Recovery from BSOD in Windows 10

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I am running Windows 10 (Home) on a Dell Inspiron desktop.  I have myself changed nothing for several months.  A few days ago, I got the recurring Blue Screen of Death (BSOD).  I have a Macrium Reflect backup.  However, I seem to have misplaced the Macrium bootable USB stick to start the backup installation process.

Is there any way to boot the computer with any other process, such as a generic Windows PE?

Ken Stephens

 

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As you “got the recurring Blue Screen of Death (BSOD) a few days ago”, was this a result of the CrowdStrike Falcon issue?  If so, the latest 3 options (updated 22 July) for repairing the problem are here:

https://learn.microsoft.com/en-gb/windows/release-health/status-windows-10-22h2#3354msgdesc

I’ve never used Windows PE myself but full details (including how to create bootable media) are here:

https://learn.microsoft.com/en-gb/windows-hardware/manufacture/desktop/winpe-intro?view=windows-10

I tend to go for a full-blooded system reinstall, details of which are here:

https://support.microsoft.com/en-gb/windows/create-installation-media-for-windows-99a58364-8c02-206f-aa6f-40c3b507420d

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Kenneth Stephens

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Because this was a home computer, I do not believe my program was directly related to the Microsoft/Crowdstrike problem.  However, I also suspect that Microsoft issued an update to Windows 10 that was somehow related to the problem (and installed without my permission).

I have gotten deep into the machine and have not found the Crowdstrike problem itself.  If I had, I could already have fixed the problem.

I am close to recovery, but not yet there.  The computer is a Dell Inspiron.  I went to the Dell site and downloaded their program for booting from a USB stick.  That would let me get to a backup re-installation program on the computer.  There is only one problem, after I burned the recovery USB stick, I cannot boot the computer from it.  There is something in the BIOS that I need to change to force the booting from the USB.  I have tried everybody’s suggestions, but none work.

If anybody knows which BIOS settings I need to boot from a USB, please let me know.

 

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Kenneth Stephens wrote:

If anybody knows which BIOS settings I need to boot from a USB, please let me know.

You should boot into BIOS and change boot order so that USB will be the first drive.

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Kenneth Stephens

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Thank you, that is correct.  The problem is that I can’t seem to make it happen. I do that, but it does not seem to last long enough to be recognized in the booting process.  There are all sorts of people on the internet and YouTube talking about how to do that, but none of their suggestions seem to work.  The Dell site goes into great detail on how to set up a bootable USB stick, but almost nothing on how to configure the BIOS to make it happen.

I am about ready to conclude that Clark Maxwell (of electricity fame) had his Maxwellian Demons, and that they are real.  <grin>

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Sometimes that boot setting is the hardest part of the process.  You may have to try different key combos as well to get it to grab the usb.

Susan Bradley Patch Lady/Prudent patcher

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Kenneth Stephens

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Kenneth Stephens wrote:

I seem to have misplaced the Macrium bootable USB stick to start the backup installation process.

Macrium has a feature that allows you to boot into the recovery environment without using a USB stick. In the future, can you can enable a pre-boot menu option and ditch-the-stick.

Desktop mobo Asus TUF X299 Mark 1, CPU: Intel Core i7-7820X Skylake-X 8-Core 3.6 GHz, RAM: 32GB, GPU: Nvidia GTX 1050 Ti 4GB. Display: Four 27" 1080p screens 2 over 2 quad.

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Kenneth Stephens

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Kenneth Stephens wrote:

The problem is that I can’t seem to make it happen. I do that, but it does not seem to last long enough to be recognized in the booting process.  There are all sorts of people on the internet and YouTube talking about how to do that, but none of their suggestions seem to work.

This Youtube instructions gets high reviews in actually working.  Worth looking at.  It appears the USB drive has to be added to the boot menu and other settings changed to get the USB drive to boot.  I post it as a way to boot to the USB and not a way to install windows as the title suggests.

How to Boot From a USB Drive on Dell laptop to install Windows 10,11

HTH, Dana:))

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Kenneth Stephens

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Kenneth Stephens wrote:

If anybody knows which BIOS settings I need to boot from a USB, please let me know.

On most Dell Inspirons you need to press the F12 key immediately after the Dell logo is displayed to bring up the one-time boot menu (you may have to “repeatedly” click it until the menu shows up.)

The menu will display all the various drives the BIOS can see and you use the arrow keys to scroll up/down to select the bootable USB (it typically shows up as the brand name of the USB) and then press return.

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Kenneth Stephens

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Indeed, n0ads.

