I selected "Update and shut down," but the update stopped around 35% and changed to a message saying that Windows ran into a problem and needed to restart. It has been stuck in that cycle for several hours. I'm worried because this PC was repaired recently after a serious hardware problem, and I don't want another Windows update to damage anything. I'm not very confident with complicated PC troubleshooting, so I'm looking for the simplest safe recovery steps. The system has an RTX 5080, an Intel Core i9-13900K or i9-14900K, 64 GB of RAM, and about 2 TB of storage.
1 Answer
This is usually a failed update rather than a damaged graphics card. Let the PC finish restarting once, but if it keeps looping, hold the power button to turn it off. Start it again and interrupt the boot process by turning it off during startup two or three times; Windows should open its recovery screen. Choose Troubleshoot > Advanced options > Startup Repair first. If that does not work, use Uninstall Updates and remove the latest quality update. Those options are designed to roll back the failed update without erasing your personal files.
I’m mainly worried about accidentally making the hardware problem worse. I’ll try the recovery options before doing anything more complicated.