Hi,
So I have a situation with a Dell Optiplex that won't boot into Windows 10 64 bit.
One of 3 things happens depending on sunspots or the phases of the moon:
- It shows the Dell logo and then goes into the circling dots, endlessly (my user left it on overnight and it stayed circling), or...
- It starts the Automatic Repair which of course does not work, or...
- It blue screens with WINLOGON_FATAL_ERROR (c000021a)
Further complicating this sorry state of affairs is that I do not know the local admin pass. This PC was set up by someone who is no longer here. I know the domain admin pass, but not the local admin pass.
Why is this a problem? Because when you boot into recovery mode off the hard drive, which it will do, it then asks for the local admin pass before letting you do anything. And I don't know it!
What I can do is boot off a USB drive I prepared with Rufus, but that somewhat limits what I can do against the installed version of Windows. It's now an offline image.
I've done what I could:
- I was able to do a sfc /scannow with the /OFF... switches, it found issues and fixed them.
- Likewise I was able to do a Dism /Image:C: /Cleanup-Image /RevertPendingActions
- I was able to snag a memory.dmp to the flash drive
Of course this made no difference, still won't boot into Windows. Keeps on with automatic repair, circling dots or BSOD.
Let me return to the Admin password issue if I may. I'm aware of the hack with utilman. But that only works if the system boots into Windows. This won't.
So if some kind soul would educate me on how to:
- change the admin pass on what is essentially an offline image so I can boot to recovery from the hard drive and work on the online image, and
- then proceed to troubleshoot the other problems I'm having
... I would be greatly indebted.
Please let me know what info you need to troubleshoot this.
Thanks,
Dan
