I say “computer” because not only can’t I boot, but I can’t even boot from DVD.
We had a power outage and my boot disk (Win8.1) is now messed up worse than I’ve ever experienced before. I can’t get to my Windows boot menu (I also have Windows 10 and 11 installed on different drives) and I can’t boot from DVD. When my motherboard logo displays, there’s a “Please wait” message and then a list of keyboard layouts shows. After I select US, a number of options are displayed. Startup Repair didn’t work. When I tried System Restore, I got a message that I have to choose which Windows I want to do a restore on and that I should reboot. When I rebooted, I was NOT shown a list of my Windows installations to choose from to do a restore to. I’m stuck in an infinite loop. None of the other options appears to be relevant.
Any ideas?
Update: I disconnected my boot drive to see if by some remote chance the other Windows installations would be detected and I’d be given a chance to boot into one of them. No such luck. |I got an error message saying that a required device isn’t connected or can’t be accessed. The Recovery options were of no help.
Update # 2: I’m embarrassed. I was so sure that the last time I changed my boot order I’d placed DVD drive at the top that I didn’t even bother checking when this problem began. I CAN boot from a DVD. Lazesoft’s Windows Recovery has not been able to fix things. I do daily system backups and restores using programs such as Macrium Reflect. Will restoring yesterday’s backup fix things? I ask because it’s almost certainly not just a problem of a file gone bad. The problem probably runs much deeper (e.g., I found that my 3 Windows installations were identified in the BCD as Chinese locale China) and I wonder whether a backup is all-encompassing that even data like those are backed up.