I wanted to log in to Windows 10 in safe mode, so I use msconfig to choose "Diagnostic startup" and rebooted.
Windows loads the sign-in screen, with my sign-in wallpaper, the date/time, and the 'no network' icon in the bottom-right. When I press any key to sign-in, the date/time slides up as normal, and the wallpaper dims slightly, but no password box appears. If I try and type in my password anyway, nothing happens. After 30 seconds or so, the date/time will slide back down, but I still won't be able to enter my password.
I've created a Windows 10 Pro boot USB, but I have UEFI fast-boot turned on, so I can't boot from it. When I'm stuck at the log-in screen, I do get the power icon appearing. I've tried restarting from that icon whilst holding SHIFT, hoping that would give me UEFI options, but it just restarts as normal and dumps me back at the same screen.
If it makes a difference, I recently (three or four days ago?) switched to a local account from a Microsoft account.
How can I get past this impasse? Thanks in advance for your help.
Disable UEFI boot, boot USB to advanced startup - run CMD - msconfig - enable normal startup.
Advanced Startup Options - Boot to in Windows 10 - Windows 10 blog
A bit extreme option is to suddenly turn off PC and hopefully upon start it might start in a recovery mode itself.
That's the problem. I can't do that because I have fast boot enabled.Disable UEFI boot.
My motherboard manufacturer gives these instructions, but I can't follow them because I can't log-in to Windows: GIGABYTE - Support - FAQs
OK - I ended up shorting the CMOS battery, and that has worked. I can now boot from my USB. Startup repair didn't work, though, so I'm still looking for the solution. It's annoying because I have to short the CMOS after every unsuccessful boot attempt.
Try to boot back into Windows. Open Admin Command and type:
bcdedit /deletevalue {default} safeboot
Thanks for the suggestion.Try to boot back into Windows. Open Admin Command and type:
bcdedit /deletevalue {default} safeboot
Booting into Windows gives the same problem as before.
If I boot from my USB, and run the command you suggest I get "The boot configuration data store cannot be found. The requested system device cannot be found". I also can't use System Restore, presumably for the same reasons.
On reboot from HDD, immediately hit: Ctrl+Alt+Del and then <enter>, repeated on the next reboot - two interrupted boots should enter the troubleshooting boot mode menu including an option to select safe boot (Startup Settings with Safe mode on F4/#4).
CTRL+ALT+DEL then <enter> didn't do anything. So I tried killing the power during boot (whilst the blue flag was onscreen). I did that twice, then the PC entered Repair Mode, and I got a blue screen. Didn't have time to get the full error message, but something to do with ntfs.sysOn reboot from HDD, immediately hit: Ctrl+Alt+Del and then <enter>, repeated on the next reboot - two interrupted boots should enter the troubleshooting boot mode menu including an option to select safe boot (Startup Settings with Safe mode on F4/#4).
i tried the same technique a second time. This time Repair Mode led to a message about repairing the drive. When that was done, I was back to the broken login screen.
So I tried a third time. This time I got into the advanced boot options. Running the bcdedit command suggested above gave me the following: "An error occurred while attempting to delete the specified data element. Element not found."
So I tried System Restore. My only restore point was 24 hours ago, which was before the problem occurred. That fixed the problem. Thank you!
I spoke too soon. All is NOT well - one of my drive volumes is missing.
Checking in the Disk Management tool, I can see that this missing volume is on a drive that's now classified as my EFI System Partition.
The drive that SHOULD have my EFI system partition on has a 450Mb "Recovery Partition" instead. This has happened before, about 18 months ago, so I think I can fix this with GPT fdisk. Stay posted...
GPT disk did indeed fix the problem. Should I convert my the "Recovery Partition" on my System disk back into an EFI? I'm 99% sure that's what it used to be.
