Windows 11 Stuck Preparing Automatic Repair on Boot

[calvinatorr]

Hi,

I'm experiencing some boot issues with my recent Windows 11 workstation (had for barely 6 months) with booting and potentially a corrupt drive.

I can't seem to get it to boot in safe mode or into the windows recovery environment, and it just gets stuck on the PC specialist screen with the loading throbber. If I select boot manager it'll get stuck on "Preparing automatic repair" for hours (I gave up seeing if it'd do anything at that point). I tried resetting BIOS settings to their default, but no luck.
I'm absolutely tearing my hair out over this as I don't know what to do.

Some context; I suddenly noticed files on one of the hard drives were inaccessible (could see the directories in file explorer but got an error trying to open any) so I tried to run chkdsk on that drive, which said it can't run on a RAW drive (it's formatted with NTFS). PC was still working fine, so saved my stuff and restarted my PC and now I can't get past boot. (I didn't get chance to check if I could access anything on my C drive where Windows is installed).


Specs:
Case
CORSAIR 4000D AIRFLOW TEMPERED GLASS GAMING CASE
Processor (CPU)
Intel® Core™ i9 10 Core Processor i9-10900X (3.7GHz) 19.25MB Cache
Motherboard
ASUS® WS X299 PRO/SE: ATX, USB 3.1, SATA 6 GB/s - ARGB Ready
Memory (RAM)
32GB Corsair VENGEANCE DDR4 3600MHz (2 x 16GB)
Graphics Card
8GB NVIDIA GEFORCE RTX 3070 - HDMI, DP, LHR
1st M.2 SSD Drive
1TB SOLIDIGM P41+ GEN 4 M.2 NVMe PCIe SSD (up to 4125MB/sR, 2950MB/sW)
1st Storage Drive
3TB SATA-III 3.5" HDD, 6GB/s, 7200RPM, 64MB CACHE
1st Storage Drive
4TB SEAGATE BARRACUDA SATA-III 3.5" HDD, 6GB/s, 5400RPM, 256MB CACHE
Power Supply
CORSAIR 850W RMx SERIES™ MODULAR 80 PLUS® GOLD, ULTRA QUIET
Power Cable
1 x 1.5 Metre UK Power Cable (Kettle Lead, 1.0mm Core)
Processor Cooling
PCS FrostFlow 360 Series ARGB High Performance Liquid Cooler
Thermal Paste
ARCTIC MX-4 EXTREME THERMAL CONDUCTIVITY COMPOUND
Sound Card
ONBOARD 8 CHANNEL (7.1) HIGH DEF AUDIO (AS STANDARD)
Network Card
2.5G ETHERNET PCI-EXPRESS CARD (10/100/1000M/2.5G) (1 x RJ45)
Wireless Network Card
ASUS PCE-AX3000 Wi-Fi 6 (802.11ax) 2400Mbps/5GHz, 600Mbps/2.4GHz
USB/Thunderbolt Options
MIN. 2 x USB 3.0 & 6 x USB 2.0 PORTS @ BACK PANEL + MIN. 2 FRONT PORTS
Trusted Platform Module (TPM)
Asus TPM-M R2.0
Operating System
NO OPERATING SYSTEM REQUIRED
Operating System Language
United Kingdom - English Language
Windows Recovery Media
NO RECOVERY MEDIA REQUIRED
Office Software
FREE 30 Day Trial of Microsoft 365® (Operating System Required)
Anti-Virus
NO ANTI-VIRUS SOFTWARE
Browser
Google Chrome™
Warranty
3 Year Silver Warranty (1 Year Collect & Return, 1 Year Parts, 3 Year Labour)
Delivery
STANDARD INSURED DELIVERY TO UK MAINLAND (MON-FRI)
Build Time
Standard Build - Approximately 5 to 7 working days
Welcome Book
PCSpecialist Welcome Book - United Kingdom & Republic of Ireland
Logo Branding
PCSpecialist Logo

 

[Martinr36]

Where did you get your windows from, does the boot drive show in the bios

 

[calvinatorr]

I got it from a reseller online if I remember correctly. And yes all the drivers show up in the BIOS in the order I expect (Windows Boot manager -> M.2 drive -> both HDDs).

 

[SpyderTracks]

I got it from a reseller online if I remember correctly. And yes all the drivers show up in the BIOS in the order I expect (Windows Boot manager -> M.2 drive -> both HDDs).

Try disconnecting the SATA power cable to the drive that was inaccessible, then try booting again.

To be honest resetting BIOS may have caused issues

What version of windows are you running and did you clean install it or just license the test windows that was already on there?

