HP Spectre 360 won't boot into Windows 10

[Gozoman]

Okay folks I really need help here. I have a HP Spectre x360, Model 13-ae005na. Actually I have two, bear with me. I bought my laptop years ago running Windows 10 but about a month ago it died, just wouldn’t power up. Computer repair guy checked it all out and determined that there was a short circuit on the motherboard. He said trying to find it would be like looking for a needle in a haystack and recommended a replacement board. It was going to cost almost £400 for the board and labour. I started searching on eBay and found the exact same laptop used for £400 so I bought it. I took the back off them both and swapped the SSD in mine into the new purchase. Booted it up and it worked and everything was back to normal.

Then yesterday I switched it on and it didn’t boot into windows. All I have on the screen is HP and the little wheel going round. I’ve left this for several hours by the way and it’s still the same.

I did the Windows and B key thing and pressed the power button and it wrote a new BIOS image. When it restarted there was no difference. I also did the CMOS repair but again no difference. I then did the power button and ESC key and ran all the tests and it passed everything, but still won’t boot into windows. I’m thinking it might be a registry problem but don’t know how to repair that when I can’t boot into Windows. Another option would be a system restore but when I try to do that or access a command prompt it asks me for a password. What password? I have a Windows 10 account password and also a Microsoft account password. Tried both and they came back as invalid passwords. If I could get the command prompt I could run the SFC and CHKDSK tests but no joy. I also tried the HP default password of 12345678 but that didn’t work either.

Any suggestions what I should do next? I love my Spectre x360 and at 70 I don’t want to have to start all over with a new computer. Is there any way to repair the registry from the position I’m in? Is there any way to find out the password for my account in case it’s changed somehow? Can I maybe carry out a Windows 10 repair? What I’m trying to avoid is losing all my programs and photos and files etc. I could swap over the SSD from my other Spectre as it has windows 10 at least operational on it although none of my programs or files and I’m not sure if that would let me do anything anyway.  Really would appreciate some help here.