Got through the mystery black screen with cursor and now all I get is a mystery blue screen with the very annoying white dots circling. It’ll sit here all day. Nothing works.

Help….

I haven’t got/ didn’t make a boot disc/ USB or whatever they are called these days…

It’s taking all my resolve not to launch it out the window or smash it up with a pick axe.

As consolation, and no help whatsoever, the most recent Windows 10 update seems to have lost the DVD drive on my laptop.

More updates downloading as I type………12%

there has been an update today – new logon screen pictures if nothing else

I know I’m not qualified to say this, but have you tried switching off & on again ?

Hold down the power button until it switches off totally.

See if it’ll start from there.

If all else fails you ought to be able to perform a full install from USB if you use the “Media Creation Tool” wotsit like what I did: https://www.microsoft.com/en-gb/software-download/windows10

Fine for a full install as long as it definitely had W10 on it before anyway AFAIK.

I’ve held the power button down and switched off. Switched off and on a few times. Might leave it longer if there’s been an update today. Might be that. Tried f8 to get odd mode or whatever but that didn’t work.

I didn’t make a USB boot thing. How can I make one now if I can’t get my pc to work? Only other pc thing is my ipad which obvs doesn’t have a USB!

If I do get a USB media creation thing will it wipe my pc and what’s on there already? I have some end of yr business stuff that’s been done between back ups. Doh.

Bump for the morning techies.

If you get a USB stick with the installation media on it there should be a repair option, your files will be fine.

Even reinstalling should give you the option to keep them these days.

Catch 22 no repair stick yet, computer broke so can’t download/ make repair stick..

Windows 10 usually sticks the recovery media on a partition. Keep hitting f10 during start-up. Should be able to repair if it starts.

If the disk partitions are utterly goosed then,

Friendly techie mate who will look disappointed but will fix it anyway?

Work IT department who can give you a recovery USB?

Warranty – take it back?

The USB repair works pretty well usually for Windows 10. Library, mates house or anywhere else with internet access where you can download and create the recovery USB – link to the M$ page here:

http://windows.microsoft.com/en-us/windows-10/windows-10-recovery-options

Without looking, I am always suspicious when something “just breaks” as they don’t usually “just break”.

Normal IT question for support, what were you doing before it stopped working? Do you need to do what you did, if not, don’t do it again 🙂

If the disk is on it’s way out or there’s another hardware fault you could be polishing a turd by fixing it. Either buy a new one or find a techie mate who knows how to diagnose and fix laptops.

allan23 is spot on

It’s a 5 yr old sony vaio pretty good spec and has been good so far. No warranty left!

My work it dept are in Scotland and it’s hard work getting something fixed on my work pc!

There is a guy down the road who has a back room pc fixing business who’s fixed pcs for me before. Last resort I’ll try him.

Since windows 10 it’s been random once or twice not booting up but always fixed itself with some time.

I’ll try the f10 trick. Then the USB stick through a mate.

It stays on most of the time hooked up to an external monitor. It wasn’t giving a signal to the external monitor so I restarted it. Then it booted up fine but I couldn’t open chrome etc. so I restarted it again and this happened or nothing happened I guess.

So I hit f10 and got the vaio recovery area up. Asked if I wanted to do full recovery or help fix things with custom recovery.

Thing is I don’t want to wipe my data on my hard disk. Will this happen if I try these recovery options?

Black screen

I can’t help specifically as not a Windows expert but as you say best being safe unless you know what you are doing. You can get the harddrive out and put it into a usb caddy and them read it from another pc and almost certaknly see your data files and save them. After that you can do as you wish with it of course in terms of recovery / reinstall

You can also go back to a saved restore point

No need to take the hard drive out just do a restore or follow the link posted (restore is less work if your a novice)

Use the fix things if you wish

I have some end of yr business stuff that’s been done between back ups. Doh.

if that’s a big deal I’d be copying it off before buggering about with restore options – your boy down the road could prob do it in half an hour, assuming the case is easy to get into

that’s the question.

If I “restore” it via the tools after pressing f10 will I lose the contents of my hard drive? When it says restore to factory settings I take that to read it came out of the factory with none of my data on it.

Where are you? Can you pass / post it to me?

I’m nr southampton….

Burko, can you see how to get the drive out of the machine and do you own a USB drive ?

Do you save your work somewhere recognisable, that can easily be found by file explorer ? (say, in documents ?)

I’m nearish Southampton and have a computer and a caddy and a bit of spare time tomorrow to at least try to get your work files copied off it before you “fix” it

Warning: I am most definitely NOT an IT expert by any definition outside of my office at work – where “off and back on” is beyond many of us
(If any of the grown-ups on here think this is a bad idea, please say so)

I’ll prob call my guy down the rd to see if he’s still in the game. Thanks for all the kind offers so far.