Also, if it still leads to startup repair, you need to run that from a windows USB, can’t do it from a flaky boot drive 9 times out of 10

 

[calvinatorr]

I'm running Windows 11 - specs I copied don't show it for some reason but it came preinstalled and I activated it myself.

I just unplugged both SATA cables and it got past startup repair into the recovery environment.

What would you suggest to do from here?

 

[SpyderTracks]

I'm running Windows 11 - specs I copied don't show it for some reason but it came preinstalled and I activated it myself.

But you ordered without windows right? You supplied your own key. It comes with a test windows environment, but it's not suitable for use, you really need to clean install. I'm not that surprised it's gone wonky.

What would you suggest to do from here?

As above, run startup repair from a windows USB

 

[calvinatorr]

I ran the repair and after resetting my pin I was able to get back into Windows with just my C drive (the M.2 drive). (wooo thanks!)

It seems to get stuck in a loop trying to boot if the drive which seemed to get corrupted is plugged in - I'm assuming this means the drive is faulty?

 

[SpyderTracks]

I ran the repair and after resetting my pin I was able to get back into Windows with just my C drive (the M.2 drive). (wooo thanks!)

It seems to get stuck in a loop trying to boot if the drive which seemed to get corrupted is plugged in - I'm assuming this means the drive is faulty?

Yes, that drive needs swapping out.

But you need to clean install anyway, you don’t want to carry on using that OS as it’s not setup properly and you’ll find this is just the start of issues

 

[calvinatorr]

Ah sorry I remember I actually did have to do a clean install when I got the PC due to other issues.

Thanks for the help!

 

[SpyderTracks]

For anyone else reading this, please please get some advice if you don't understand hardware, even when it was released over 4 years ago, that processor was dead on arrival, it's just a 10900k with reduced clock speeds and a few additional PCIe lanes, but cost an absolute fortune for worse performance. And that was 4 years ago so it's already half way into a poor lifecycle. X299 was in the bin immediately as Ryzen desktop processors outperformed it at a fraction of the cost. So unfortunately that system cost twice what it should do, performs substantially worse than a modern Ryzen desktop counterpart and will be end of life within 4 or 5 years rather than 9 or 10 if a current generation had been bought.

 

[calvinatorr]

Oh I purposely avoided going with Ryzen because I've been continuously burnt in the past with AMD products.

I'm also a developer so it made more sense to me to avoid Ryzen because most software and IDEs don't seem to utilise multiple cores as much as they could, so I just chose Intel for speed. Maybe I'm wrong and these days it's utilised more but this was my thinking 🤷

For anyone else reading this, please please get some advice if you don't understand hardware, even when it was released over 4 years ago, that processor was dead on arrival, it's just a 10900k with reduced clock speeds and a few additional PCIe lanes, but cost an absolute fortune for worse performance. And that was 4 years ago so it's already half way into a poor lifecycle. X299 was in the bin immediately as Ryzen desktop processors outperformed it at a fraction of the cost. So unfortunately that system cost twice what it should do, performs substantially worse than a modern Ryzen desktop counterpart and will be end of life within 4 or 5 years rather than 9 or 10 if a current generation had been bought.

 

[SpyderTracks]

Oh I purposely avoided going with Ryzen because I've been continuously burnt in the past with AMD products.

I'm also a developer so it made more sense to me to avoid Ryzen because most software and IDEs don't seem to utilise multiple cores as much as they could, so I just chose Intel for speed. Maybe I'm wrong and these days it's utilised more but this was my thinking 🤷

Again, if you don't understand hardware, get some advice, I guess you were purely concentrating on frequency which means absolutely nothing without taking into account IPC (instructions per clock). But even the frequency on that CPU is less than any modern equivalent

Even if you stuck with Intel, you'd never go X299 as it's inherently poor performance for exorbitant cost. A last gen 13900k would HUGELY outperform it.

I'm also a developer so it made more sense to me to avoid Ryzen because most software and IDEs don't seem to utilise multiple cores as much as they could, so I just chose Intel for speed.

But you've chosen a far far slower processor with more cores than even a mid range modern processor in single core performance, around 30% slower while as a system costing well over double what an equivalent modern system would cost

Processor Comparison - Head 2 Head

AMD Ryzen 5 7600 vs Intel Core i9-10900K - Benchmarks, Tests and Comparisons

www.notebookcheck.net

Even if you were to stick with last gen intel a 13600k would be around 25% higher performance as well at a fraction of the cost

Processor Comparison - Head 2 Head

Intel Core i9-10900K vs Intel Core i5-13600K vs Intel Core i5-10600K - Benchmarks, Tests and Comparisons

www.notebookcheck.net