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Forum Index : Microcontroller and PC projects : Windoze 10 problem....
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Grogster Admin Group  Joined: 31/12/2012 Location: New ZealandPosts: 9610 |
Howdy folks.  I have a Windows 10 laptop here, which never makes it to the desktop. All I get is the little animated circle of dots forever. I have tried a recovery boot, and asked Windows to diagnose and repair any problems stopping it from booting correctly. It ran this and completed fine, then it rebooted itself, and now we are just back at the circle of dots again. No new software installed, no new updates installed(it has no internet connection). It is just a field laptop for changing code on my Micromite-based things. To be sure I was not rushing Bill too much, I left it like that for about two hours, but it never gets past that point, and you never get the desktop, mouse, or ANY kind of error message to let you know what it is having issues with. This makes it hard to fix, as I don't actually know what the issue is in order to fix it.  You used to be able to press ESC on earlier windoze's, and it would clear the boot-up splash screen and show you some text of what it was doing, so if it hung while trying to load a certain driver etc, you would at least know where to start looking, but W10 does not seem to all that ESC key during boot. Or, it does, but it has already hung before I can press it. Safe-mode in W10 is done in a really odd way. It would seem you have to enable booting to safe-mode, from within W10 itself. But if you can't get W10 to start correctly in order to set that option, you are totally locked out the ability to start in safe-mode. An odd way to setup safe-mode.... Has anyone seen this issue on their W10 machines, and if so, what did they do to fix it? I am currently searching the net for more information. Smoke makes things work. When the smoke gets out, it stops! |
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TassyJim Guru  Joined: 07/08/2011 Location: AustraliaPosts: 6283 |
Make sure nothing is plugged in to the USB ports. Mouse etc can cause boot problems. Remove battery for a while. Then try this (taken from a whirlpool post): The next step would be create a USB boot drive with the latest W10 ISO and do a recovery (or reinstall) Jim VK7JH MMedit |
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| BrianP Senior Member  Joined: 30/03/2017 Location: AustraliaPosts: 292 |
Hi Grogs Very frustrating - been here a few times on various client PCs. 1st possibility is a hard drive issue - if you have any way of running a diagnostic / surface scan on the drive it could be useful (even if you have to take the drive out of the laptop & connect into a PC). See if you can look at the drive S.M.A.R.T. data (the free Piriform Defraggler program will do this for you under "health") to see if there are any drive issues. Laptop drives generally have a hard life. I use an extremely good drive repair & maintenance utility called Spinrite (not free) that has fixed this sort of issue quite a few times. It works on SSDs also. From an install disk you could try a system restore - only problem there is Windows updates in the past have been known to turn system restore off & you might not have any restore points available.  One of the many frustrating things about Win 10 is that it has some excellent repair / upgrade procedures available, but only from within a working Windows session. If Windows won't run, then you are screwed.  Best thing would be to extract anything vital from the hard drive first (remove from laptop, put into a PC or use a USB > SATA adapter) & then do a clean install, but use the latest Windows version though (https://www.microsoft.com/en-au/software-download/windows10) - I've noticed this issue more likely happens with earlier Windows builds. If you can afford it, replace the laptop drive with a SSD drive - laptop will run 5 - 10 times faster! Someone said quite a while ago now that Microsoft is using us, the users, as the guinea pigs to test the software - surely not!  Good luck... B |
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Turbo46 Guru Joined: 24/12/2017 Location: AustraliaPosts: 1642 |
I have a very old laptop that still runs Windows 10. It used to have that problem of the blue screen with the rotating dots after an update. Once I left it overnight - the bloody rotating dots were still there to greet me in the morning. Holding down the power button restarted it (not ideal I know) and it usually re-started OK. I replaced the hard drive with an SSD as BrianP suggests and it's been OK ever since (a couple of years). I can't remember which utility I used to clone the HDD but it was a free one. I think that's worth a try for an old laptop Bill Keep safe. Live long and prosper. |
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| BrianP Senior Member Joined: 30/03/2017 Location: AustraliaPosts: 292 |
Turbo46 wrote I have been quite surprised at how well most "very old laptops" can run Windows 10 - hardware & driver issues seem noticeably absent. You do need an SSD drive though as "old" hard (particularly laptop) drives are not very fast. My cloning tool of choice is the free MiniTool Partition Wizard - very user friendly & powerful & lots of disk / partition options. "Migrate OS to new drive" is brilliant & does the job seamlessly. Grogs - WHATYAGONNADOO? B |
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| Grogster Admin Group Joined: 31/12/2012 Location: New ZealandPosts: 9610 |
