{"id":4551,"date":"2024-11-05T17:13:12","date_gmt":"2024-11-05T14:13:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/maniainc.com\/technology\/?p=4551"},"modified":"2024-11-05T19:27:39","modified_gmt":"2024-11-05T16:27:39","slug":"windows-wont-load-fixing-windows-boot-errors-with-only-a-phone-sd-card-sd-card-reader-and-otg-cable","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/maniainc.com\/technology\/windows-wont-load-fixing-windows-boot-errors-with-only-a-phone-sd-card-sd-card-reader-and-otg-cable\/","title":{"rendered":"Windows Won\u2019t Load: Fixing Windows Boot Errors with Only a Phone, SD Card, SD Card Reader, and OTG Cable"},"content":{"rendered":"

Windows Boot Errors can be quite disappointing, especially when you have only the one laptop or pc and it\u2019s what you use for work. A few days back, my laptop shut down and couldn\u2019t start. It took me nearly a week to get it to load and through that jarring experience, here\u2019s what I learnt.<\/p>\n

How It Started<\/h2>\n

What started my blue-screen of death error was probably my HP laptop overheating. For a while now, the laptop has been showing a fan error telling me that my fan is not working as expected. I have largely ignored that error, but little did I know it would come to haunt me.<\/p>\n

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My old HP laptop has been showing a fan error for a while and overheating.. Little did I know that it would be the genesis of my Windows Boot Errors.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

My laptop would work normally despite the error with the fan. I am an intense user of the laptop, mostly for writing, research, photo browsing, internet use and so on and therefore, it could get hot but I didn’t think too much of it.<\/p>\n

How Moving from Chrome to Firefox Brought Down My Laptop<\/h3>\n

Things started going south when I decided to shift from using Google Chrome Browser to Firefox. I hated how the Chrome browser (and even Chrome Canary) would always latch on to my site\u2019s cache when I am trying to make backend changes and monitor them on the frontend.<\/p>\n

As a result, I was always switching tabs between Chrome, Canary and Brave web browser after making a change to go and see how that change has turned out.<\/p>\n

An Old HP Laptop<\/h3>\n

This probably weighed heavily on my laptop, which I have had for about 5 to 6 years now. Saying that, it sounds like I have had the laptop forever but yes. It is an HP Folio 9470m that I got at a good price in 2018, even though it was a refurb. Refurbished laptops are the laptops that users send back to the manufacturer – shortly after buying mostly – due to problems with the hardware, etc.<\/p>\n

As such, the manufacturer repairs these laptops and resells them as refurb. They are mostly user-returns or can sometimes be laptops that the manufacturer finds are defective off the production line; or factory \u2018rejects\u2019 for lack of a better word.<\/p>\n

But once a laptop gets out of the line and it does not work as expected, or a customer returns it, these laptops go into repair and are resold as refurbished or refurb laptops. Mine is one of those.<\/p>\n

So, on uninstalling Chrome and Canary and getting started with Firefox installation, I was happy that I was finally moving away from all the tracking and bs, and I thought this was it. I went on to use Firefox for a few days before sh started hitting the fan.<\/p>\n

Overheating<\/h3>\n

In came the overheating issues, I tried going into Firefox settings to check what is wrong and even allowed Virtualization Technology (VTx) in my BIOS settings as a way to help take off the processing load. I do not have over 20 browser tabs open most of the time and what I am usually using the laptop a lot for is work, web development, and entertainment, which is mostly listening to music in VLC.<\/p>\n

My song collection had gotten to 100GB and I later discovered that VLC would index all these songs each time I opened the folder on the app, a setting that I later tweaked and turned off.<\/p>\n

But the problem persisted, the laptop would overheat like crazy and I eventually went into the BIOS settings to try and see what the problem was. But that was the start of my laptop\u2019s undoing.<\/p>\n

Updating BIOS Version<\/h3>\n

On going into the BIOS and failing to see anything that would be messing with my laptop\u2019s functionality, I decided to update to the latest BIOS version. I did not know it at the time but the latest BIOS for my laptop was an UEFI type, which is like a more modern version of the MBR my laptop initially came with.<\/p>\n

I went into HP\u2019s website and downloaded the latest BIOS version and made another mistake when installing it.<\/p>\n

When installing the BIOS, I did it with other windows open on my laptop, something you should NEVER do; I later came to learn. It showed that it had flashed the BIOS okay, but really, something was amiss. You should always only flash the BIOS or update it when there are no other windows open and generally, when the laptop is not undertaking any background tasks, such as updating Windows.<\/p>\n

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‘Everybody is an atheist until they start updating their BIOS’ meme. I learnt this the hard way. :]<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

I messed up because my laptop was doing both when I flashed the BIOS. The BIOS showed that it had flashed okay and the Windows 10 updates also completed successfully and I gullibly went on to restart my laptop. It went on to update the Windows 10, and on getting back in, it showed \u201cdisk errors\u201d. Precisely, Windows Defender was indicating that there were disk errors on my HDD and that I should restart my laptop.<\/p>\n

Check out this video to diagnose the BIOS update issue before you start tinkering. Courtesy of Electronics Repair School.<\/p>\n