Automatic repair not working

Hi, I have a Windows 10 machine that keeps coming up with Preparing Automatic Repair, Diagnosing your PC, and then Your PC did not start correctly.

Thru the Troubleshooting / Advance options, I tried System Restore to an earlier date. It said the restore was successful. Then I got the same old Preparing Auto Repair which didn't solve the issue.

I also tried Safe Mode - Same issue - It comes with Auto repair which finishes but doesn't fix the problem.
I tried Uninstalling the latest quality update. It completes, but same issue
I removed the drive and ran a chkdsk /r - no issues found. It's still not booting properly.
I ran sfc /scannow /offbootdir=e:\ /offwindir=e:\windows with the drive connected to another W10 machine. (The partition with Windows was e.)
I ran a Malwarebytes Antimalware scan with the drive attached to another W10 machine.

I have USB install media drive. I understand I can use it to repair W10 the PC and keep the user files. I'd rather keep both user files and applications.

Any ideas please?

 

Thanks Seth.

Yes, I did try Safe Mode. No joy there.

I haven't tried another System Restore. I can do that later this afternoon when I get back home.

I've run chkdsk /r twice now, once while it was in the machine via cmd prompt and once out of the machine connected to another machine via USB adapter.

Not ruling out hard drive - it's a 1 TB Seagate. I'll make an Acronis Image of it. Acronis usually complains is the disk isn't right.

 

I've had this problem before and automatic repair never seemed to work for me. I had to to do a reset and reinstall user installed apps. Hope the clone works for you like Seth said your running low on options.

 

Yup, Yup, and Yup. I fired it up. Same thing - does auto repair and it doesn't work.
Advanced Options / Troubleshoot / System Repair - this time is says there are no restore points.

Just started making an Acronis True Image. So far it hasn't complained. 10% thru the process.

 

Here's an update. The Acronis True Image completed successfully.

I got it out of doing an automatic repair loop by getting to a command prompt and typing
bdcedit /set {default} recoveryenabled No

On boot it said the file \Windows\System32\drivers\eppdisk.sys is missing or corrupt.

Interesting - so now we know what the problem is. I replaced that file with the one from my W10 computer. The file was of a different size, but worth a shot. No joy. It now says Config\System is missing or corrupt

I put the original eppdisk.sys file back. Now it still says Config\System is missing or corrupt. That's a registry file I believe. So something got changed in that file so that it's not happy any longer.

I can no longer do things in the Advanced Options because when I try something it wants me to log in with an Administrator account. It should show the user account, but it doesn't. It just says there are no Administrator accounts on the machine.

In the old days you could replace the registry files in the config folder: system, software, sam, security, and default with ones from the repair folder. I haven't looked into how that is done on W10. It's late. I'll look at it tomorrow.

 

You probably saw this
https://www.freefixer.com/library/file/eppdisk.sys-297776/

Perhaps a bad uninstall of Emsisoft Protection Platform from 2019.

If you get in again, perhaps try this
https://help.emsisoft.com/en/1752/w...or-message-about-a-computer-resource-problem/

 

thanks plodr, but I believe the registry is corrupted at this point. Restoring from an image made earlier. My plan it to then reset keeping files.

 

Yup, sometimes restoring an image and doing a few updates saves a lot of time and headaches rather than trying to fix something.