acronis recovery media disc
I started having some problems with my computer running windows 10 with the most recent updates yesterday morning. The computer did a windows update the night before and it just was not running properly and I was having browser issues as well. Did some research (at this point I don't remember the search I did) and started to run the scandisk command but it could not complete. Some sort of problem or other so I searched that issue and did a chkdsk from the command prompt (admin) and it was running. I just left the pc alone and when I was going to bed last night it had the Dell icon on the screen and nothing else. I left it be until this morning, but it was the same so I did a hard shut down and left it alone for about an hour. Came back and turned on the pc and it would only go as far as the Dell icon and no further and hitting the f2 key to access the bios or any other keys did nothing.
I pulled out the Acronis Recovery Media disc I had made and the notes I had made at that time stated to press F12 on start and while using a wired keyboard select option 2. I did that and then let it run the test and it stated that it passed so I let it to the thorough test and after that was done it stated that it passed as well.
I am not sure what the heck is going on or how to get back into my pc - get it to load windows for me. I did also make the bootable PE Media, Universal Restore Media and the Bootable Rescue Disc and I do have a backup from about 2 weeks ago that I can use if need be.
I am not sure if that will resolve the issue of if I am going to have to use installation media to do clean install of Windows 10, by downloading the media creation tool, then use it to create installation media on a DVD or USB drive. (I will have to create it on a usb since this pc does not have a drive to create a dvd). I do have a windows 10 disc that I created with that tool in the past - but when I put that into the drive nothing happened so I am currently creating the USB from the media creation tool.
Any suggestions as to what I need to do or if using the acronis rescue disk and my backup will get the computer up and running again?
If you can't get past the Dell logo, that suggests a motherboard issue. You could test this by disconnecting the internal hard drive as it should POST to the bios regardless of any hard drive (or OS) being installed or not. If you can't get past it even then, you can try to pull the battery, disconnect the the AC power, press the power button a few times to remove any residual power and preferably, if the CMOS battery is accessible, pull it for 10 minutes too (and press the power button a few more times while it's out). Then return the CMOS battery, laptop battery and AC power supply and try to boot again. You might get lucky.
If you're able to get to the bios now (F2 or use the F12 one time boot menu) then we can try some other things as far as repair or backup/restore go.
You could try the startup repair from the windows installer first... or even try safeboot as a possible option (F8). If you have a spare drive (old or new), you could pull the current (just in case) and try to restore to the temp or practice disk and make sure all goes well. If it does, then you could do the same on the original if it looks like there is no way to get it to boot in it's current state.
Regardless, if you can get to the bios and/or can boot Acronis rescue media, if you have current data you want to retain, I'd still try to take a disk backup "as is" so you can then recover the data (files, documents, music, photos, etc) that might not be in the most current backup that you plan to restore the OS from.