Debug hardware issues after water damage

Question

Short Version: I have a machine that freezes during the regular boot cycle (safe mode is fine). Is it possible to create a boot log during this time so I can figure out which piece of the hardware is failing? (Acer Aspire S7, Windows 10)

Long Version: I spilled a small amount of water on the back of my Acer Aspire S7 near the vents. It was off at the time and didn't look like any water got inside (turns out it did). The next day I tried to boot it and it did not respond.

After 4-5 days, I opened it up, disconnected the battery and held the power button for 30 seconds. Then it did boot up, but freezes on the boot up Acer screen. After several boot attempts, it goes into diagnostic mode.

I am able to boot into Safe Mode, where everything that is powered up works fine (touch screen, touch pad, usb, cooling fans). Chkdsk comes back clean. All files intact. So I'm guessing that some piece of hardware is failing, and that piece is only powered up during a regular boot, not safe mode. Is there a way to create/check a boot log to determine what is going wrong?

Answer 1

Open msconfig (Win key +R, type msconfig>Ok)

When msconfig opens go to Boot tab and tick the Boot Log and OS Boot Information boxes. Revert these settings when you are done creating reports.

Restart the PC and read the ntbtlog.txt file located at

C:\WIndows\ntbtlog.txt

Or use a Microsoft tool to do boot logging

You can also use Performance Monitor to configure data collector sets

Reliability Monitor can also help with hardware problems, search control panel for Reliability Monitor then generate a report by clicking "Veiw reliability history"

Answer 2

Enable Verbose Service Startup/Shutdown Messages

Regedit :

 HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE \ SOFTWARE \ Microsoft \ Windows \ CurrentVersion \
 Policies \ System

set [verbosestatus] = 1

Group Policy:

Computer Configuration > Administrative Templates > System> DISPLAY HIGHLY DETAILED MESSAGES

Enable Verbose Boot Logging for Drivers and Such

Open up msconfig.exe through the Start Menu search or run box, and then head over to the Boot tab. You’ll want to use one of these two settings:

Boot log: Use this setting to create a text log of all the drivers that are loaded during startup.
OS boot information: Use this setting to display the drivers on the screen while booting (note that this seems to slow startup a bit)