Disk errors in Windows can be annoying and equally devastating if not fixed in time. Disk errors aren’t common in Windows 10 yet sometimes these errors can be caused due to bad sectors, sudden power failure, power surge, malware or virus infection, corruption, physical damage, etc. Due to this error, the internal or external hard drive connected to your Windows 10 system becomes inaccessible and files present in the affected hard drive become prone to corruption that can lead to data loss. You may have noticed that Windows 10 operating system tries to fix the disk errors when you boot your PC; but sometimes due to severe disk errors, your PC might get stuck while repairing the hard drive.

The first sign that a hard disk drive approaches failure is when you encounter logical errors on the disk. When a drive incurs logical errors, unreadable parts of the drive reclassify as bad sectors.When a disk has a bad sector, it doesn't necessarily mean there is anything physically wrong with the disk; you may just need to repair the drive with software.

Solutions to Fix Disk Error in Windows 10

Below we have explained few fixes (step-by-step) to repair disk errors in Windows 10.

1. Startup Repair

For startup repair, you need a Windows 10 system repair or installation disc. You can use a tool like Rufus or Win32DiskImager to create a Windows 10 bootable USB drive. Then:

• Plug the bootable USB drive or disc to your system
• Press the power button to turn on the system and immediately start pressing the Boot Menu option key, usually F12, to enter the boot menu.
• Use up/down key to select the bootable USB drive or system repair/installation disc and hit Enter.
• On Windows setup screen, click ‘Next’ and then click ‘Repair your Computer’.
• Select Troubleshoot > Advanced Option > Startup Repair. Wait until the system is repaired.
• Then remove the installation/repair disc or USB drive and restart the system and let Windows 10 boot normally.

2. Check Security and Maintenance

Under Security and Maintenance, the Windows OS keeps you informed about the issues that pertain to your system’s health. It can help you pinpoint problems with the hardware and software. If your system is able to boot Windows 10 then perform the following:

• Go to Control Panel > Security and Maintenance. Click Maintenance to expand and then look for Drive Status
• If there is an issue with the hard drive, it is shown here otherwise you see all drives are working properly.

3. Use CHKDSK

Windows has a CHKDSK (check disk) utility that helps in fixing the logical file system and bad sectors that are causing disk errors. CHKDSK helps fix most issues with the hard drive and makes it accessible.

Follow the below steps to run CHKDSK on your affected hard disk.

• Press ‘Windows + S’ and type cmd.
• Right-click on Command Prompt and select ‘Run as Administrator’. When prompted, click ‘YES’.
• In the Command Prompt window, type chkdsk X: /r /f where X is the external hard drive letter and /r & /f are the CHKDSK parameters. Hit ‘Enter’ to start the scan and repair process.

Wait till CHKDSK finishes its job. Later, reconnect the external hard drive to use it or restart the system (if the internal hard drive is scanned) and check if your system still tries to repair the disk.

4. Use PowerShell

Windows 10 has a powerful shell called PowerShell that can be used to check and repair the drive errors using the Repair-Volume command.

• Press ‘Windows + S’ and type PowerShell. Right-click on ‘Windows PowerShell’ and select ‘Run as administrator’.
• In the PowerShell command line, type Repair-Volume C –Scan where C is the volume or drive letter. This command scans the hard drive volume for errors. If errors are found, run next command.
• Type Repair-Volume C –OfflineScanAndFix and hit ‘Enter’ to perform an offline scan and fix errors found on the drive. Wait till the process is finished
• Or type Repair-Volume C –SpotFix to fix an issue by taking the volume offline

Restart the system after repair and type Repair-Volume C –Scan in PowerShell to check if the errors are fixed.

5. Data Recovery Tool

If your system is not able to boot and gets stuck in disk repair process, you should immediately stop using it instead of rebooting again and again, as it may further damage your system. Immediately remove the hard drive from your Windows 10 system and get an HDD enclosure to connect the affected hard drive to another PC.

Then,

• Download the Stellar Data Recovery- Standard for Windows software.

• Connect the affected hard drive to the system via USB port and launch the program.
• Select what files you want to recover from the given options and click ‘Next’.

• Under Connected Drives, select your affected drive and turn on the Deep Scan toggle switch that appears at the bottom-left corner.

• Click ‘Scan’ and wait until the process is finished.
• After the scan, the folders containing the scanned files are displayed in the left tree-view pane. Click on ‘File Type’ tab to sort them according to file type.

• Click on a folder in the left tree-view pane to display the folder content in the right panel of the software window. You can click on any file to preview it and use the search box to find and recover specific files and folders from the scanned results.
• Click the checkbox of the files and folders that you want to recover and then click the ‘Recover’ button. A pop up appears.
• Click ‘Browse’ to select the location to save recovered files. Make sure not to select the same drive from where data is to be recovered. Click ‘Save’ and wait till the saving process is completed.

