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The purpose of the flaky power port is to sell new machines when the warranty is spent as it’s not economic to support them forever though having the user locked to your battery tech is a plus in revenue stream terms they want you to feel the need to replace the machine before its insecurities (software/ firmware / design issues) become problematic to the brand’s reputation.

Likewise the TV remote fills the same function as the “universal” never seems to have the button you have to press to save the newly scanned channel list..  On the subject of batteries there, is it me or are the positive end pips on AA / AAA batteries getting smaller so connection is poor as the ribs in the housing which stop incorrectly inserted batteries making that connection and up actually touching the cell body so the sprung contact only just makes? (If you have a good TV I would suggest use a universal remote day to day and keep the genuine with batteries out in a drawer if you can’t tune with the universal.. or the alternative back of TV controls are against the wall the set is bolted to..)

If they wanted to fix the problem the laptop would come with a slim charging dock which actually negotiated with the machine to deliver the required power level via a beefed up version of wireless QI charging.. but then they would sell less chargers as there would be no dangling DC lead for dogs / rabbits / hamsters to chew up.. so it’s not in the manufacturer’s interest..

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inductive_charging

As to the daughterboard thought, each connector (internal or external introduces cost and potentially reliability issues, and requires extra operations to install and test that part on every machine so its simply cheaper to test the machine built on one board on a “bed of nails” test jig before installing it in the machine housing than it is to test and fit several assemblies, each needing their own test bed and stage in production line, QA testing, staff training… perhaps this explains it..

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lean_Six_Sigma

 

 

Nice to see the elephant is remaining well hidden.

Cloning and Microsoft FFU (full disk imaging) techniques have (well, had a few years back) a small but inconvenient Achilles heel.

The structure translation is simpler for a clone but can fail if the destination drive is even a sector smaller as the process doesn’t know what to do with the data which won’t fit (any you’d be right to think I found this when the whole Gibbibyte / gigabyte thing licked off and I had to argue the toss with purchasing every time as to what went wrong. And if we weren’t changing drive brands, we’d be selling a one off batch of the machines but with a smaller SSD.) I ended up getting a 1Tb desk drive so I could FFU to that and then recapture to WIM images to recreate the layout in a smaller drive to re-capture the FFU for the target drive size.)

Unfortunately FFU doesn’t cope either – though at least you don’t have to manually resize partitions (but Sysprep as a prerequisite means nobody’s going to use FFU as a data backup method, it’s just a bit inconvenient.)

Simple partition imaging (Imagex, DISM, or one of many non Microsoft solutions) of course will work fine as long as you understand the layout to start with.

I’m kind of hoping for a reply along the lines of the problem mentioned which went away years ago, but I’m not going to hold my breath!

I’m going to throw a curve ball (as usual..). Required components may well be in your junk cupboard if you haven’t cleared it recently.

I really found being jolted from my slumber by something screeching / bleeping / whirring / ringing more than a bit of a bind. Having a lithium cell in or near bedding also strikes me as a bad idea.  Literally everything I have bar the fridge and house “automata” is devoid of mains power overnight. If something does screech, it would be the fire alarm and I’d be  leaving.

Perhaps as an alternative consider wiring / plugging in a digital timer to switch on the bedside lamp. You wake up, but without the auditory trauma. If you use  digital timer they have extra functions like deciding the day if the weeks it operates and daylight saving by a button, and a local on / off toggle button. They are generally use less power and more reliable then mechanical timers. My waking lamp is on the cupboard on the other side of the room though – I found I needed to physically rise to reliably exit the sleep state!

Once up its a small matter to remember to switch the light off to save juice but as most timers give 15 minute increments…

 

 

Sorry – perhaps I should have been more explicit.. When you manage to get into safe mode you can use those to extract information even if chunks of the interface run off the display due to the low resolution so you can’t get at the information easily.. and work out what has changed..

I guess the other option is to use pnputil to pull the display driver in safe mode (forcing Windows to try to find and load the right driver at next normal boot) but if that goes wrong it could dig a deeper hole. (using the info from /enum-drivers, use /remove-device)

I’d still go with back up everything manually (so you don’t need a program to get at it all) and either reinstall Windows, or your backup, onto a completely different blank hard disk. You need to separate the hardware/BIOS and Windows software aspects of the issue or it can lead you on a long and trying detour.. I think its software but at this point it could even be some sort of malware / protection product interaction.

Perhaps another way would be to download a recent Linux “live” CDs and see if it can get to a desktop – you don’t need to have a drive connected.. Unfortunately Linspire isn’t new enough to be of use as its drivers would be too old for your card and I haven’t used one since. That said you could try both by getting the Dr Web live disk and see if that boots to a desktop and finds anything..

In a command prompt / run box, typing devmgmt.msc and pressing enter should get you into device manager.

Also in a command prompt (should it help), typing the following line will return the display adapter information:

pnputil /enum-devices /class Display

If the device has a problem this should get the text details for each one:

pnputil /enum-devices /problem /ids

This will list all the drivers – so you can look for any suspiciously new ones..

pnputil /enum-drivers

The above command can be redirected to a file.

pnputil /enum-drivers > c:\users\%username%\desktop\drivers.txt

This will put the result in drivers.txt on the desktop replacing any existing one.