Fully shut down the device first. Insert the USB stick you wish to boot from. Press the power button and then press and hold the F12 key whilst the device is doing its memory test. Keep the key pressed until the one-time boot menu (usually a small-ish grey square in the centre of the screen) is displayed.

That does the trick on my Dell Vostro – and should do so on most Dell devices. There is no need to reconfigure the BIOS.

https://www.dell.com/support/manuals/en-uk/inspiron-15-3525-laptop/inspiron15_3525_sm/f12-one-time-boot-menu?guid=guid-71da763a-3f2f-4021-8ef7-3e50da009c74&lang=en-us

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Kenneth Stephens

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Kenneth Stephens wrote: If anybody knows which BIOS settings I need to boot from a USB, please let me know. On most Dell Inspirons you need to press the F12 key immediately after the Dell logo is displayed

Try holding down the F2 key. It’s also a common bios trigger at boot. Might work. Nothing to lose.

Desktop mobo Asus TUF X299 Mark 1, CPU: Intel Core i7-7820X Skylake-X 8-Core 3.6 GHz, RAM: 32GB, GPU: Nvidia GTX 1050 Ti 4GB. Display: Four 27" 1080p screens 2 over 2 quad.

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Kenneth Stephens

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IIRC on most (if not all) Dell computers, the F12 key will give a one time boot menu where you can choose the order of boot media (cd/dvd, USB flash drive, HDD/SSD) for that one session, while the F2 key will let you set the boot order in the BIOS for all succeeding sessions or until the next boot order change is made.

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Kenneth Stephens

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DrBonzo wrote:

while the F2 key will let you set the boot order in the BIOS for all succeeding sessions or until the next boot order change is made.

I’ve been using the F2 key at the POST screen for a long time, and choosing a different “boot from” source has only been applied for that boot, not all succeeding sessions, at least is my case.  HOWEVER my “boot from” source is always a USB stick which isn’t present on the second boot.  I’ll leave the USB stick in for the second boot and see if the USB remains as the “boot from” source with no input from me.  I’ll test F12 as well.  I may like it better.  Auto pilot habits are not always the best thing.  Thanks for the input.

Desktop mobo Asus TUF X299 Mark 1, CPU: Intel Core i7-7820X Skylake-X 8-Core 3.6 GHz, RAM: 32GB, GPU: Nvidia GTX 1050 Ti 4GB. Display: Four 27" 1080p screens 2 over 2 quad.

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DrBonzo, Kenneth Stephens

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My “boot from first” source is always a usb stick also. What happens on my Dells – and also an old Acer and HP – is that on the next boot if there is no usb stick inserted, the computer will boot as normal from the HDD/SSD. If a bootable usb stick is inserted the computer will boot from that stick. So, the F2 key allows a new boot order to be set in the BIOS which will subsequently be in effect (as long as I remember to save the new BIOS settings before exiting the BIOS!)

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TechTango

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On my Dells, since I bought the first way back:
F2 = BIOS access
F12 = one time boot menu

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TechTango, DrBonzo, Kenneth Stephens

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Thank you to all who provide suggestions.  All where good. The problem has been resolved, and I lost nothing on the computer–just many hours of hassle.

I tried multiple times to change the Dell BIOS so that it would accept a boot from the USB stick.  Nothing worked.  Then, I found on the Dell site a way to make a bootable USB stick for recovering from a situation such as this.  Alas, it would not boot, even after I changed the boot order using F2, and even after I tried F12 (one time boot) multiple times.

Success came when I had the USB stick inserted and got one of the many repeating blue screens, saying, “Something went wrong.  We will boot the computer.”  Being exasperated, I slammed my hand on the computer, used naughty language at the computer, and sat there.  Instead of getting the usual blue screen, I got a new message saying something like “Boot in progress.”  It took about 20 minutes, and then I got the sign-on screen, signed in, and got my normal desktop.

Because I had a Macrium Backup, but could not earlier get booted, I immediately restored a backup from 15 July.  All is well.

That is, until I got another blue screen saying that there was an interrupt error.  I coaxed the machine back to normal.  At the moment, it is working well.  (I am typing this from another computer).

Thank you for all your advice.

 

 

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DrBonzo

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I have often found the methods you describe in your third paragraph to be effective when all else fails!

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Kenneth Stephens wrote:

Because I had a Macrium Backup, but could not earlier get booted, I immediately restored a backup from 15 July.  All is well.

