HP Pavilion Cannot Boot from USB Recovery Drive

[akshayd21]

I was not able to boot my laptop yesterday morning as I saw a blue screen error. It automatically went for the recovery but it could not boot. I shut down the laptop and restarted it again. It went through the HP blue logo and then stuck at Automatic Repairs and started looping through the process again and again. 

I contacted HP about the issue and they pushed me into a "SmartFriend" contract for a year and I had no choice but to buy it since I am not sure how to proceed next. They asked me to run a diagnostics test that retred as follows: SMART check : PASSED, Long DST Passed. I guess that says that my drive is mechanically intact. Afterwards, an agent sent me two web links to download the USB recovery media. I made the recovery media by myself by following the instructions. 

After creating the USB recovery media, I inserted the USB into the slot and hit F9 before startup could proceed to select the USB Boot Option (UEFI) from the Boot Menu. At first, the laptop did not respond at all. It stuck on the HP logo again. I shut down the laptop and tried again. It passed through the HP Logo with a "loading" symbol beneath and ended up on a completely blue screen. I shut it down again tried the same thing again. And now the laptop is stuck at HP Logo with a he "loading" symbol beneath it. Two agents hung up on me last night. I don't know how to proceed and I also need the data on the device drive.

Can anyone help me boot from this USB device? Is there at least a way to recover my data? 

Any help would be appreciated. Thank you! 

[Paul_Tikkanen]

Hi:

If you can get into the BIOS, try enabling legacy mode and disabling secure boot, and then at the F9 menu select the legacy usb flash drive.

See this link for the settings to change.

https://www.support.hp.com/us-en/document/c03736054/

As far as saving your data, I don't know what recovery media you made, but if it was from HP, normally it will erase everything on the hard drive before it reinstalls the operating system.

if they sent you to the Microsoft link to create recovery media using the media creation tool, then if you don't delete or format any partitions, you can install W10 over the current installation, and it will create a windows.old folder.

After W10 installs, you can explore the windows.old folder, find your old user profile and copy the folders and files you want to the new installation.

Then once you are sure you got what you needed, you can delete the windows.old folder by using the disk cleanup utility, click on the cleanup system files button on the lower left side of the window.

[akshayd21]

Hello Paul,

Thanks for responding. I tried doing the legacy mode boot using the USB drive. The laptop stuck on an older Blue logo of Windows. HP Sent me a media recovery creation tool which is proprietary. I dont think its from Microsoft as they said it is specific to my system. I really need to save my data as I have a ton of it. 

Whatever you mentioned about the Windows.old, they never mentioned. I will try the lagacy option again in the meantime. Thank you. 

[Paul_Tikkanen]

You're very welcome.

If you want to save your data, use the media creation tool to create a bootable USB flash drive.

To reinstall W10...Use the Media Creation Tool.  Make the 64 bit installation media.

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

You can make a W10 USB flash drive installer using an 8 GB flash drive using another Windows PC, since your PC is not working.

W10 will find the product key in the PC's BIOS, install and will automatically activate once you are connected to the internet.

Here are the steps to create the W10 USB flash drive installer...

1. Select Download tool now, and select Run.
2. If you agree to the license terms, select Accept.
3. On the What do you want to do? page, select Create installation media for another PC, and then select Next.

4. Select the language, edition, and architecture (64-bit or 32-bit) for Windows 10. You want 64 bit.

5. Select which media you want to use:
6. USB flash drive.  Plug in a blank USB flash drive with at least 8GB of space. Any content on the flash drive will be deleted.

Then you can install the drivers and available software from the PC's support page.

If your notebook has a DVD drive, you can save the ISO file instead and burn that to a DVD using the tool I zipped up and attached below.

You must have secure boot disabled and legacy mode enabled to boot from a DVD.

[akshayd21]

Thank you so much for a detailed response. I talked to the HP guys and they said that the USB recovery software they sent me would ask for an option for backing up the data. 

But turns out, my RAM has failed. It's failing the memory check test in HP diagnostics. Do you think that a RAM failure can prevent normal boot or recovery boot processes? I'm absolutely clueless about this stuff. Please help. Thank you for your time. 

[Paul_Tikkanen]

Yes, I suppose a bad memory module could cause booting issues, but I am not a PC repair tech by trade or training, so I can't say for sure.

If your notebook has two memory modules remove one and run the memory test.

If it passes, you found the bad memory module, and you can then see if you can boot from the flash drive.

If it fails the memory test, remove it and put the one you first took out in its place.

Replace the bad memory module with one with the same specifications.

[akshayd21]

Thank you very much. I have just one 8gb stick and now I'm hoping that it's the memory stick itself and not the RAM Port .

Thank you for the logical explanation though. I really appreciate the help. 

[Paul_Tikkanen]

You're very welcome.

Odds are, it is a faulty memory module.

I think if the memory slot was bad, the PC wouldn't even get as far as it is getting now.

[akshayd21]

May the odds be in my favor, Paul. Thank you! 😊

I'll update this thread by tomorrow when I replace the memory and try booting again. 

[akshayd21]

So I opened my laptop (nervewracking experience TBH) and swapped the memory module slot from the one it was in to an open slot. I turned the computer on and ran the memory check test from the diagnostics menu and it failed again. Now I think either the memory module has failed or both the slots on the motherboard have failed, which I personally think is unlikely. I also use a surge protetor so I don't think there was a power surge to cause it. 

The boot is still unsuccessful. It still loops through the HP Logo -> HP Logo with "Preparing Automatic Repairs" Caption -> Proceeds to Blue Screen with STOP CODES. The unique thing is that every time it loops, the Blue screen shows a different STOP CODE. I have managed to note these so far

- SYSTEM_THREAD_EXCEPTION

- KMODE_EXCEPTION_NOT_HANDLED

- KERNEL_SECURITY_CHECK_FAILURE. 

Does anyone know what these might be related to? Thank you for reading.