PC won't boot after update

Windows 10 prompted me for an upgrade, but now I’m stuck in a loop. Every time I boot up, it goes through the login screen, hits a black screen, and then just sits there with a cursor. Nothing else happens.
Does anyone know how I can save the files on my hard drive or find a way to get my data back?
Best,

northerncyclist32 said:Windows 10 asked me to upgrade, and now I'm stuck. It gets through the login screen, then everything just goes black—all I see is the cursor staring back at me. Nothing else happens!

Are you looking to back up your data to a drive, or are you trying to recover files that were lost? Let me know what's going on so I can help!

Hey there! How’s it going?

It’s totally possible there’s an issue with the update. There are really only two ways to play this. You can either wait out that black screen with the mouse cursor—it took one of my buddies about 20 minutes before everything finally snapped back to normal. I wouldn't exactly recommend it, but you could also try a hard restart. Just be prepared that you might have to do it a few times if it gets stuck in the same loop!

After about half an hour, it just hung on "personal setting (not responding)" and went back to waiting. Does anyone know if there's a workaround for this, or am I stuck doing a full reinstall?

Hmm, you could always try a Windows repair, but honestly? My go-to move is to just grab a Linux Mint live USB, boot from that, and use it to rescue all your important files onto an external drive or a thumb drive. Once everything is safe, just wipe the hard drive and install a fresh version of Windows.

You could also try booting up in Safe Mode. Or maybe try logging in as a different user if there's one available.

I’d honestly just ditch it overnight—these damn updates take freaking hours.

Hey there! I'm running a Toshiba s55 with Windows 10. Everything was smooth sailing until Microsoft pushed a recent update, and now things have gotten... weird. Since that update, my laptop won't actually boot up unless I mash some random key on the keyboard. It just sits there staring at me with the "Toshiba : Leading Innovation" logo on the screen. Sometimes it finally kicks into gear if I hit Home, End, Page Up, or Page Down, and other times it’s just any old letter.
Everything else seems to be functioning perfectly fine. Do you think this could actually be caused by that update?

Well, it’s definitely a possibility—especially if you've noticed your laptop acting all glitchy ever since that last update. Maybe try running a Windows repair? Or, if you don't have anything super important saved on there, you could always just wipe the drive and do a clean install.

Repair? You mean a system recovery, or something else entirely? That’s really all I can wrap my head around right now. To be honest, I'm a complete novice when it comes to this stuff—I haven't the slightest clue how to actually format a hard drive or handle any of those deeper technical maneuvers. My computer was actually being serviced earlier today to get some drivers cleaned up and installed, so I'm assuming the issue isn't stemming from that. Should I dive in and attempt a recovery myself, or would it be wiser to just sit tight and wait for the next software update to roll out?

Grace Hill17 said:Repair? Do you mean a system recovery, or...? That's really the only thing I know how to do—I have no clue how to format a drive or anything else like that since I'm a complete novice when it comes to this stuff. The computer was actually being cleaned up and some drivers were being installed earlier, so maybe that isn't the issue? Should I give the recovery a shot, or just wait for the next update?

Give the recovery a try. You should have an option to reset the settings while keeping all your files and other random junk intact, right? If that's the case, just go with that and let Windows do its thing. Since you aren't familiar with formatting a hard drive...

Go ahead and disable fast boot