Boot loop with no recovery options

[stevetastical]

There I was, wasting my time looking through a weatherchannel.com slideshow. Out of nowhere, my browser seemed to be running quite slow. I closed my browser thinking I would just open a new one to give it a quick "refresh". After closing my browser and staring at a blank desktop with no applications running, I saw my mouse icon would consistenty get the hourglass icon next to it which seemed strange. In an attempt to identify what process was causing the hourglass to appear, I pressed Ctrl+Shift+Esc. The task manager window would appear for less than a second and then vanished. I pressed Ctrl+Shift+Esc again and had the same result. At this point I figured the computer just needed a good ol' restart. The only option available was "Apply updates and restart". That's when it all went wrong and I found myself in a boot loop which would show me the "HP" logo, then go black (turn off), turn back on, show me the "HP" logo, repeat, repeat, for all eternity. 

Troubleshooting steps taken:

• Unplugged all attached storage devices (only one) and my wonderful Oculus VR headset. The only devices plugged in are my mouse, keyboard, and monitors (2).
• Upon startup, I press the Esc key repeatedly which opens the cool little menu (I don't know the name).
  • I try the F2 option which is System Diagnostics (or something like that) but my screens go black and nothing ever appears. The screens are definitely not off, they are receiving a signal from the computer but are just black. I can see some "glowing" around the edges which is just due to my low quality monitors I guess. The monitors also do not show me the "cannot receive signal" message, that's how I know they're not off. 
  • I also try F11 for System Recovery and the same thing happens, blackness until I turn off the computer via the power button.
• Upon startup, I press the F10 key to enter the BIOS.
  • I first try the simple option of restoring BIOS to defaults. I've never made changes before but figured this can't hurt. After doing so, there was no change, I still got the boot loop.
  • I forget excatly what it's called (I'm not at my computer right now) but I ran the DST test on the drive (SSD) that has my OS. The test passed.

I don't know what to try at this point since my SSD passed the DST test (which doesn't mean much since I don't know what that test means) but it seems like the recovery partition is gone and there's no OS to boot to either. Please advise!

[Paul_Tikkanen]

Hi:

The only suggestion I can offer would be to try clean installing W10 using the media creation tool to create a bootable W10 USB installation flash drive.

https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/software-download/windows10

The DST stands for 'Drive Self-Test.'   Since it passed, it is assumed the drive is still good.

If your PC did not come with W10, and you are asked to enter a product key during the installation process, select the 'I don't have a product key' option.

If it came with W10, it should not ask you to enter a product key.

[stevetastical]

Thanks for the advice Paul. I created the bootable flash drive, went into BIOS and put USB flash drive as the first boot option, but still no luck. Now when I turn on the PC with the thumb drive in, it boots up to the HP logo and stays there indefinitely. No more boot loop, but it's not booting the thumb drive. To confirm I didn't make the flash drive wrong, I borrowed my friends known good 64bit bootable flash drive and had the same results. What does this point to now? Please don't say my motherboard or something crazy like that haha.

[Paul_Tikkanen]

You're very welcome.

The only suggestion I can offer would be to see if you can boot from the USB flash drive as follows...

1. Go into the BIOS, enable legacy mode and disable secure boot if your PC originally came with W8 or newer.

See this link for the settings to change.

https://support.hp.com/us-en/document/c03659945

2. Plug the flash drive in the USB port, turn on or restart the PC.

Tap the ESC key to get the menu of options.  Select the F9 boot options menu and from that, select the legacy usb flash drive and press the Enter key.

If the PC doesn't boot from the flash drive then, I won't be able to help you with why it won't boot.