"Preparing Automatic Repair" message on lap top blue screen and failing to boot up.

[PSIB]

I keep a couple of older laptops for using some of my ancient software programs, one of the laptops being an HP Notebook-15-f387wm laptop that I've had since 2017. It came with Windows 10, but I can't remember if it was ever updated to 11, or not. If I had to guess, I would say that it was.

The problem: When I turn it on, it sometimes displays " Preparing Automatic Repair" on a blue screen and freezes up. I went through the diagnostic steps that are available when pushing f2 at start up and nothing in any of the tests failed.  (Ran extensive and fast tests).  I also attempted to use Windows Recovery Environment but couldn't access it by either of the two methods provided by HP Support online.  Suggestions...?  TIA

[Paul_Tikkanen]

The only suggestion I can offer would be to use the Microsoft Media creation tool to make a bootable USB installation flash drive and reinstall W10:

Download Windows 10

Your PC does not meet Microsoft's minimum W11 hardware requirements to install W11 without using a workaround to bypass the W11 hardware checks.

If you did not do that, or someone did that for you, your PC has W10 installed.

After you get W10 installed, if you want to do an inplace upgrade to W11, watch this video which IMHO, is the easiest way to do an in-place upgrade to W11.

How to Install Windows 11 25H2 on Unsupported PCs (New Easiest Method)

You can also clean install W11 with a modified USB installation flash drive with Rufus that bypasses the W11 hardware checks.

Watch this video:

Windows 11 24H2 Install on Unsupported Hardware with Rufus

You can download the W11 25H2 ISO file from the link below:

Download Windows 11

Rufus will work the same way as 24H2 with the 25H2 ISO file.

[PSIB]

Thank you for the suggestions. If I reload W10, would I lose my non-Windows files or folders?

[Paul_Tikkanen]

You're very welcome.

You should be able to save your personal files/folders if you reinstall Windows over the existing Windows partition and not delete or format any existing partitions.

When you get to the screen that asks 'Where do you want to install Windows,' it should list a few partitions, and you select the Windows partition and it will create a Windows.old folder.

After Windows has completed installing you can explore the Windows.old folder, find your old user profile and copy the files/folders from the Windows.old folder to your new user profile.

What I usually do is copy the folders from my old user profile (downloads., documents, pictures, music, etc, and let them overwrite the empty folders in my new user profile on the new Windows installation.

Once you are sure you got everything you wanted to save, you can delete the Windows.old folder by running the Windows disk cleanup utility>cleanup system files option, check all of the boxes to delete the files, and you should be good to go.