Automatic Repair Black Screen - what might cause this, and cause it to recur?

[britechguy]

I have a client who, at boot time, was receiving a black screen with the following text:
----
Automatic Repair

Automatic Repair couldn't repair your PC
Press "Advanced options" to try other options to repair your PC or "Shut down" to turn off your PC
Log File . . .
----

I have seen this before, and have typically had to resort to a fresh install of Windows to get past it, and did just that last December a couple of days after Christmas. Well, the client called up in arms today with precisely the same issue. I hasten to add that I am not being blamed. The statement is that everything has been working just perfectly since I fixed the machine in December 2025, but that this had just reared its ugly head again.

I do not know of anything that an end user can do that would trigger this occurrence, period. And I've never had an instance where it recurred.

I'm curious if others have insights into why it might recur and whether anything short of a clean install of Windows should be tried first prior to "the thermonuclear option." Part of me worries that I'll get this fixed, again, and after another 3 or 4 months, *surprise!*, it'll be back again.

 

[Rigo]

I have a client who, at boot time, was receiving a black screen with the following text:
----
Automatic Repair

Automatic Repair couldn't repair your PC
Press "Advanced options" to try other options to repair your PC or "Shut down" to turn off your PC
Log File . . .
----

I have seen this before, and have typically had to resort to a fresh install of Windows to get past it, and did just that last December a couple of days after Christmas. Well, the client called up in arms today with precisely the same issue. I hasten to add that I am not being blamed. The statement is that everything has been working just perfectly since I fixed the machine in December 2025, but that this had just reared its ugly head again.

I do not know of anything that an end user can do that would trigger this occurrence, period. And I've never had an instance where it recurred.

I'm curious if others have insights into why it might recur and whether anything short of a clean install of Windows should be tried first prior to "the thermonuclear option." Part of me worries that I'll get this fixed, again, and after another 3 or 4 months, *surprise!*, it'll be back again.

I had a few of these recently on a couple of my own computers.
I switched off the machines for about 10 minutes, on restart everything was fine.
Didn't try to work out why
One thing I also found was that Easeus Partition Master (don't know about all the other offerings out there) can sometimes repair boot failure corruptions, slaving the patient to the repairing machine though (haven't tried the USB stick boot option, suspect it should work).

 

[Markverhyden]

This happened on my W11 daily driver a few months ago. I was not even able to repair it via booting from installation media. Had to nuke and pave. I think it started because I went several weeks with out turning it on. So no CMOS battery and built in battery ran down to zero.

 

[britechguy]

Gentlemen, I thank you both for your input.

 

[sapphirescales]

I've had several systems where this happens, I do a fresh install, and it happens again a few months later. The only way to fix it was to just get them out of here with a different computer. I think it's system dependent. Maybe related to a specific driver? I have no idea. Thankfully if you do a fresh install it usually doesn't reoccur but if it does you might just have to replace the system. I don't think it's anything the end user is doing because every time I've gotten them into another computer, it hasn't reoccurred. Anecdotal evidence, of course.

 

[DRPCNZ]

Also had this, try booting into safe mode, if that doesn't work then its nuke and pave. Pretty much almost say "Thank you Microsoft for you latest update".

 

[lan101]

Also had this, try booting into safe mode, if that doesn't work then its nuke and pave. Pretty much almost say "Thank you Microsoft for you latest update".

All the bootrec commands etc. I swear they never work these days. I can't remember the last time I tried all that to no avail. Pretty much if no image backups and no restore points to attempt then it's a nuke n pave or maybe if lucky the "keep my files reset" may work occasionally lol.

I usually just autofabs the data first before a nuke n pave and hopefully anything important is there.

Maybe I've just gotten lazy over the years lol but I get extremely annoyed nowadays if the client doesn't have some sort of back up image. Just makes the annoying nagging things to deal with so much less of a headache.

 

[britechguy]

I usually just autofabs the data first before a nuke n pave and hopefully anything important is there.

Elaborate, please. Mostly about the "auto" part and how you use this on a system that won't boot at all.

I've used Fabs plenty of times, but only on systems that were still alive to allow it to be run upon. If you mean by pulling the system drive and Fabs-ing it connected externally, I could do that, but what a PITA to extract it from a laptop.

