Windows 8 struck in auto-repair loop

Hi Michael.

Glad we could help by fixing your issue. In case of a similar situation in future, you can always refer to the link . Feel free to reach out to us on Support Site http://dell.to/Yjrbbm for any help.

Hi, I know its been a couple months since this post but I was hoping you might be able to help me with this part.  I'm having the same issues as the other person who started this but once I got to this step I ran into some trouble.  While I was attempting to backup my data I came to a screen which showed me which files will be backed up.  This screen gave me an option to choose any other files I could preserve.  This is where I ran into my trouble It has been at a screen that says 

Data Backup

Followed by a striped green loading bar

And

"Please wait while Dell Backup and Recovery lists the files you could preserve.."

And from here there is nothing I can click or do. It has been this way for several hours and I'm curious if this is normal or if I Should be doing something else?

my test gives me a negative result for hard drive , what should i do ?

I have switched on my comp today with this problem.  No matter what option I choose on the blue screen above it does not do the action and loops back to the automatic repair screen.  I have pressed h12 and run a diagnostic and have no issues.  I only bought the pc in April 2013, has the hard drive failed already? I don't have back up discs and the software was pre installed so I cannot reinstall anything.  Please help

Hello,

I seems that I have similar case. My laptop has stuck in reboot loop of windows 8. Unfortunately, I can't force my laptop to start recovery procedure. I think I need some kind of installation or recovery media from Dell. Do you think you can help me with this?

Looking forward for your reply. 

Thanks!

I have reinstalled my laptop. Now everything works fine.

THIS DOES NOT WORK

Clearly this is some kind of big issue here with Dell laptops. Is this something that Dell has found a fix for? Other than telling people to wipe their systems and lose everything they have? Several times I have had this issue and yes I have even formatted and reinstalled windows on several occasions. Usually I can go into Diagnostics and after running it my computer will load up just fine. Today it wasn't as easy. I ran diagnostics and it said everything was fine. But the repair boot loop was still happening. I ran diagnostics again and once more it said everything was fine but the boot loop still took place. I tried to change bios settings back to factory (not sure if i've ever made any changes or not) and still did not hep. I kept hitting F12 each time it wanted to loop in hopes of clicking on the right option and nothing helped. I even tried the suggestion listed above to shut down, power on, power off on dell logo screen ... did this several times and never could get into that menu that was shown in the previous post. After several more tries at the diagnostics it finally worked. I am not back into my windows. But the real question here is what is a more permanent fix for this problem? This is not the first time this has happened to me and I doubt it will be the last. The biggest problem that I seem to have with this issue is that each time it happens it get's harder and harder to get out of the loop. The first time it happened I was able to get into diagnostics and escape to stop it and exit and it worked. But each time it takes longer to get it to work and the fact that I am now having to run the diagnostics several times is not a good sign.

Hello the same thing is happening with my computer and if I back up with an external hard drive will that save EVERYTHING I have on my computer? Like all the files I have installed and everything?

Whether from your repair console or a suitable bootup repair utility,  recover, remove and read the bootstat.dat file which has been the frequent culprit for startup panic messages:

Inside your Windows 8 directory (frequently "c:\windows" but always the %systemroot% variable:

attrib -s -h -r /s /d %systemroot%\System32\LogFiles\Srt\

ren %systemroot%\System32\LogFiles\Srt   -SRT-RESCUED

move %systemroot%\System32\LogFiles\-SRT-RESCUED  c:\

REBOOT in the manner you prefer whether continuing to AutoRepair or just cold booting the power button.

Those steps frequently "repair" the annoying boot panic messages since Windows relies on an archaic creation of "bootstat.dat" logging that contains semi-useful  error codes.

But, Windows can errantly fail to remove the bootstat.dat file even after system issues are seamlessly fixed and continuously choke in the manner you describe.

If Windows continues to choke in the manner that brought you to this post:

Open the %systemroot%\System32\LogFiles\Srt\srtTrail.txt file, at the bottom of this semi readable text file are useful troubleshooting messages literally quantifying the number of problems found and the (albeit failed) repair attempts to automatically fix the issue(s).

"0x0" messages are encouraging, "0x1" messages are worth noting and googling for.

Any "0x5" "0x50" or "0x55" messages are Access Denied issues encountered when attempting repairs and or access denied results when just trying to describe the failed repair in varied system log files.

All of those errors will help determine the issues assuming that just removing the bootstat.dat and SRT directory didn't eliminate the Repair loop.

If all that fails, then, feel free to carpet bomb your system as everyone else has rushed to uninsightfully encouraged you.

Ok, after a bit of investigation I thought I figured out that this was happening due to over heating. I bought a cooling mat and everything seemed to be perfectly fine. BUT, it happened again the other day for no reason. The cooling mat was working perfectly (i checked thinking that maybe one of the fans gave out). I had something major happen this time because I shut down my laptop and left it off until the next day. When I turned it back on it wanted to repair windows and then gave me an error that it couldn't even do that due to some issues with windows. I'm wondering if it's missing files or if this is actually hardware related such as a hard drive or something. I've had my laptop for 3 years or so and this has been happening since the day I bought it. I should have taken it back immediately but thought that it was a fluke or something and kept it. Now i'm paying the price of frustration for keeping it.

I am going to go ahead and backup my windows 8 onto a thumb drive and do another format with a win 10 upgrade and see if it still happens. 

I'm having the same problem,  stuck in repair loop, but when I try to refresh my pc, it states that I must use an adminstrator account and none have been set up. Apparently we didn't assign our only account the administrator  account. What do I do now?

hi saharsh i had the same problem but  when i click on refresh your pc the system shown some error

How are you supposed to run a diagnostics from a web address if you can't get your computer to get out of the "diagnosing your pc" loop?

I have tried this and when I start and turn off my computer several times, it never goes on to the refresh page.  Do you have another suggestion?