System will not boot into Win 10. Blank screen with Win pointer and sometimes blue spinner; no more.

[geistman]

System will not boot into Windows 10. I see a blank screen with the Windows pointer, occasionally the blue "spinner" next to the pointer, then nothing -- no icons, no task bar, totally blank screen. Tried booting into Safe Mode (with and without networking, and to Command Prompt) and the same thing. Any suggestions would be appreciated. Thanks in advance.

[Bill_To]

Greetings @geistman 

Welcome to the HP Forum.

It's tough to say if your PC has: a hardware problem or a Windows corruption problem.

Check your PC's hardware using HP Diagnostics as follows:

Start the PC. Repeatedly tap the "ESC" key.

Select "F2". Run extensive system and component tests to confirm: a drive problem, a memory problem, or other component problem.

Let the Forum know how it goes.

Regards

[geistman]

Hi Bill -- Thanks for the suggestion, I will run extensive tests on both System and components. Because of the amount of time these tests take, it may take a few days before I can get back to you with results. I'll let you know when I have further information.

[geistman]

Well I just got a failure on the Hard Drive short DST test:

Failure ID: RU3T3G-8RNCML-WPQCRG-60UF03

Product ID: 1MQ45UT#ABA

Hard Drive 1 - SATA0

My computer is out of warranty, so I can't seem to find the option to send this information to HP support. Can you let me know what this failure ID is telling me? Is my hard drive toast? Is it possible to retrieve data from it? I'd appreciate any information and support. Thanks in advance.

[Bill_To]

Greetings @geistman 

My pleasure.

I always check hardware first in your situation.

A corrupted Windows bootloader can be a rabbit hole.

Sadly, in my experience, corrupt Windows system files can be very difficult to fix. Especially if the Windows registry is corrupted. Microsoft has recently disabled automatic registry backups. So this option is a dead end.

Your problem often requires backing up data on the system drive to a different PC before doing a new Windows installation.

Regards

[Bill_To]

Greetings @geistman 

My pleasure.

Thanks for the info.

The system disk is failing or has failed.

You could connect this drive internally to a different PC as a data drive or use a SATA to USB adapter to see if any data can be moved to the host PC.

You will have to replace this drive and reinstall Windows.

HP has a Cloud Recovery option if your PC qualifies.

Regards

[Bill_To]

Greetings @geistman 

You can check the failure code at this HP Site.

Regards