and it does not see it.  This rules out booting from a USB at all presumably

 

 

[Jray4]

11 minutes ago, Radium_Angel said:

If the files are important, take computer to any local computer geek and ask for data recovery.

I will have to pull the SSD and throw it in an adapter so I can use a spare sata on my gaming rig as a last resort.  No need to pay someone else to do the same 

[Jray4]

11 minutes ago, samcool55 said:

Going the USB Distro route does not care about the current W10 installation.

You boot straight from the USB, it doesn't need the drive in any way to work.

Once it's booted from USB you can just explore the broken windows 10 hard drive and copy everything to another USB drive (or internal drive, whatever you have to put the data on)

 

As long as the USB drive is recognized in the BIOS of the system, you are good to go!

You need another PC to prepare the USB drive tho (and have a spare usb drive)

I'm going to give this a shot just in case the bios is being conceited about which USB's it'll recognize (none so far).

[Jray4]

16 minutes ago, TheGlenlivet said:

Do you know how to get into safe mode?  Try and reboot into safe mode and see if you get USB and/or networking to work.  

tried but no cigar, can't get into safe mode.  F8 brings up advanced startup options but no safe mode.  Google says I have to do it from windows settings, which I can't get to

[samcool55]

2 minutes ago, Jray4 said:

Hi All,

 

The important factor that most seem to be missing is that it refuses to recognize a USB at ANY time.  I tried creating a bootable usb (used Rufus if anyone is concerned) and it does not see it.  This rules out booting from a USB at all presumably

 

 

Well if it can't even find a usb drive in BIOS, the system itself is just broken.

Because whatever windows does cannot screw up USB detection for example at bios level, that layer is too close to bare metal and windows has no straight access to that to mess with stuff.

[Jray4]

20 minutes ago, TheGlenlivet said:

Do you know how to get into safe mode?  Try and reboot into safe mode and see if you get USB and/or networking to work.  

Update: got into safe mode.  "Unknown hard error" comes up every couple of seconds.  Seems like this is game over.  Looks like I will be pulling the ssd to save files and starting over.  Also, still no USB or network in safe mode lol.  Thanks!

[Jray4]

3 minutes ago, samcool55 said:

Well if it can't even find a usb drive in BIOS, the system itself is just broken.

Because whatever windows does cannot screw up USB detection for example at bios level, that layer is too close to bare metal and windows has no straight access to that to mess with stuff.

Yep, looks like you are right.  Game over for this one   Thanks!

[Enderman]

You need to clean install windows.

 

If you need the files then you have to take the storage drive out and access it from another computer with a working OS.

 

You should use the official windows media creation tool to make a bootable USB using a different computer, not rufus.

Also the advanced startup options are where you should be able to select one time boot from a USB that is plugged in.

[samcool55]

1 minute ago, Jray4 said:

Yep, looks like you are right.  Game over for this one   Thanks!

Well, RIP acer in that case

You can always get an empty HDD enclosure so you can connect the hard drive with USB and get the data off that way with another PC.

[Jray4]

27 minutes ago, Enderman said:

You need to clean install windows.

 

If you need the files then you have to take the storage drive out and access it from another computer with a working OS.

 

You should use the official windows media creation tool to make a bootable USB using a different computer, not rufus.

Also the advanced startup options are where you should be able to select one time boot from a USB that is plugged in.

Hi @Enderman

 

You are correct, I have tried an official windows USB created on my other laptop as well as other attempts to get the updated bios on using rufus and free dos etc.  No matter what I do the computer does not see a usb plugged in at all, not even from BIOS or the boot menu or advanced startup.  I'm throwing in the towel and pulling the drive.  Thanks!

[Tallguy64]

Last ditch idea but have you tried a powered usb hub? if it is dying maybe it cant provide enough power for the device?

[Enderman]

36 minutes ago, Jray4 said:

Hi @Enderman

 

You are correct, I have tried an official windows USB created on my other laptop as well as other attempts to get the updated bios on using rufus and free dos etc.  No matter what I do the computer does not see a usb plugged in at all, not even from BIOS or the boot menu or advanced startup.  I'm throwing in the towel and pulling the drive.  Thanks!

If you've tried other USBs and all the USB ports and those also don't work then you have some bigger issue with the laptop than just software.

Get the data off and buy a new laptop.

[NumLock21]

Do you have a desktop and a M.2 slot

Yes, then take SSD out of laptop and plug that into your desktop.

Boot with your main drive so you can then access that SSD and copy out the data.

If your desktop does not have a M.2 slot, I believe they do sell M.2 to USB adapters, can get that, to help you copy the files out.

 

As for USB not booting, it could be your bios CSM isn't enable. Turn that on and try again. The other way is to boot from a CD.

[Jray4]

46 minutes ago, Tallguy64 said:

Last ditch idea but have you tried a powered usb hub? if it is dying maybe it cant provide enough power for the device?

Good idea!  Giving it a shot!