I'm trying to assist a friend with their computer issue remotely. They're unable to boot into Windows 11 and are receiving an error message stating, 'Windows cannot access the specified device, path, or file.' I want to help them boot into Safe Mode, but I heard Windows 11 has disabled the F5 and F8 key options for this. There's an alternative method I've found that involves forcing the computer to shut down by holding the power button three times during boot-up. I'm concerned about whether this might damage the hard drives. Ultimately, I need to know if there's a way to get into Safe Mode to run a disk check on the C drive, and if that's unsuccessful, can I create a bootable USB drive to perform repairs?
5 Answers
There's also an option called Medicat that includes various repair tools. It's worth checking out if you can’t get anything else to work.
If your friend’s computer has an SSD, it should handle the interrupted boot cycles better without causing issues. You definitely can access recovery options using bootable media. In my experience, the automated fixes often help. You might also want to try booting with a Linux USB drive first to back up any important data just in case it gets worse, even though guiding someone through that remotely can be tricky.
Yeah, that sounds complicated when I’m not there to help. Plus, my experiences with Linux and NTFS writing haven't been great.
Shutting down three times will not harm the drives. Once you manage to boot into Safe Mode, run 'chkdsk /f /r /x' to check for disk errors, and also try 'sfc /scannow' to fix any corrupted files.
To resolve this, you'll need to boot from a Windows installation image, where you can access repair or recovery options. It's a more solid approach since it lets you troubleshoot without worrying about the boot errors.
So, you can't access Safe Mode from boot? It really takes away from the quick fix when something goes wrong, especially since Safe Mode is usually used for recovery.
You could try the Run option with 'msconfig' to set Safe Boot, but keep in mind that this usually only works if Windows is bootable. If they can't even get into Windows, this won't help much. If the issue persists, consider creating a USB with multiple partition setups using Ventoy. This way, you can run different utilities and ISOs for recovery.
I haven't heard of Medicat before, but I'll definitely look into it.