Stuck on "Preparing automatic repair" loop windows 10

Just a few hours ago I was installing an update for Windows 10 and then it started turning on and off. I let it do it's thing for a while until I found it odd that it would do it so much.

When I looked closer I found that it followed a simple pattern:

Turn on, try to load OS, fail (Or at least it seems so), restart, Show "Preparing automatic repair", turn off and the cycle begins again.

What my case has different from all others I saw is that I am using the very laptop that doesn't work since I have Linux running along-side of it.

I can access all the files and probably do some other stuff that might help but I'm not sure what to do.

Help would be appreciated.

Slava Knyazev

Posted 2015-05-31T03:08:09.770

Reputation: 383

If Windows is not fully installed. You will just have to reinstall it. There isn't anything to repair. – Ramhound – 2015-05-31T03:12:32.220

Perhaps running startup repair from the Win10 installer media might help. – Karan – 2015-05-31T03:12:32.610

@Karan Where do I get that? – Slava Knyazev – 2015-05-31T03:36:58.273

@Ramhound What exactly went wrong then? I was just installing an automatic update from MSFT... – Slava Knyazev – 2015-05-31T03:37:35.193

Create a bootable USB using the ISO and hopefully it'll allow you to repair. – Karan – 2015-05-31T03:39:18.583

@SlavaKnyazev - The installer was likely crashing. Was it restarting or "turning on and off" slight difference there. – Ramhound – 2015-05-31T03:49:47.907

@Ramhound Is there a difference? If there is then it was restarting. – Slava Knyazev – 2015-05-31T04:57:41.907

@SlavaKnyazev - If Windows Preinstallation Environment was crashing that is one thing, if it indicated it was restarting, and then did so that is normal. You don't indicate how many times so I can't say if the number of times it did restart is normal or not. – Ramhound – 2015-05-31T05:01:12.000

@Ramhound Probably a few dozen until I got my tea and came back to my computer. Then I watched it restart 4-5 times until I understood that it won't stop. – Slava Knyazev – 2015-06-01T04:10:14.110

If it indicated it was restarting, it would have been normal, although not that many times. Honestly it sounds like it was actually crashing though. – Ramhound – 2015-06-01T10:50:28.753

@Ramhound Would it be possible to boot into safe-mode somehow then? – Slava Knyazev – 2015-06-01T20:55:28.617

Answers

In your BIOS, change XD-bit (No-execute Memory Protect) to ENABLE.

I had this exact issue last night, and this BIOS change resolved it.

Eoin Connolly

Posted 2015-05-31T03:08:09.770

Reputation: 18

Too late, windows 10 is now gone for good. – Slava Knyazev – 2015-06-30T16:49:52.857

I'm sure it will eventually be back. This issue has been around since the Windows 8 days, so it's not unique to Windows 10 - I just never encountered it until my instance of Windows 10 wanted to update itself. – Eoin Connolly – 2015-07-01T14:08:46.350

I meant that I took windows off. I know run linux. I simply assumed your answer as correct. – Slava Knyazev – 2015-07-02T00:08:45.123

Well, hopefully it will help somebody else. I had to wade through a lot of articles saying a windows reset was the answer until I found the bios change buried in a forum post. – Eoin Connolly – 2015-07-03T10:38:21.243

I had the same problem, automatic repair was stuck. had to do a hard reset to get the system to boot. But it went back to the automatic repair screen.

I used a usb with windows 10 install on it to boot, choose repair system and went to a cmd prompt. I used diskpart to assign the windows boot manager drive letter from C: to I: then changed the windows os partition to c:. Rebooted the system and booted from the usb again and used the system restore. It took a long time and told me it failed... but upon rebooting, system restore had worked and everything was back to normal. What a pain in the ass Note: This boot took a super long time while system restore was restoring.

Oh ya, one more thing; the XD crap in the bios is a cpu thing and did not fix anything for me with this dell optiplex 380 computer.

Rob Moore

Posted 2015-05-31T03:08:09.770

Reputation: 349

I had the same problem with my desktop computer. In my case, I found out it was because of faulty RAM. My computer restarted suddenly, just as a scheduled restart after installing updates, and after that, it won`t boot, saying Preparing Automatic Repair. After some research and trying, I found out that it can be from a majority of causes, one of them being Faulty RAM. I tried to swap one memory card at a time, and after doing that my computer started again and boot normaly, just as before.

Radu

Posted 2015-05-31T03:08:09.770

Reputation: 11

In my case, mis-paired RAM. Thanks. – EpicVoyage – 2017-06-17T01:51:08.103

I had the same problem trying to install sole Windows 10 on a Mac. It was a pain as I reinstalled Windows no less than 5 times without success until I found out what my problem is. I will post my solution here in case someone might need it.

My problem is with the MBR and GPT disk format. Mac could create a "hybrid" disk using Disk Utilities but that was not enough. So what I did was:

Use gdisk to add a GPT partition as partition 2. The code for Windows is 0700 in case you wonder. I wiped everything out except the default 1st partition, 200MB reserved by Mac.
Install Windows 10 as usual and the problem is gone.

Just a note to another Mac user, you could back up your whole drive to an USB drive and boot up Mac OS from there just in case you will need it later.

function1983

Posted 2015-05-31T03:08:09.770

Reputation: 1