[Quote=BrianP]One of the many frustrating things about Win 10 is that it has some excellent repair / upgrade procedures available, but only from within a working Windows session. If Windows won't run, then you are screwed.[/Quote] Well, quite. It seems like such an odd way to approach tools to fix a system that won't boot or run correctly - to have to set those tools up from within a working system. But if you can't actually start the system to setup the tools, you are stuck in a digital loop you can never get out of.... In THIS event, I used a USB copy of W10 installer. Booted THAT, and then asked it to fix the one that was on the machine. I chose to use a restore point that the system had automatically made. The newest one did not work, but the next oldest one DID, and it gave me the system back again. This in itself has given me food-for-thought, as I have not added any new software or connected this machine to the net at all since I set it up. All it has, is W10 home, and MMBASIC stuff such as MMEDIT, GFXterm/TeraTerm etc. This machine DOES have a small SSD in it though, and it has been moaning to me every time I start it up, that it wants to do updates - but the SSD is too small for the updates, so I have always just being skipping/refusing to allow W10 to do this. Perhaps after many refusals, something odd happens? With W10, anything is possible.  Having said that, I use W10 on my main machine and have for more then a year or so, and provided you give it plenty of RAM and a SSD to run from, it seems very good, reliable, and as good as any other Windows I have played with. Especially once you turn off all the W10 snooping, and disable the METRO GUI with something like Classic Shell. Smoke makes things work. When the smoke gets out, it stops! |
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| AussieWombat Newbie  Joined: 04/05/2018 Location: AustraliaPosts: 21 |
On Win10, you can select safe mode from the start menu. Just shift click restart , to start the ball rolling. boots to a menu, just follow the prompts from there. from the menu click "troubleshoot". then click "advanced options" then you may have to click "see more recovery settings" to see the final button "startup settings" then click restart bottom right. when it reboots to the menu select 4 or 5 or 6, depending on what you want. The menu explains it all. try this link if needed...https://www.digitalcitizen.life/4-ways-boot-safe-mode-windows-10 If it won't boot..... when it gets to the twirling dots, press and hold the power on/off button for 10 seconds. ( usually 4 will make it turn off). when it gets to the twirling dots again. do the same thing again. It usually takes 3 or 4 goes to get to the same menu, that shift restart does. Follow the prompts to allow booting into safe mode. When finished in safe mode, run msconfig from the task manager, and check safe boot is de-selected in the boot settings. |
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| Paul_L Guru Joined: 03/03/2016 Location: United StatesPosts: 769 |
Download a copy of Macrium reflect 7 free. Make images of the disk every week to a USB drive. MAKE A MACRIUM RESCUE CD! Boot from the CD and restore your last image. Macrium 7 has actually worked every time for me. Paul in NY |
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| Grogster Admin Group Joined: 31/12/2012 Location: New ZealandPosts: 9610 |
It's funny you should mention Macrium Reflect, as I have images on the server of this main W10 machine, as this one is mission-critical and I would need to have it up and running again as soon as possible, so I do images with M.R. every time I make any kind of serious change to the folder arrangements etc. As far as my little field laptop is concerned, the SSD is embedded - you cannot remove it, as it is permanently soldered down to the main-board. This is also why it is not upgradable to a bigger one, and why I am somewhat stuck with the constant W10 update moaning. There is no way to do it. I DID try once, by uninstalling EVERYTHING to give the machine as much room on the wee SSD as possible, emptied the cache, turned off the pre-fetch and emptied the recycle bin - all that jazz. This gave me about 4GB of space, but the freakin' update's still used all that, then there was no room to move to actually PERFORM the updates - so W10 moaned about THAT, and reverted back. That was a waste of time.... As a little field-programmer/debugger/tester/code writer thing, it works a charm, but it's only when Bill wants to do administrative things to W10 that things start to get a little sticky! Smoke makes things work. When the smoke gets out, it stops! |
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| BrianP Senior Member Joined: 30/03/2017 Location: AustraliaPosts: 292 |
Sounds more like a "Tablet" than a "Laptop" - I have something similar here with the same issue, but so far I have been able to (just) manage major updates. Make sure you have actually cleaned ALL the junk out - run "Disk Cleanup" & select system files cleanup. Hidden gotchas include memory dump (.dmp) files, previous Windows installations, upgrade "optimisation" files, temporary Internet files, also Windows temp. files. It MAY be worth running a registry compactor to gain a few more (mega)bytes. Also delete all saved restore points in system restore. I've saved more than a few gigabytes this way - about 8gB free on a 32gB drive. B |
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| robert.rozee Guru Joined: 31/12/2012 Location: New ZealandPosts: 2442 |
all of the windows 10 "netbooks" with 32gb of onboard flash fall over when win10 tries to do a major update. a while ago i saw mention online of some folks in the US calling for a class-action lawsuit against the manufacturers over the issue - essentially the machines are not 'fit for purpose'. it is crazy that the machines are not sold with 64gb or more of onboard flash, given how cheap flash memory it is. with HP stream 11 machines, i wipe win10 and replace it with 32-bit linux mint. this works brilliantly well. when i get the time i'd like to sit down and create a winXP VM to run on them; apart from web browsing, winXP is an exceptionally usable OS. alternatively, someone could port the current firefox to XP. the last firefox that will run on XP (version 52.9) has gaping memory holes that make it mostly unusable with today's bloated websites. cheers, rob :-) |
