Laptop won't boot into Windows but nothing's wrong

[helpless_idiot]

I'm not too savvy, hopefully someone can help me out.

I was innocently watching tiktok videos when I got an abrupt blue error message and restart.  Then I would get an HP loading screen that lasted for twenty or thirty minutes, but no Windows.  Either initially or soon after, this screen would read "Preparing Automatic Repair," then "Diagnosing Your PC," but Windows wouldn't boot.  Maybe I was too impatient, but I started problem solving.  First I drained all power and restarted.  Then I ran diagnostics, inclusing all the diagnostics available for memory and hard drive, all passed.  Then I went into troubleshooting options, but in every case, for instance if I clicked on "Command Prompt," the computer would apparently freeze.  Then I removed and reinstalled the battery to reset the BIOS.  Then I reseated the RAM and SSD.  Then I did a BIOS recovery.

After all this, and several subsequent restarts, restarting gives me an HP loading screen, then a "Your device ran into a problem and needs to restart" blue screen, followed by the HP loading screen with the messages, followed by a blue screen: "Automatic Repair:  Your PC did not start correctly."  Now the troubleshooting options work, except they require a password.

The trouble is that my mother set this computer up without knowing what she was doing, and that password is good and lost.

So my priorities are to preserve my data on this computer, not to lose my work by any means; and then to have the computer in working order again, but with no hope of knowing the password that would allow me to do this.

Note: I did not reset the CMOS.

Also note: the computer kept giving me messages, in the week leading up to this, that there wasn't enough storage available.  I wonder if it's possible I just need to access the files, delete some to make room, and then this problem will resolve itself automatically?  This would be a movie or audio file.  There are documents on this computer, not backed up, which I cannot lose.

All I can think to do is:

1. Find the password and do a restore while preserving the files (unlikely).

2. Boot from an OS on a USB (I was thinking Slax) just so I can delete one or two big files and see if that fixes this.

3. Just buy a new laptop and a hard drive and at some point clone the old laptop's hard drive onto the new hard drive using the new laptop.

Can I do a partial restore from a Windows OS on a hard drive, without password?  What are my other options?  Anything I omitted?  Any other ideas?  Losing my mind at an accelerating pace, please help.

[Nal_NR]

Hi @helpless_idiot,

Welcome to the HP Support Community. 

I'd be glad to help you! 

Fabulous analysis. Spectacular diagnosis of the issue before posting. Kudos to you for that.

This might require one-on-one interaction to fix the issue.

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