Endless Automatic Repair Loop Upon Startup (cont.)

[Raj_05]

Hi @ADonMartini_790,

Welcome to HP Support Community.  

Thank you for posting your query, I will be glad to help you.

I'm sorry to hear that you're still experiencing issues with your HP Pavilion 15 and the Automatic Repair loop. It's good that you're taking steps to resolve the problem.

Regarding the insufficient disk space on your alternate laptop while trying to create a bootable flash drive, there are a few options you can consider:

Free up space on the alternate laptop:

• Delete unnecessary files and folders.
• Empty the recycle bin.
• Uninstall any unused applications.
• Move large files to an external drive if available.

Use a larger capacity USB flash drive:

• If possible, try using a USB flash drive with more storage capacity to accommodate the bootable image.

Use a different USB flash drive:

• If you don't have a larger capacity drive, try using a different USB flash drive to see if it has enough space.

Once you've resolved the disk space issue and created a bootable flash drive, you can use it to try some advanced troubleshooting steps. Here's a general guide you can follow:

Boot from the USB:

• Insert the bootable USB drive into the HP Pavilion 15.
• Start or restart the laptop.
• Press the necessary key (often F2, F10, F12, or ESC) to access the boot menu.
• Select the USB drive as the boot option.

Access Advanced Startup Options:

• Once the laptop boots from the USB, choose the "Repair your computer" option.

Navigate to Command Prompt:

• In the Advanced Startup Options, go to Troubleshoot > Advanced options > Command Prompt.

Run System File Checker (SFC) and DISM:

• In the Command Prompt, type the following commands and press Enter after each:

sfc /scannow 

dism /online /cleanup-image /restorehealth

Check and repair the boot configuration:

• You can use the bootrec command to check and repair the boot configuration. In the Command Prompt, type the following commands one by one and press Enter after each:

bootrec /scanos 

bootrec /rebuildbcd 

bootrec /fixmbr 

bootrec /fixboot

Exit the Command Prompt and restart your computer:

• Type exit and press Enter to exit the Command Prompt.
• Restart your computer and see if the Automatic Repair loop is resolved.

I hope this helps. 
 

Take care and have a good day.

Please click “Accepted Solution” if you feel my post solved your issue, it will help others find the solution. Click the “Kudos/Thumbs Up" on the bottom right to say “Thanks” for helping!

Alden4
HP Support 

[ADonMartini_790]

Thank you for your reply, @Alden4 -- it is helpful to have some renewed focus from the Community on the topic.

According to the post from @Ub6424 found here, the USB flash drive space I've used is of adequate capacity to create the media; knowing the flash drive needed a minimum of 32GB for this to work, I deliberately made sure that I got one with twice the capacity at 64GB.

The issue at hand is the internal capacity of my secondary laptop's C-drive; only having a maximum of 28.3GB overall, most of its space is already largely consumed, and according to the prompt in the HP Cloud Recovery Tool (seen in the screengrab of my previous post), I would have to effectively empty the entire hard drive to free the needed 27.01GB to create the bootable media with the program -- a pretty daunting task.

I suppose I could attempt to back up everything on the borrowed laptop onto an external drive, remove/delete/uninstall a number of things from the computer to create the needed space, use the HP Cloud Recovery Tool to create the bootable media to fix my actual affected laptop once enough space is free, then attempt to reinsert everything back onto the hard drive when I'm finished, but that strategy seems pretty complicated, risky and time-consuming.

Would this strategy be of use for this task? If so, how exactly could I do this safely, ensuring I would be able to successfully put everything back onto this borrowed laptop afterwards? Is there a way I could get the bootable rescue media without having to alter the computer to do so, either through use of freeware or requesting a bootable repair drive from HP?

Any helpful suggestions are welcome.

Thanks in advance

ADonMartini_790

[ADonMartini_790]

I have a quick update that might be useful...

Soon after I made yesterday's post, I got a pop-up alert from Windows to do an update on my alternate laptop's Windows 10 operating system (just to remind everyone, the secondary laptop I've been using is an HP Stream that runs Windows 10 In S Mode; the affected laptop I'm working to fix is an HP Pavilion running Windows 10 Home). In yesterday's post, I mentioned that low disk space on the Stream's C-drive was causing an issue with using the HP Cloud Recovery Tool to create a bootable flash drive to repair the Pavilion, since a lot of disk space was needed to complete the operation (a screengrab was included to explain). However, when I got the message regarding the Windows update, the "low disk space" message had a very fortunate detail useful for this particular issue. Sorry I wasn't free to post this immediately the other night, but I made sure to take a screengrab of the message itself, which you will see below:

"Windows needs space to update"

I was almost shocked at how relevant it was to have this appear so soon after my last post -- apparently, Windows has a function in which the hard drive's disk space can be temporarily extended with the use of an external drive, of which I have a few (as noted in older posts). Upon reading the message, I figured to myself, "couldn't I just use this very same method to allow enough disk space in order to complete the process with the HP Cloud Recovery Tool?" I made sure to keep the provided link in the message to share here:

https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/free-up-space-for-windows-updates-429b12ba-f514-be0b-492...

If anyone believes this could be of use to bypass the disk space issue, please feel free to leave a reply. Thanks in advance.