Now that you have successfully recovered your important files and other data, you can format the hard drive. You must perform full/normal/low-level format on the hard drive to fix the issue. Quick Format is not recommended.

Conclusion

To avoid disk errors, it’s important to check the hard drives on a regular basis (once a week or month) using tools like CHKDSK and S.M.A.R.T. – the hard drive monitoring system. This helps in determining exact disk errors and fix them with ease before the drive becomes inaccessible or corrupt. As always, use Stellar Data Recovery- Standard for Windows tool to recover data from a corrupt, inaccessible, formatted, and even reformatted hard drive or its partitions. The tool supports recovery from exFAT, FAT(FAT16, FAT32), and NTFS formats.

Summary :

Laptop stuck on Preparing Automatic Repair during startup? This article tells you several solutions to fix 'Preparing Automatic Repair' or 'Diagnosing your PC' error message in Windows 10/8/7. If any data is lost due to these messages, use MiniTool software.

Diagnosing Your PC/ Preparing Automatic Repair Loop

Laptop is stuck during startup - with a screen saying Preparing Automatic Repair or diagnosing your PC!

A true example from answers.microsoft.com is shown below:

Laptop is just stuck in an infinite loop between diagnosing your PC and Preparing Automatic Repair. Sometimes it comes up with repairing disk errors, but never stays and just enters the loop again.
I've read numerous other threads online and yet to find something that works. Starting to think there is nothing I can personally do.

What should you do if you are one of them?

Video Tutorial

Now, before solving the issue, you should know what Automatic Repair is.

What Is Automatic Repair?

Automatic Repair is a feature introduced in Windows 10/8 that can fix some PC issues when the computer cannot boot properly.

But sometimes due to some reasons, Windows Automatic Repair might fail to work and get stuck in diagnosing your PC. It will go to a blue or black screen of death error. HP, Lenovo, Asus, Dell and Acer users are the most common victims of this issue according to a report online.

If your laptop stuck on Preparing Automatic Repair during startup, you can try the following solutions.

8 Solutions - Fix Preparing Automatic Repair Loop Windows 10

Solution 1. Perform a hard reboot

If your Windows cannot boot because of the 'Preparing Automatic Repair' or 'Diagnosing your PC' error, you can do a hard reboot.

• Remove the battery and AC adapter.
• Press and hold the power button for 20 seconds and see if it will boot up normally.

If this method doesn't work, try the following solutions.

Indian serial actors in underwear. Solution 2. Boot into safe mode

You can try the method below to enter into safe mode when you encounter any issues related to booting up your computer.

Step 1: Turn off your computer.

Step 2: Insert the Windows bootable installation disk to your PC and boot from it.

Step 3: When prompted to Press any key to boot from CD or DVD, press any key to continue.

Step 4: Select your language preferences in the Windows Setup interface, and click on Next button to continue.

Step 5: Tap or click on Repair your computer to continue.

Step 6: Select Troubleshoot.

Step 7: Click on Advanced options.

Step 8: Click on Startup Settings.

Step 9: Click on Restart. After restart, the computer will show another screen that has different startup options.

Step 10: On your keyboard, press the 4 or the F4 key to boot into minimal Safe Mode. (If you need to do some online research after booting into the safe mode, press 5 or F5 to boot into 'Safe Mode with Networking.')

Solution 3. Extend system reserved partition

If your computer's system reserved partition is smaller than it should be, you will get the 'Preparing Automatic Repair' or 'Diagnosing your PC' error message. To fix this issue, you can try extending system reserved partition. You can download MiniTool Partition Wizard to effectively complete this task.

Helpful Article: This post 'Extend Partition' will show you more information about how to change partition size easily and effectively.

After extending system reserved partition, you can restart your computer to check whether this issue has been solved.

Solution 4. Perform a startup repair

Some users recommend performing Startup Repair when the laptop is stuck on Preparing Automatic Repair during startup.

The steps are:

Insert the Windows bootable drive to your computer and boot from it.

Select your language preferences, and click on Next.

Click on Repair your computer.

Select Troubleshoot > Advanced Options > Startup Repair.

Solution 5. Rebuild BCD

If the boot files are missing or corrupted, you will receive the Preparing Automatic Repair error in Windows 10. Therefore, some users will re-build the boot record by following the below steps.

Step 1. Insert the Windows bootable installation disk into your PC that has 'Preparing Automatic Repair' or 'Diagnosing your PC' error message.

Step 2. Boot your PC from the installation disk.

Step 3. Select your language preferences, and click on Next button to continue.

Step 4. Click on Repair your computer.

Step 5. Click on Troubleshoot.

Step 6. Click on Command Prompt.

Step 7. Type the following commands into the prompt and press Enter key after each command.

• bootrec /fixmbr
• bootrec /fixboot
• bootrec /scanos
• bootrec /rebuildbcd

Step 8. Type exit and press Enter.

