Unexpected I/O error occurred; File: \windows\system32\winload.efi; 0xc00000e9

[Roberino]

I had my laptop turned off since I was last on it like 3 or 4 days ago. I booted it up today and it introduced the HP logo along with "Preparing Automatic Repair." 

It then goes to a blue screen stating, "An unexpected I/O error has occurred.

File: \windows\system32\winload.efi

Error Code: 0xc00000e9"

It shows buttons I can press to do things at the bottom. Enter just does the startup again, f1 doesn't work, and F8 doesn't work. The only one that does is Esc which, of course, brings you to this screen. 

The serial number of this laptop is [edited]. I know a decent amount about PCs - not a lot of info on laptops - ,but I'm not extremely tech-savvy yet as I'm still in classes. I was hoping there could be some easy ways to fix this before I have it brought to a computer repair place. Thank you for your time.

[WAWood]

@Roberino 

Unfortunately, that error message nearly always means that a recent Windows Update failed and Microsoft then tried to recover from that, but that failed, so it's trying over and over again -- and will never succeed because Windows Update got corrupted in the process.

First thing you need to do is see if you can restart in Safe mode -- by doing these steps: https://www.tenforums.com/tutorials/2304-boot-into-safe-mode-windows-10-a.html

If you don't know how to start using Advanced Startup Options, then read this: https://www.tenforums.com/tutorials/2294-boot-advanced-startup-options-windows-10-a.html

Then, follow these steps to reset Windows Update: https://www.tenforums.com/tutorials/24742-reset-windows-update-windows-10-a.html

If these work, when you finally reboot, you should then be able to login to a working Windows desktop.

[Roberino]

I appreciate the response. This could definitely be the solution, but it appears my computer cannot get to the advanced startup options. The only one I could try was the hard reboot and for some reason my laptop refuses to hard reboot - I don't know if I'm doing it right or not. Everything I do just brings me right back to the blue screen for recovery. There was a new thing that I noticed and it was the fact that when I turn the computer on now, it has a beep code I believe. Basically, it does one beep and then waits a good few seconds then it does another beep. It repeats that process until the computer just turns off by itself, so probably about 4 beeps? Unless there is some other ways, I'm probably either going to have to get a USB drive so I can do safe mode or just take it to a repair place. Again, thanks for your response. Even though it could've helped, I don't know whether to put accept as solution or not because I could not get to safe mode to actually try it. But to anyone else who has this problem, try it out.

[Roberino]

I got the USB drives to get to advanced startup options. I put Windows 10 installation on one of them and on the other usb I put the recovery drive. Unfortunately, when I tried booting from each USB, nothing worked. It just goes back to the blue screen. Weirdly enough, the windows 10 installation one made the text disappear from the blue screen. But so far that's all I got from it. If there is any other methods, I would be happy to know them.

[WAWood]

@Roberino 

You count the beeps as the number that happen between pauses, not until you turn the PC off.  

A beep code means there is an underlying hardware failure.  Since the PC is a laptop, this HP thread describes the different blink and beep codes: https://support.hp.com/us-en/document/c01732674?jumpid=reg_r1002_usen_c-001_title_r0001

--------------------
If you CAN, to find out the problem, you would need to be able run hardware diagnostics by pressing the Esc key repeatedly and then, when the HP Startup Menu appears, select Diagnostics (usually F2) and let it run.

If you can NOT do that, or if that does not work, then there is NOTHING more you can do by yourself -- and there is NOTHING we can do because we have no way of accessing your PC from here to run diagnostics or repair hardware.