This client will definitely be being advised to get a backup drive and be taking system image backups from this point forward simply because of this recurrence. I don't honestly believe he's been doing this so far. I don't care about this so much anymore for those using M365 or who have all their critical user data in cloud storage rather than locally. Once Windows is back they can typically reinstall the software they were using as they did so in the first place. But when they don't, oh, what a mess!

 

[britechguy]

Out of curiosity, has anyone here ever used Rescatux to repair Windows boot issues? It appears to be a solid tool that bundles a lot of the other commonly used utilities (e.g. Gparted) with it.

 

[lan101]

Elaborate, please. Mostly about the "auto" part and how you use this on a system that won't boot at all.

I've used Fabs plenty of times, but only on systems that were still alive to allow it to be run upon. If you mean by pulling the system drive and Fabs-ing it connected externally, I could do that, but what a PITA to extract it from a laptop.

This client will definitely be being advised to get a backup drive and be taking system image backups from this point forward simply because of this recurrence. I don't honestly believe he's been doing this so far. I don't care about this so much anymore for those using M365 or who have all their critical user data in cloud storage rather than locally. Once Windows is back they can typically reinstall the software they were using as they did so in the first place. But when they don't, oh, what a mess!

Yeah pulling the system drive to autofabs it is what I was saying. Also yes I agree taking them out of laptops sucks...hopefully not too much of a headache if you have to go that route.

 

[britechguy]

To complete the story I ended up doing a "nuke and pave" again, but discovered a couple of "interesting" things due to a screw-up on my part.

When I decided the nuke & pave was the way to go, and used USB media for the reinstall, when it told me that all existing data would be destroyed, etc., I thought, "Oh, they must have changed things to make it do a completely clean reinstall," so I didn't do my usual escape out to run diskpart to clean the system drive first. Definite mistake (and definitely not doing a completely clean reinstall without having done that). As things moved along I ended up with 2 Windows instances and, on top of that, could not connect to the internet because the installer claimed it didn't have the right device driver for the network card, which I knew had to be false. Long story short, once I started again, escaped out at the language prompt dialog and used diskpart/clean, the installation went without a hitch and no "missing driver" message, either.

In addition, because I had to work around the initial "no internet" problem: if you escape out of the windows installer at the screen where you're being asked to connect to the internet, and run oobe\bypassnro, it works. The installer automatically restarts itself and brings you back in to the same dialog, but with the option for "I don't have an internet connection" visible, allowing you to go on to create a local account.

Also, in a moment of madness, I tried using Windows Settings, Accounts, Your Accounts to set up the owner's own Microsoft account from the local admin account. Mistake there, too, as it did exactly what gets done if you choose "log in with a Microsoft Account instead" resulting in the original Local account path names being used to set up the Microsoft Account linked account, which I absolutely did not want. Another lesson learned (or re-learned, so much stuff went oddly yesterday). So if you ever create a local admin account to "take care of business" setting someone else up with a MS account, set up that second account through Other Users. in the Accounts Pane.

Now my fingers are crossed that this fix, then fail 3 months later in the same way, was a one-off. I have already cautioned the client that it might not be, and if it recurs then hardware failure of some kind is the likely culprit. CrystalDiskInfo showed a perfectly healthy SSD with 99% life left. At two points trying to straighten this out, early on, I got black screen DRIVER IRQL errors, but couldn't get the error code in time and as further ministrations were applied, no more occurred.

One thing that appears to be completely new is how MS is setting up user paths. For years now it's been C:\Users\{5-character user identifier}\ as the root, but with yesterday's reinstall it took the form C:\Users\{5-char UID}.{machine name}\, e.g., C:\Users\alexi.HPEnvyx360\. That's the first time I've seen that structure used.

The machine is an HP Envy x360 2-in-1 model 16-ad0023dx that's only approximately 2 years old sporting a Ryzen 7 8840HS processor.

 

[frase]

In addition, because I had to work around the initial "no internet" problem: if you escape out of the windows installer at the screen where you're being asked to connect to the internet, and run oobe\bypassnro, it works. The installer automatically restarts itself and brings you back in to the same dialog, but with the option for "I don't have an internet connection" visible, allowing you to go on to create a local account.

This is usually from my experience due to Win 11 Pro versions, Home will allow bypass - Pro will not.
The longer user path is due to the system being used as an identifier for the install (MSA) not the Local User.