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The Lenovo IdeaPad U310 with Windows 8 is not booting into Windows. The machine has both a spinning drive and solid state drive.

The machine always boots to the "Preparing Automatic Repair" (PAR) screen. No matter what is done there, it either hangs, or restarts and goes back to the PAR screen. Specifically, hitting "Troubleshoot" hangs, and that's were I really need to go, I think.

Hitting Func+F2 goes to a password prompt because Lenovo doesn't want users to get in there. This is the way it came from the factory. Hitting Func+F12 goes to a boot menu, all selections cause a restart and then to the PAR screen. Hitting Func+F12 also leads to an App Menu which shows a splash with BIOS info (65CN97WW), and a setup entry which goes to the password prompt.

I am able to boot FreeDOS from a USB thumb drive and it shows my USB drive plus two non-DOS partitions. Spinrite shows the SSD as working fine, but the tool is not coded to work with through EFI on the spinning drive.

I thought I'd update the BIOS, but everything I've seen requires me to get into Windows first, which, of course, doesn't work.

Since the machine is kind of beat-up and may not work without a lot of expensive repairs, what steps might be taken, short of taking the machine to Lenovo?

Update 1: After downloading a Windows 8.1 install to a flash drive and booting from it, I am able to get to the Troubleshoot page that contains Refresh your PC, Reset your PC and Advanced options. Under advanced I have System Restore, System Image Recovery, Startup Repair, and Command Prompt.

  • Typing bcdedit at the command prompt did not find the data store.
  • Startup Repair said it couldn't repair my PC.
  • System Image Recovery said Windows cannot find a system image on this computer and use latest image is disabled.

  • System Restore said I need to specify which Windows installation to restore, and advised me to restart the computer, select on OS, and select system restore.

  • Refresh your PC said The drive where Windows is installed is locked. Unlock the drive and try again.

  • Reset your PC said Unable to reset your PC. A required drive partition is missing.

The result is that nothing I can do after booting the Windows 8 flash drive is able to correct the machine...still stuck in preparing automatic repair on boot.

Update 2: After downloading the Lenovo diagnostics tool, I discovered that the spinning hard drive would not pass tests. Hard drive diagnostics failing

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2 Answers 2

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If you don't have windows 8 installation media use Create Windows 8 media with valid product key only. You can use also Windows 8.1 media creation tool which is available without product key.

You have to create Windows 8/8.1 installation USB/DVD on another working computer.

Boot the created USB/DVD on your computer. If Windows is installed to a GPT disk you have to boot UEFI way - select firmware boot entry that has UEFI in its name - for example "UEFI USB device".

Once booted select Troubleshoot/Repair/Advanced options/Command prompt.

Check that c:\windows or d:\windows exist with command:

dir c:\windows (change drive letter to c,d,e until you find drive with \windows folder)

then use

bcdedit N:\Windows

where N: is drive where you have found \Windows with "dir" command.

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  • Thank you very much. The result from your process gives ...command line is not valid. However, bcdedit by itself says The boot configuration data store could not be opened. The requested system device cannot be found
    – Dale
    Commented Sep 30, 2015 at 19:19
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Looks like your Hard drive is about to fail soon.

Please boot into a Live Operating System based on Linux and backup your files as soon as possible.

You may try using the Windows Installation media to perform recovery but from my experience, Windows won't boot even from the installation media (USB / DVD) as it tries to read your failing Hard drive.

Linux would help you mount the drives though.

Download Rufus and use it to make the live image of a Linux OS (personally Linux Mint) in a USB drive and boot into the OS.

Good Luck with the file rescue!

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