XPS 8500, stuck in recovery & restore

While it would help to know your system build and at what point your got the initial message and what issued that message (BIOS or OS), my suspicion would be a file system or system disk fault, or perhaps some other hardware fault.

If the later and you can get into Device Manager to identify it and it is a removable device, you could try physically removing it from the system.

If the former and you can not restore (after last ditch backup), you may have to replace the system disk and re-install.

Disclaimer:  The above is my shot in the dark... a first pass assessment.

GK

The initial message happened while I was at work.  I turned on my monitor when I came home and saw a blue screen with the bad system config info message.  Rebooting did not help, it kept booting to the same message.  Windows repair and restore would not work.   Dell repair and restore did not work.

system is XPS 8500... I don’t know what other system info to put and obviously I cannot pull any info from the pc itself.

and by system disk....you man buy a new hard drive?

The hard drive is original.  It is a 2tb sata 6gb/s 7200 rpm.

i cannot get into safe mode. When rebooting and pressing f8, it look as if I will get the menu to select boot option, but it flashes and continues to a automatic repair blue screen that goes to advanced options and troubleshooting.  None of those result in helping. 

at one point I did come across a drive configuration and showed 5 I think partitions and I believe 2 of them were labeled recovery.  But I do not remember how I got to that point.  I was hoping that I could have the operating system reinstalled or reset.

Ok...that is that then.

once I have the new drive and install it the pc....how do I go about getting the operating system?  The pc originally came with windows 7 and then it upgraded to 10.

" “bad system config info”

usually means PHYSICALLY failing hard drive.

Time to reinstall clean on another drive and recover the files from the failing drive.

BAD_SYSTEM_CONFIG_INFO bug check has a value of 0x00000074. This bug check indicates that there is  corrupted registry due to physically bad hard drive.

>>The initial message happened while I was at work.  I turned on my monitor when I came home and saw a blue screen with the bad system config info message.

I wonder if a pushed update caused this.

If the blue screen comes after the BIOS finishes its start up and passes control to the OS, then the system hardware is less suspect and the file system and/or system disk are more suspect.

Is there an option to continue starting Windows in a 'safe mode' (that uses limited devices)?  I have not looked at this on Win10 yet, sorry.

>>Rebooting did not help, it kept booting to the same message.

The fault persists... that would be expected.

>>Windows repair and restore would not work.   Dell repair and restore did not work.

The persistent fault is disabling the system.

>>and by system disk....you mean buy a new hard drive?

The system disk is typically the C: drive holding the OS.  Is yours an ? year old SSD?

Ultimately, you would need to buy a new disk to replace a faulty disk, yes.

One course of troubleshooting the disk could be to remove it from the boot process, such as by changing the BIOS to boot from another device, or temporarily reconfiguring the physical hardware to boot from a healthy device, even if that device is not prepared to boot, at least the system will not blue screen on a fault... it will stop on 'no boot' device available.  This exercise would reinforce the conclusion to replace the system disk.

Can you get into the BIOS?  Seeing it run will restore your confidence in your system.  And it may have some hardware diagnostic tools you can run.

GK

Thank you all.

i will now go look for a new drive...all I need to get is a SATA SSD?  No other requirements?

hopefully I can do this without troubling you guys again.

thanks again.

My bad...I just realized you had a link to the drive....perfect!

>>The hard drive is original.  It is a 2tb sata 6gb/s 7200 rpm.

HDDs are usually pretty reliable these days.  This would lean the suspicion toward a OS file/file system fault.

You could temporarily disconnect its SATA cable and boot to a 'normal fault' of 'no drive present'.  This would suggest the file system/disk are the issue.

>>i cannot get into safe mode. When rebooting and pressing f8, it look as if I will get the menu to select boot option, but it flashes and continues to a automatic repair blue screen that goes to advanced options and troubleshooting.  None of those result in helping. 

That sounds like OS control after a healthy BIOS boot.  Again, leaning toward a file fault.

>>at one point I did come across a drive configuration and showed 5 I think partitions and I believe 2 of them were labeled recovery.  But I do not remember how I got to that point.  I was hoping that I could have the operating system reinstalled or reset.

To restore, I think you need to boot from another device and then run whatever utility to use content on the system disk to repair/restore the system disk.  This will not be successful if the system disk hardware has a fault that interferes with using it.  It will more likely be successful if the system disk is ok and only the working OS files got screwed up some how.

Another approach would be to remove the system HDD, set it aside for now, install a new or spare HDD (or SSD upgrade) and re-install the OS from scratch.  Once you are into Windows, update, and then install any remaining and more recent device drivers offered by Dell for your system devices.  Finally, re-install your old system HDD as a second drive and copy off your data only, assuming no hardware fault.  Later, you can reformat the old system drive and continue using it for fast, in-system backup.

Of course, someone may come along here yet with more appealing recovery advice.

GK

Looks like you could install an mSATA drive on your motherboard.  I would investigate Samsung products such as https://www.samsung.com/us/computing/memory-storage/solid-state-drives/ssd-860-evo-msata-500gb-mz-m6e500bw/

Your XPS 8500 manual:  https://downloads.dell.com/manuals/all-products/esuprt_desktop/esuprt_xps_desktop/xps-8500_owner%27s%20manual_en-us.pdf

GK

>>Thing about mSATA is they are rare now-days (really only still sold because of older laptops). They are not any faster than a 2.5 inch SATA-3/600 SSD. Also, you can move the 2.5-incher to another computer later.

Yeah, it looks like you are right.  I'm just now getting familiar with SSDs since I bought one in my XPS 8930.  OP should consider your advice.

GK

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@GKDesigns wrote:

Looks like you could install an mSATA SSD drive on your motherboard. 

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Possibly.

Thing about mSATA is they are rare now-days (really only still sold because of older laptops). They are not any faster than a 2.5 inch SATA-3/600 SSD. Also, you can move the 2.5-incher to another computer later.

What do you think of this drive since I cannot get the other one until the end of the week:

https://www.bestbuy.com/site/wd-mainstream-2tb-internal-serial-ata-hard-drive-for-desktops/9312076.p?skuId=9312076

Any 3.5" 7200RPM SATA3 HDD drive will likely work as a direct replacement.  I would go no smaller than 500GB.  If you over-size it, like 1-2TB, you can always move it into a new system later.

Once you get your new system disk running, you may still be able to install your existing HDD as a second drive, copy your data off, and format it for use.  (Check its brand now... you may not want to buy another one of those... a drive with a longer warranty is cheap data security and a 'better' drive.)

Me, I would install a ~256 to 512GB SSD (Samsung, 2.5") for the system disk, and a 1 to 2TB HDD (WD, 3.5") for internal backup.  Lately I prefer WD Black drives, usually from Micro Center (nice specs on one of those 4TB versions!):
https://documents.westerndigital.com/content/dam/doc-library/en_us/assets/public/western-digital/product/internal-drives/wd-black-hdd/data-sheet-wd-black-pc-hard-drives-2879-771434.pdf

Drive mounting and power and SATA cabling in the chassis would have to be planned and provisioned.  If so, measure SATA cable route length required and consider right-angle connector ends where it helps with cable management.

GK