Now that you have use of your computer, consider activating the Macrium windows boot menu I outlined above. With this, you don’t need a bootable USB stick. I always keep a bootable USB stick handy for extreme cases, but I very rarely use it. It would have saved you a ton of hassle. If you don’t like it, you can always turn it off.

Desktop mobo Asus TUF X299 Mark 1, CPU: Intel Core i7-7820X Skylake-X 8-Core 3.6 GHz, RAM: 32GB, GPU: Nvidia GTX 1050 Ti 4GB. Display: Four 27" 1080p screens 2 over 2 quad.

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You might want to check that all your memory sticks are firmly seated. Perhaps that was the problem which you solved by your use of the “11-inch solution.”

Zig

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If the machine is using a HDD vs a SSD you may have been suffering from “Sticksion” where the drive head sticks to the landing zone. The good hard wack may have shaken it loose. If this is the case IMHO you should replace that HDD with an SSD soonest while you can still get a good image backup to load on the SSD.

May the Forces of good computing be with you!

RG

PowerShell & VBA Rule!
Computer Specs

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Unfortunately, the fix for the Blue Screen of Death on my Dell Inspiron desktop did not last.  After a couple of successful reboots, it went back to its old ways.  The BSOD occurs, the machine goes into a cycle, and repeats.

None of the above suggestions work, period.  At one time, I got a choice to do a fresh install, but now I cannot even do that.

I discovered that all my important files had been put on storage devices, and that no important software was not on other computers.

Is there any way to completely refresh the computer when it won’t boot?

 

PS I have tried booting from the optical disk version, but it has the same problem as with trying to boot from a USB stick.  Being as old as it is, I could write off the Dell (I bought a new laptop, which I needed for travel.)  However, I need to completely wipe the hard disk.  Is there a way to do that after removing it from the computer?  Otherwise, I may have to resort to the sledgehammer method of permanent “wipe.”

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Kenneth Stephens wrote:

I discovered that all my important files had been put on storage devices, and that no important software was not on other computers.

Hi Kenneth Stephens:

Do you have Dell SupportAssist OS Recovery v5.5.7 (also known as Dell SupportAssist Remediation) installed on your Inspiron computer? I uninstalled that software from my Inspiron 5584 over a year ago but what you’re describing sounds like Dell SupportAssist OS Recovery is trying to assert itself and perform an emergency recovery at boot-up after your BSODs. This ~ 350 MB program now ships with most Dell home consumer computers and is installed on the hard drive.  Dell SupportAssist OS Recovery loads at Windows startup and creates a system repair point (snapshot) every time your system is re-booted that is saved in the hidden C:\ProgramData\Dell\SARemediation\SystemRepair\ folder and can be used (at least in theory) to repair your computer if it fails to boot up correctly.

Note that Dell SupportAssist OS Recovery v5.5.7 is completely different software from the 21 MB Dell OS Recovery Tool v2.4.x available for download at https://www.dell.com/support/home/en-us/drivers/osiso/recoverytool (currently Dell-OS-Recovery-Tool_HTRTG_WIN64_2.4.0.7813_A00). The Dell OS Recovery Tool v2.4.x is a small utility you can use to create a bootable USB thumb drive that can be used to remove all the data and software from your hard drive and reinstall the Windows operating system was installed on your computer when it shipped from the factory, which is the tool you seem to be describing in your post #2690370. See the support article How to Download and Use the Dell Operating System Recovery Image in Microsoft Windows for more information, but I’m guessing this is not the Dell recovery tool you should be using if you want to keep your data, third-party software and current version of your Win 10 OS.
———–
Dell Inspiron 15 5584 * 64-bit Win 10 Pro v22H2 build 19045.4780 * Firefox v129.0.1 * Microsoft Defender v4.18.24070.5-1.1.24070.3 * Malwarebytes Premium v5.1.8.123-1.0.5007 * Macrium Reflect Free v8.0.7783

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satrow

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Kenneth Stephens wrote:

Is there a way to do that after removing it from the computer?

Sure, you can use an external USB dock and connect it to your laptop and wipe it.

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I also had a BSOD 10 days ago with a Dell laptop (Win10 Pro). What I did was restart and press F12 repeatedly. It got me to the One Time Boot menu and there I selected the Dell Diagnostic Quick Test. That’s when I discovered that a new faulty memory stick was the culprit. Before ditching your laptop, you could try that diagnostic test.

https://www.dell.com/support/kbdoc/en-ca/000181163/how-to-enter-the-built-in-diagnostics-32-bit-diagnostics-supportassist-epsa-epsa-and-psa

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satrow

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