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| Paul_L Guru Joined: 03/03/2016 Location: United StatesPosts: 769 |
If you can't install a bigger SSD on that tiny notebook I think you should just switch to linux. Win 10 won't be able to update itself! Paul in NY |
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| Grogster Admin Group Joined: 31/12/2012 Location: New ZealandPosts: 9610 |
No, W10 can't update itself, and this is part of the problem I think. I figured I could just ignore the 'I want to update!' messages forever - afterall, this machine has no net connection. Perhaps you CAN'T just ignore the message forever.... I have a USB3 flash-drive with Puppy Linux on it that can run on this machine. I have it setup with PUTTY I think it is, and I can connect to a micromite, so that gives me basic terminal access via Linux. The problem is that I can't run GFXterm or MMEDIT under Linux. I have not tried WINE on this machine - perhaps I should. I suppose I could also setup Virtual-Box on Linux to run a basic Windoze to run those apps, but I see that as actually a step backwards to me. If you have to install a VM, and install a Windoze to that so you can run some software you need inside Linux, you're better off just using Windoze natively. My 2c only. However, it would give me a chance to have a play with WINE and VM again. EDIT: This machine is an Acer ES1 132 series.. My one is red like in this link, and has a 32GB embedded SSD. EDIT: You CAN put a standard SSD in this thing, but you have to have a special SATA cable. I have found one here. They are not too much, so I am thinking about perhaps getting one of these, and putting a bigger SSD in there. I can use Macrium Reflect to clone the internal SSD to the new one, so I can then keep the same system and Windoze license, I would just have a bigger SSD. A Western Digital Green 120GB SSD is about $40 new in my money, so the smaller capacity SSD's are very affordable now, and I would not need hundreds of GB of storage on this thing.... Smoke makes things work. When the smoke gets out, it stops! |
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| BrianP Senior Member Joined: 30/03/2017 Location: AustraliaPosts: 292 |
Grogster has a moot point - there are those of us that HAVE to work in a Windows environment - fact of life. Grogs - spend your $40 & remove some of the pain. How much time have you wasted so far... B |
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| Grogster Admin Group Joined: 31/12/2012 Location: New ZealandPosts: 9610 |
Oh, heaps!  It was only after I took the back off the machine and investigated a little more, that I found out about the OPTIONAL standard SSD you can add to it. It comes supplied with an embedded 32GB SSD, and I was of the opinion that cos it has the embedded SSD, there is no other option - that is the norm with embedded SSD machines. I will get the cable and use Macrium to clone to the new one. Case closed.  Smoke makes things work. When the smoke gets out, it stops! |
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| Turbo46 Guru Joined: 24/12/2017 Location: AustraliaPosts: 1642 |
Good luck Grogster. After my old laptop received the SSD (240G) then came the battery - it lasts 10 minutes or so. I gave it to my Grandson yesterday which is pretty much a death sentence. Hopefully I can retrieve the SSD when it's dead. Bill Keep safe. Live long and prosper. |
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| Paul_L Guru Joined: 03/03/2016 Location: United StatesPosts: 769 |
My old desktop is an Acer/Gateway. It died when windoze was upgraded from 7 to 10 and then to new releases of 10. Eventually windoze changed the driver programs so that the hardware was not supported any more and Acer/Gateway had also quit supporting the physical hardware. The machine is now a fairly fast boat anchor with an I5 and 8GB of ram, an intel mother board, and standard graphics and disk drivers, but it can't be updated to a current W10 or rolled back to W7 without losing the Visual Studio installation. Phooey! In the future I won't buy from a questionable assembler. I'll stick to Dell, HP, and Lenovo. The other assemblers are likely to go bankrupt and then fail to support the older products anymore. Paul in NY |
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| Tinine Guru Joined: 30/03/2016 Location: United KingdomPosts: 1646 |
Sort of a related topic. I am very surprised and impressed with the performance of my FUSION5 W10 tablet. It has 4g RAM, 64g Storage, USB 3, micro USB, mini HDMI. I only really intended to use it for light weight stuff but this thing really performs. I loaded up some audio processing apps which can easily bring a system to its knees but the tablet hardly breaks a sweat. Question: I want to get a 2nd unit for a backup and want everything to be identical. Is it possible to use one of these utilities to completely mirror my tablet to the other or will W10 complain that it's not on the original hardware? |
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panky Guru Joined: 02/10/2012 Location: AustraliaPosts: 1114 |
G, Both MMEdit and GFXTerm work fine under Wine as does PICPROG. I had to fiddle about with Linux (Mint) settings a bit but if you want to explore this option let me know and I will try and remember/determine what I did to get them going and let you know. Doug. ... almost all of the Maximites, the MicromMites, the MM Extremes, the ArmMites, the PicoMite and loving it! |
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bigmik Guru Joined: 20/06/2011 Location: AustraliaPosts: 2950 |
Hi Grogs, What brand / model is your laptop? I would be surprised if it wasn’t a socketed M2 or mSata drive. Regards, Mick Mick's uMite Stuff can be found >>> HERE (Kindly hosted by Dontronics) <<< |
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