Please help! Swift 3 (SF314-52-859M) stuck on 'Preparing Automatic Repair' screen

Hello,

I'd be so grateful if someone could please help me troubleshoot an issue I'm having, as follows:

Turn on laptop and get a blue screen which reads “ Your device ran into a problem and needs to restart. We'll restart for you”. Stop code: UNMOUNTABLE_BOOT_VOLUME.
I then get the black screen showing the Acer logo with a message below saying “ Preparing Automatic Repair”. It then stays on this screen indefinitely (well, think I left it on for about 6 hours).

Things I've tried:

Holding ALT+F10 whilst turning on: Get the black screen with Acer logo and says “Please wait” at the bottom of screen. Every 30 seconds I get a flash of blue (for less than a second), then it returns to the black/please wait screen. After doing this for a few minutes, I get the blue recovery screen saying "Your PC/Device needs to be repaired (Error code: 0xc0000185). It says I'll need to use recovery tools and then gives me three options: Enter to try again, F8 for startup settings, or ESC for UEFI Firmware Settings. After about a minute on this screen the laptop turns off.
Removed the battery pack for a few hours, then replaced it.
Removed the SSD and replaced just to ensure it was perfectly connected

None of the above has made any difference and I'm not sure what to do now. As a last resort, I'd be comfortable losing data (don't think there was much on it which wasn't cloud based), and replacing the SSD (assuming that's the issue?!) but then I wouldn't know how to go about putting a clean OS on to the new SSD. Anyway, I'm jumping ahead. If anyone has any suggestions I'd love to hear them.

Thanks in advance.

Nick

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wascas

Try to repair your PC with the following steps.

Create a bootable flash drive with Windows Media Creation Tool.
Enable F12 Boot menu in the BIOS.
Insert USB flash drive, start your computer and begin tapping F12 to enter boot menu. Select USB. When you see the windows screen, click "Repair
your computer" on the left side of the screen.
Click "Troubleshoot", "Advanced Options", "Startup-Repair" or try "System Restore".

If no success, I suggest to do a clean installation of Windows. If possible, check the health of your SSD with CrystalDiskInfo

Graym0

Thanks for your help.

You suggest I create a bootable flash drive using the Windows Media Creation Tool. Following that link there are a few options. Can you please confirm if I want the ‘Create Windows 11 Installation Media’ or ‘ Download Windows 11 Disk Image (ISO) for x64 devices’ option. Both seem to create a bootable USB drive.

Thanks in advance.

wascas

Select “Create Windows Installation Media”. Create bootable USB flash drive.

Graym0

Ok so I've followed the steps above but am stuck on #3.

"Insert USB flash drive, start your computer and begin tapping F12 to enter boot menu. Select USB. When you see the windows screen, click "Repair
your computer" on the left side of the screen."

Tapping F12 bring up the boot manager menu but I don't have an option to select USB. I've tried the USB drive in several USB ports. In the boot option menu I just see 1 option - ‘Windows Boot Manager (Micron_1100_M……………)’

Selecting that takes me to the blue screen I originally described above.

Any thoughts?

Thanks.

wascas

If the USB is not recognized, it may not have been created correctly. Did you try another USB flash drive?

You can also create a bootable usb by using Rufus. Disable Secure Boot in the BIOS.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S57ag-pN5QA

To create a bootable USB with Rufus, take the following settings.

Puraw

Hi @Graym0

Your boot sector on the SSD is probably corrupt. You need a Recovery USB flashdrive like Wascas wrote, if you never made a Recovery USB drive (with WindowsRE on it) try to borrow one from a friend that has the same Windows version or create one on on another computer as Wascas also described. The idea is that you stop this Repair Loop your laptop is in with the recovery drive. Personally I would bring your laptop to Acer Services and ask for a complete reinstall of your system (factory reset), you will lose all your data so consider taking out the SSD and connect it to external SSD USB cable/case and copy your files to another PC, then reformat the external SSD and put it back in your laptop for service (a $25 service fee will be charged or free if under warranty).

wascas

If you create a bootable flash drive using the Windows Media Creation Tool, it's important to uncheck " Use recommended options for this PC " on the "Select Language, Architecture, and Edition" setup screen.