[ADonMartini_790]

Just to add onto my last couple posts regarding the disk-space issue with my alternate laptop, I've taken a couple of screengrabs that might add some insight:

Storage Settings Window (true size)Storage Settings Window (full screen)

Again, in reference to my earlier posts, if it is indeed possible to temporarily extend the space of the C-drive with external storage to use the HP Cloud Recovery Tool to create the bootable rescue media, I would really appreciate a response on how to do it very soon.

Thanks in advance

ADonMartini_790

[ADonMartini_790]

Added yet another parallel topic to the HP Community Forum.

Hopefully, someone might help address the disk space issue that has held me up recently.

Feel free to comment: https://h30434.www3.hp.com/t5/Notebook-Software-and-How-To-Questions/How-To-Reclaim-Disk-Space-On-C-...

Thanks in advance to anyone that has a possible solution to share.

ADONMARTINI_790

[ADonMartini_790]

Hello everyone -- I could still use some help to correct this issue.

If anyone can help do either of these following listed tasks below, it would at least offer some reportable progress in correcting the problem:

• Help reopen lost disk space to allow for programs to generate rescue media (see here)
• recommend where rescue media can be found as freeware, or available through HP or Microsoft

The two tasks above might help deal with the short-term stumbling block regarding the disk-space issue that leads towards solving the larger problem. As far as the larger problem is concerned, seldom do I promote other forum spaces to draw some assistance here, but for whomever it may help understand the problem, feel free to look at the links below:

• Microsoft Community: Correcting An Endless "Automatic Repair" Loop
• Microsoft Community: How To Temporarily Extend C-Drive With External Storage
• MajorGeeks: Correcting An Endless "Automatic Repair" Loop Upon Startup
• BleepingComputer: Copy "AppData" To External Storage

Hope to hear from someone soon -- thanks in advance

ADONMARTINI_790

[ADonMartini_790]

Merry Christmas Eve, Season's Greetings, and Happy Holidays to all here on the HP Community Forum.

I'm still having problems in solving this issue, so I am leaving a new message to keep my topic alive for now.

As a further act of charity for the occasion, I will also share links recently created by fellow users facing this same problem; though my topic has been open for most of the year, these were created in recent days. If anyone sees fit to help them, please feel welcome to help me out as well. More recent messages on this thread will explain my progress, while my two earlier topics (first and second) will explain what happened at the very start of the issue.

• https://h30434.www3.hp.com/t5/Notebook-Operating-System-and-Recovery/Issue-with-automatic-repair-loo...
• https://h30434.www3.hp.com/t5/Notebook-Operating-System-and-Recovery/Laptop-displaying-preparing-aut...
• https://h30434.www3.hp.com/t5/Notebook-Operating-System-and-Recovery/No-Boot-Device-Found-Preparing-...
• https://h30434.www3.hp.com/t5/Notebook-Boot-and-Lockup/Automatic-repair/td-p/8946411

Hope to solve my issue soon -- that would be a welcome gift for this time of year.

ADONMARTINI_790

[ADonMartini_790 · Accepted solution]

Hello again, HP Community.

First and foremost, I want to take the time to thank everyone who spared some of their time in order to help me out with this issue between this topic and the previous ones ([1], [2], [3]), both on this forum and others, over the past thirteen-and-a-half months. Granted, I would have liked to have seen more consistent mobility from other users here and elsewhere so that I wouldn't have needed to join so many forums and create so many topics to resolve the problem, but to whomever that did engage to help out, thank you. The effort was truly appreciated. Each of you tried to help me navigate my way through every frustrating twist and turn of the repair effort, whether it was backing up the hard drive, opening the laptop, or most recently, attempts in creating the external rescue media; the whole process was driving me bonkers, so I also thank you all for your patience and empathy wherever given. A thousand times over, thanks for everything.

Which brings me to why I've returned: in the past few weeks, I finally broke down and managed to pull together the funds to sign up for the HP SmartFriend Service, albeit begrudgingly. Working with one of the HP SmartFriend technicians via teleconference (as well as a Staples technician prior to that -- thank you for your help, Steven), it was determined that the hard drive was clear in another series of diagnostic scans, and through HP SmartFriend, I ended up purchasing the installation media through them. Several days later (about a week ago now), another SmartFriend teleconference led me through the reinstallation attempt, only to receive a series of error messages each time; from the results, the technician determined that the errors pointed to a more fundamental problem that never rested in the software. Apparently, the root cause of the "Automatic Repair" reboot loop was a malfunction in the laptop's motherboard all along; as such, it was never feasible to correct the matter at home on my own, with or without professional guidance. Based on that, the only options to truly fix the matter are to either surrender it to a professional for repairs, or simply invest in a new laptop altogether -- whichever may come first.

So, yes, I got that bad news fairly recently. Facts are stubborn and depressing things sometimes; while I can accept the answer as to why the problem occurred, it sucks that it took more than a year to get that answer in the first place. Since I don't currently have the estimated $300-$400 available to pay HP to fix the defective motherboard, I'll just close the topic with this reply serving as the "answer" to the question.

Sorry I couldn't solve the problem in a way that helped other users; at best, anyone else with this "Automatic Repair" reboot loop might want to learn from my experience and consider that it may be a hardware issue rather than a software problem.

Best of luck.