Can’t get past Preparing Automatic Repair screen

DeanKiefer
DeanKiefer Member Posts: 5

Tinkerer

edited September 2023 in 2019 Archives
Okay i’m gonna throw in all the details here so bare with me.. Just a couple hours ago I was on my laptop (one of the Aspire ones, it’s fairly new) and Windows alerted me that my storage was almost full and showed me a recommended list of things to delete so i went with that. Soon after during the purging process my laptop freezes and comes up with the “Your PC has encountered a problem, we’ll restart it for you” blue screen. So when that came up it simply turned my laptop off rather than restart it and when i turn it back on it just gets stuck on the Preparing Automatic Repair screen and ends there. Stays on a loop, doesn’t point me to a next page or anything. When i shutdown, the same thing happens so i don’t know what to do. Any suggestions before i take my laptop in somewhere to get looked at? 

Answers

  • JackE
    JackE ACE Posts: 44,858 Trailblazer
    Shutdown the machine again so it's completely off. Remove the charger. On the bottom, check for a pinhole with a battery symbol. Gently insert a paper clip for about 10 seconds to disconnect the battery from the mainboard. Then let the system rest for 15 mins. Then plug the charger back in  and try to turn it back on again. Jack E/NJ

    Jack E/NJ

  • DeanKiefer
    DeanKiefer Member Posts: 5

    Tinkerer

    JackE said:
    Shutdown the machine again so it's completely off. Remove the charger. On the bottom, check for a pinhole with a battery symbol. Gently insert a paper clip for about 10 seconds to disconnect the battery from the mainboard. Then let the system rest for 15 mins. Then plug the charger back in  and try to turn it back on again. Jack E/NJ
    Did that and nothing has changed unfortunately. Blue screen came up again and then it shuts down, when turned back on the Preparing Automatic Repair comes back like it had. 
  • JackE
    JackE ACE Posts: 44,858 Trailblazer
    Shut the laptop completely off again. Keep the charger plugged in. Turn it back on again and IMMEDIATELY press and hold the ALT key while tapping the F10 key. A recovery screen should appear as in the video below. You can follow direction to either partially refresh the machine to factory condition while trying to save your personal files or do a complete erase-everything full factory reset. Jack E/NJ


    Jack E/NJ

  • DeanKiefer
    DeanKiefer Member Posts: 5

    Tinkerer

    JackE said:
    Shut the laptop completely off again. Keep the charger plugged in. Turn it back on again and IMMEDIATELY press and hold the ALT key while tapping the F10 key. A recovery screen should appear as in the video below. You can follow direction to either partially refresh the machine to factory condition while trying to save your personal files or do a complete erase-everything full factory reset. Jack E/NJ


    Wouldn’t even let me boot into safe mode lol. But yeah, i tried to factory reset while keeping files and it said I didn’t have enough space, and obviously i can’t get on to free up space. I’ve now done the Alt f10 thing in startup again and it has me on this Please Wait screen now. Has been 10 minutes or so. Should I at this point shut down and get back into the reset options and do a full factory reset? I don’t have much saved on here so I’m not worried about losing anything. I just don’t want to full factory reset and then possibly still not be able to get in. 
  • DeanKiefer
    DeanKiefer Member Posts: 5

    Tinkerer

    I have tried doing a full factory reset, it says i need additional space. Can’t get on it to free up space though. Now what? 
  • JackE
    JackE ACE Posts: 44,858 Trailblazer
    The extra space needed is for temporary installation files. Sounds like you got a dinky 32GB emmc card. What's your full model number? You often can get the extra space by plugging NTFS formatted SD card into the SD slot. Jack E/NJ

    Jack E/NJ

  • DeanKiefer
    DeanKiefer Member Posts: 5

    Tinkerer

    I ended up booting a clean install of windows 10 from my usb and everything’s good now, thanks for your help mate! 
  • JackE
    JackE ACE Posts: 44,858 Trailblazer
    Congrats. Jack E/NJ

    Jack E/NJ

  • FevaDiva
    FevaDiva Member Posts: 19

    Tinkerer

    Will I lose all my files if I reinstall Windows? And if the computer was Windows 8, can I reinstall with Windows 10 and still keep my files?
  • JackE
    JackE ACE Posts: 44,858 Trailblazer
    If your machine was originally Win8, not Win8.1, you cannot reset the PC by the ALT+F10 cold boot method. Jack E/NJ

    Jack E/NJ