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cmar6

Sorry I miss read the post a bit – the stop was for the Windows RE as I re-read it?

Where were you starting that environment from? If it was the hard disk it could be the UEFI firmware is handing straight to Windows and WinRE fails as the machine has been reconfigured since Windows was initially installed.

You can in fact perform the same repair on Windows RE if you assign its partition a letter first and change to that drive  and boot folder before following the script, but if it fails to hook correctly you could loose the safe mode access you have so I think you’re better to get a manual files backup of anything critical and then see if you can find a gash drive to experiment with to determine which part of the boot – UEFI – Windows boot loader – Windows kernel chain the problem lies in. These things seldom change so bar some dodgy UEFI signature updates some time back which now shouldn’t touch your system anyway, nothing else should change on its own..

Probably its at this point you should seriously consider some sort of manual backup of your critical files so if the install craters and the backup isn’t good you at least have something you can move on with..

I take it you’ve tried the known solution for that BSOD?

https://answers.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/forum/all/how-to-fix-bsod-and-error-code-0xc0000001-loop/d731b858-1548-4d8d-8036-467ca9c3a43e

The big question is how did you get there as really only low level drive corruption or changing the drive controller / BIOS UEFI setting might cause it. Checking the time in BIOS is actually a way of working out if the BIOS has factory defaulted due to a failed RTC battery. If the time is right and you haven’t touched it, and Crystaldiskinfo (portable version) gives your drive the green light (well,  interface), then the only remote chance I can think of is a failure in an ELAM driver (protection product) due to a failed product update.

You can turn those drivers off, but get them on and working before going back on line..

https://winaero.com/permanently-disable-early-launch-anti-malware-protection-windows-10/

If you’ve never configured the bios We’d need to know the nature of the machine to indicate how to reset the settings.

If you’ve never touched those and can work out accessing the BIOS setup program, factory defaulting them from there would probably do (check the time and date while you’re in there though!). The only other hint I could find was some crankiness around old UEFI BIOS implementations and the Intel VT-x implementation.. if you switched that on maybe turn it off again and see if the problem will resolve.. seems very unlikely.

The other plausible option is to obtain and fit any suitable temporary replacement boot drive you can wipe (and disconnect any non boot data drives, and double check you have achieved both of those before going further) and then to reinstall the OS in UEFI mode having restored default settings in the BIOS setup (which should be UEFI unless your rig is getting on).

To do that you need to use diskpart /s  from the command prompt of the recovery media to run a script to configure the drive with GPT for best operation under a UEFI BIOS (a process which will start by removing everything from the first drive it finds… so be clear this method is NOT A REPAIR, its start over) and then immediately run setup from the recovery drive through that command window (otherwise a long winded and flawed attempt at repair will commence) and select settings as you indicated (and don’t freak – Windows setup will sort out the drive letters and booting itself, you shouldn’t end up with Windows on a crazy drive letter and if that did happen it’s a test install anyway).. that should get a working OS if the machine is capable, confirming a problem setting has been removed or the original install has failed, depending on the results of the effort, and upon reinstating the original configuration (as running and shutting down a working copy of Windows should have cleared out any strange transient configuration information in the UEFI system so the original installation might actually recover)..

Of course if the replacement drive is large enough and Windows does install successfully there’s no reason not to try reinstating the backup you have on that replacement drive, knowing the original is sitting unchanged and disconnected, and thus you have at least one option for data recovery should you get something badly wrong, or should the backup prove to be flawed somehow and return the new install to the same condition, leaving you to decide if you preferred the start over or hunting for the problem non default BIOS setting as a solution.

The Windows install manoeuvre is detailed here – the simpler first disk layout making sense.

https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/windows-hardware/manufacture/desktop/configure-uefigpt-based-hard-drive-partitions?view=windows-11

To be honest I have that extra file on my recovery USB and an assortment of drives as getting up and running is the main thing – I don’t store much that’s critical and that which is is spread around in multiple places.

The simplest way to check out the monitor would be to locate a suitable TV/ cable box and plug the monitor in there and see if it behaves or not (watch some festive entertainment..). A lot of monitor problems relate to the backlight or power supply (and are usually a bit thermally sensitive, so set it up in a warm place in case lower resolutions cause less warmth). If its fine then the problem is elsewhere or maybe an inappropriate resolution?

The other problem can be simply be poor connections – unfortunately its not impossible the failed cable met that fate due to contact contamination, and may have left residue in the monitor connector, but most cases that means at least initially the act of moving the cable would make the problem go away. Unfortunately cleaning those connectors isn’t easy at all – but from what I could see motherboard variants have a second HDMI or a DVI port (which can be adapted to HDMI) so you could try another port maybe?

Nvidia did release some driver updates last month but I couldn’t find an explicit match to your platform (CVE-2022-34669 and CVE-2022-34671 ..) but it might be worth checking the malware protection is OK in case something is trying to elevate through those flaws and disturbing driver operation.. even though your system may or may not be be affected by the actual vulnerability..

