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I have seen a few questions on this, but I have a unique case here that is escaping me.

This Windows 8 (maybe 8.1?) laptop will not boot up, goes to Automatic Repair, which fails. When I try to boot to Safe Mode, it also returns to Automatic Repair, which is probably not great.

I went to command prompt and ran DISM (DISM.exe /Online /Cleanup-image /Restorehealth) which ran but did not fix the issue.

Next, I tried chkdsk /f /r /x C:, which ran, but again did not fix the issue.

When I run (wmic logicaldisk get name) to see all the drives, I see C: D: E: F: X:. The odd thing is that both C: and X: have /Windows directories. When I boot to BIOS, I only see one physical drive (as expected). I only see one boot option in the boot priority.

I have never encountered this before. I know the boot menu can determine which physical disk to boot from, but I am unsure how to determine if Windows is trying to load from the C or X drive. Also found that the X drive is write-only.

  • Could X be the recovery partition?
  • If so, how would I boot to that?
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  • Most important: Check the drive's health and only then act accordingly by replacing it or installing the OS properly. Don't reinstall 8.x, it's out of support. Windows 10 or 11, or, better, any currently supported Linux distro like Ubuntu. Later you can educate yourself about UEFI and the UEFI mode boot process, the ESP (EFI System Partition) which seems to be the root cause of your confusion - Windows unfortunately have been dumbing down its users for decades by calling "disks", "drives" to what are most of the times only PARTITIONS in the same physical drive.
    – ChanganAuto
    Commented Jan 31, 2023 at 22:00
  • Thanks! Yes, I get that it is multiple partitions of the same drive. But if two partitions on the same drive have Windows installed, how would it choose to boot? Also curious how to check drive health? I ran chkdsk, wouldn't that catch some drive health?
    – theguitarman
    Commented Jan 31, 2023 at 22:20
  • One of the partitions is probably the ESP where the Windows bootloader is installed and where it boots from, NOT the system partition, the one you'd call "C:\". The ESP is small (100-500MB) and typically at the very beginning of the drive. For S.M.A.R.T. tools pcmag.com/how-to/check-your-hard-drives-health
    – ChanganAuto
    Commented Jan 31, 2023 at 22:48

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