Step 9. Restart your PC.

Solution 6. Disable Automatic Repair at Windows 10 boot

During its startup, Windows 10 executes the Automatic Repair feature to fix booting related issues automatically. This feature is very useful for the average users. However, sometimes it might not suffice solving the startup problems; or, it might even be causing the startup problems itself. Therefore, disabling automatic repair might be a solution to some problems related to Windows 10 booting up. The steps are below.

a) Insert the Windows bootable drive to your PC and boot from it.

b) Select your language preferences, and click on Next.

c) Click on Repair your computer.

d) Click on Troubleshoot.

e) Click on Advanced Options.

Puff daddy the saga continues rar files. f) Click on Command Prompt.

g) Type bcdedit /set {current} recoveryenabled No in the Command Prompt window and press Enter button.

h) Type exit and press Enter.

Solution 7. Reinstall Windows

If your laptop is still stuck on Preparing Automatic Repair during startup or if you still get the diagnosing your PC error message after trying the above solutions, you can try reinstalling Windows.

However, I guess you might be wondering:

'How to recover data when PC cannot boot effectively and quickly?'

MiniTool Power Data Recovery, a professional file recovery software developed by a famous software development company based in Canada, can help you recover data when your PC cannot boot and reports diagnosing your PC error message.

• It is a read-only tool,meaning it recovers lost data without affecting the original data.
• It offers wizard-like interfaces as well as simple operations to help you effectively recover lost data without any difficulty.
• It supports various operating systems including Windows 7, Windows 8, Windows 10, etc.

Now, let's see how to recover data when PC reports 'Preparing Automatic Repair' or 'Diagnosing your PC'.

Step 1. Create bootable CD/DVD discs or USB flash drive by using MiniTool Bootable Media Builder.Install your MiniTool Power Data Recovery Personal Deluxe in a normal computer, and then click Bootable Media in the lower part of the main interface.

Click on WinPE-based media with MiniTool plug-in.

Choose media destination to create bootable CD, DVD, or USB flash drive.

Click on 'Finish' after successful burning.

Step 2. Boot your PC from the bootable drive.

Connect your bootable drive to PC, and then start it.

Enter the BIOS and then set Bootable Disc as the 1st boot device and save configuration changes.

Select MiniTool Power Data Recovery when you enter into the MiniTool PE Loader interface.

Step 3. Recover data from PC that is having the 'Preparing Automatic Repair' or 'diagnosing your PC' error message.

Select a suitable data recovery module in the main interface of MiniTool Power Data Recovery.

Four different data recovery modules are listed here:

• This PC focuses on recovering lost or deleted data from damaged, RAW or formatted partitions. This module is selected by default. And, this module is selected by default.
• Removable Disk Drive is designed to recover lost photos, mp3/mp4 files, and videos from flash drives and memory sticks.
• Hard Disk Drive is mainly designed to recover data from the partition which is deleted by accident or lost due to reinstalling Windows OS.
• CD/DVD Drive can recover lost and deleted files from damaged, scratched or defective CD and DVD disks.

Here, we will use the This PC recovery module for example to show how to effectively recover lost data when laptop stuck on Preparing Automatic Repair during startup.

Select the hard drive you want to recover, and then click Scan button at the lower right corner. Here, you can click the Settings feature to specifythe file types and file systems you want to recover.

Finally, select all needed files, and then click Save to store them in a location of your choice. It is recommended to store important files on a drive other than the one you recovered from; otherwise, the lost data could be overwritten and there is no way to recover them.

Here, if MiniTool Power Data Recovery lists a lot of files after scanning, you can use the Filter feature to quickly find the files files you need not only by the file format, but also the size and creation or modification date.

For instance, if you want to quickly find needed lost pictures, you can click on Filter, and then choose '*.jpg, *.gif, *.png, *.psd, *.tif' from the drop-list of By Filename/Extension and then click OK button, as shown below. Besides, you can preview your needed photos before saving.

Solution 8: Check your hardware

If you still receive the 'Preparing Automatic Repair' or 'diagnosing your PC' error message after reinstalling Windows, this issue might be related to your computer's hardware.

For instance, Preparing Automatic Repair error in Windows 10 happens because this PC has a failed or failing HDD or SSD. It is recommended to check whether or not your HDD or SSD has failed or is failing. Additionally, check your RAM to make sure it is working properly as well.

Bottom Line

Are you still worrying about this issue - laptop stuck on Preparing Automatic Repair during startup? Please try the above solutions to solve your issue.

If you happen to know other ways to fix the Preparing Automatic Repair error in Windows 10 issue, please feel free to leave your comments below and we promise we’ll update this guide.

If you have any questions about recovering lost data by using MiniTool Power Data Recovery, please feel free to contact us via [email protected] Thanks for your reading.