 

 

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Casey H

Zooming in (second image) gives the stop which says nothing unexpected (though it doesn’t explain why the problem occurred so it might be worth giving the drive and memory a check)

https://answers.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/forum/all/windows-10-bsod-error-0xc000021a/764d25ea-7122-46aa-8acf-9b8de31d6c92

I have seen the “unrepairable” form of that stop as result of loss of significant chunks of the system registry hive on Windows 7 (which meant it was possible to restore those from the C:\Windows\System32\config\RegBack folder by copying them over the active copies (WinPE) to prove the point.)

Next time might be worth investigating the DISM /revertpendingoperations option (https://social.technet.microsoft.com/Forums/windows/en-US/48d20da9-0535-462f-b177-f30f48992203/how-to-removing-a-pending-update-that-is-preventing-a-successful-boot?forum=w7itprogeneral) or maybe just use DISM to view the packages (which usually list in install order) and remove the last batch, after the usual disk check of course.

Worked on Windows 7, still good on Windows 10 as far as I know, fortunately haven’t needed it. That done, /restorehealth should leave it fit should it try updating again.

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Mike

To work out what’s happening could need a dive into event viewer. That’s simpler if you copy the logs from \Windows\System32\winevt\Logs to another folder on the drive from the recovery command prompt from the F8 menu post the failure to boot properly. if you try to open them they should eventually load in event viewer in safe mode. Unfortunately the system.evt file you probably want to look at will take some time.

The sequence you describe rings to me of a failed (likely graphics card) driver update or ELAM section of a (likely long since removed) protection product (which will appear as a service, so alternatively using the enable boot logging and checking \Windows\ntbtlog.txt might indicate the removal tool required (That file is created once with the operation, and is removed next boot (successful or not) so you need to open (notepad should work) or copy that from the F8 menu also..)

At least completion of the clone would indicate no actual drive access problems, though a literal sector clone can replicate logical issues with the file system, so it might be worth using the following a scandisk, just to check Windows isn’t failing to detect it has a file system problem before it falls on its face.. if the volume is dirty be aware it will try to fix that at the next reboot…

fsutil dirty query c:

 

Initially be sure you haven’t forgotten you decided (or accidentally managed somehow) to select safe mode in msconfig – that’s covered some way down at https://support.lenovo.com/gb/en/solutions/ht116905-how-to-enter-or-boot-to-safe-mode-in-windows-7-8-81-and-10

Then, assuming (as seems likely) that isn’t the problem, try normal mode at the F8 boot menu and see what happens (basically hit F8 as the machine starts Windows and select option 1, start normally.

If you’re lucky that might work and might “stick”. Most cases the machine will restart and might even produce the F8 menu without prompting. Either case get the F8 menu and use  “disable automatic restart on system failure” – it should produce a blue screen or some sort of indicator of the cause of the problem next time around.. write any boot time error messages down and post them.

Finally, if you were engaging in Windows updates (maybe unintentionally) before the reboot which preceded the problem, I have seen this where an update fails to complete though it was a symptom of a subtly damaged install. I was fortunately able to use dism to get back in control so I could back up a few things and note some pages from browser history, broadly as described at  https://social.technet.microsoft.com/Forums/windows/en-US/48d20da9-0535-462f-b177-f30f48992203/how-to-removing-a-pending-update-that-is-preventing-a-successful-boot?forum=w7itprogeneral

The problem I found was a failing drive so it was a case for replacing the drive and restoring the last backup and those few things created post backup. Unless there is something completely irreplaceable about your Windows installation, suggest take time to back up your files so you can start over if Windows gets too messy, before changing or fixing anything – it’s all to easy to make things worse.

Also it’s worth getting crystaldiskinfo – the portable version can even be used from the command prompt of the recovery section of the Windows media to attain a quick “traffic light” coded indicator of drive health from its interface upon test completion..

 

Now even more trouble than it’s worth..

https://www.bleepingcomputer.com/news/security/antivirus-and-edr-solutions-tricked-into-acting-as-data-wipers/

https://msrc.microsoft.com/update-guide/vulnerability/CVE-2022-37971

 

 

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Alex5723, RetiredGeek

If you find the bitlocker setting can’t be turned off it can be a policy from the BIOS – the problem here seems likely to be the TPM in use was soldered to the failed motherboard.

It might be possible to manage the boot tokens (manage-bde -protectors etc etc), or to turn off the TPM requirements with gpedit.msc..

But I think the first thing is to back up your stuff before doing anything (preferably just your files, off machine) as one unforeseen incident and its lost forever..

 

Got to hope that system never has a CVE vulnerability (as in never connects to a network and uses an umbilical connection) – imaging trying to prosecute an agent of a hostile power in a foreign country for remotely using a law enforcement robot to keep the killing going. It might not be possible for the robot to travel far enough for an assassination, but turning around and taking out the officers setting it up having been “possessed” during a previous outing might become possible as the product ages.

As to the “beyond normal tech” – I think that’s the problem – the beyond is being removed from that statement by putting that facility in the public arena.

 

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Mr. Austin