I have an acer laptop that I'm trying to figure out what the problem with it is. It is stuck on preparing automatic repair. If I let it sit long enough it will eventually go to a blue screen with an error that says: “ pc could load because a critical system driver is missing or contains errors \windows\system32\drivers\refs.sys ”
I have tried everything I can think to try. I made a USB bootable device but it won't boot to it. It just gets stuck on a loading screen that I waited around 30-45 minutes on and it never allowed me to access the USB. I tested the USB on another computer to ensure that I didn't mess up and it works fine.
I tried powering down and removing all USB's and rebooting and letting the preparing automatic run a few times but it always results in the blue screen with the error.
I tried taking the SSD out and plugging it into another computer to omit any physical problems with the laptop and the error occurs on other computers as well.
I tried taking the hard drive and cloning it to another new hard drive/ plugging it into another computer with 2 hard drives and windows can't access the drive.
I feel like the drive is working and isn't dead but the missing driver seems to not be allowing me to do anything else. Any advice would be appreciated! Thanks!
