[SOLVED] Dell Optiplex won't boot into W10; don't know local Admin pass. FIX: I was able to change PW, went in recovery mode, did reset keeping settings&files

xilolee · Nov 18, 2023

JSntgRvr said:
I don't know why, but that disk shows 0 bytes Free. Perhaps that is the problem. That is how the system sees it, even if it isn't true. It can't even boot to the Recovery partition. In my honest opinion, you will need to reinstall. I am enclosing the instructions. Make sure you convert the drive to GPT in the process.

It shows 0 bytes because all the disk space is allocated.

Edit: it seems it should show 1024kb on most machines... Maybe was someone able to modify it with a partition program?

The ESP shows hidden instead of system.
Maybe could some bcdedit commands solve it?

JSntgRvr · Nov 18, 2023

No. The EFI partition and Recovery should be hidden. No one should have access to these. This screenshot is from My computer:

The space is all allocated.

dbdan22 · Nov 19, 2023

Wouldn't the Diskpart free space be entirely dependent on disk type and geometry? All of the disk space is allocated to partitions.

C is pointing to the right place, it's the right size, chkdsk c: passes. i'm not understanding, what's the problem?

ubuysa · Nov 19, 2023

JSntgRvr said:
I don't know why, but that disk shows 0 bytes Free. Perhaps that is the problem. That is how the system sees it, even if it isn't true. It can't even boot to the Recovery partition. In my honest opinion, you will need to reinstall. I am enclosing the instructions. Make sure you convert the drive to GPT in the process.

I think this is a problem with the system drive. That 0GB free is not right, in addition the exception code in the blue screen the OP posted recently of 0xC000000E is a NO_SUCH_DEVICE exception. It's been suggested already but I now agree that the system drive is likely faulty.

xilolee · Nov 19, 2023

JSntgRvr said:
No. The EFI partition and Recovery should be hidden. No one should have access to these. This screenshot is from My computer:

The space is all allocated.

In your screenshot, the esp is not hidden, but it's system (and it's also hidden).
This means it is recognized as the esp partition by the os.

In dbdan screenshot is marked as (only) hidden.
It is not recognized as the esp partition.

dbdan22 · Nov 19, 2023

@ubuysa faulty how, the drive itself hardwarewise, or the formatting of it? what specifically is the problem? should i back it up and restore it onto a new drive?

thanks.

JSntgRvr · Nov 19, 2023

Google "Drive 0 bytes free". You will have many hits.

dbdan22 · Nov 19, 2023

i'm sorry but that's not an answer, I can google anything and get millions of hits. i'm using
diskpart "disk 0" no free space
as the search terms (as opposed to c: no free space which is clearly not the case here).

What specifically is the problem?

also note - C: passed a chkdsk, which i've mentioned several times.

xilolee · Nov 19, 2023

Please try:

Code:

diskpart
List disk
select disk 0
List volume
List partition

And post the results.

Maxstar · Nov 19, 2023

The screenshot in post #59 reports a 0 bytes indication under the "free" column. But this does not indicate the actual free space of the logical volume. It only shows the (unnalocated) unpartitioned space on the physical drive.

When you run diskpart > list disk it will look at the first partition which normally begins at sector 2048 and corresponds to 1024kb of free space. The 0 bytes indication will only appear when a drive is fully formatted as primary.

However it seems the OP have 374GB of free space on this Crucial M2 SSD.

FRST Excerpt:

Rich (BB code):

==================== Drives ================================

Drive c: () (Fixed) (Total:465.13 GB) (Free:374.34 GB) (Model: CT500P2SSD8) NTFS

As a side note: this error "0xC000021a" is also dodumented in this thread: Debugging Stop 0xC000021A - WINLOGON_FATAL_ERROR

Note:

dbdan22 said:
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.

If you are an administrator of this system, you can also reset the local admin credentials in cases such as this...

dbdan22 · Nov 19, 2023

@Maxstar Well yes I am the admin, and I even know the domain admin password - but not the local admin pass which was set up by someone else who is no longer here. I do not know how to change the local admin pass on a Win 10+ PC that will not boot to Windows. I do know how on a PC that will, and win 7- either way (tool was written for XP if memory serves). Since my tools are somewhat dated I don't want to risk further damage. As per sysnative rules, I cannot be helped as discussed previously. if someone wants to help me privately i'm on yahoo mail. i won't tell a soul. i was wondering if i can provide proof of purchase - the invoice plus a picture of the service tag should do it - but dell only keeps invoices for 2 years now, this pc is an optiplex 7050 from 2017.

but i would still very much like to hear a definitive answer what the problem is, please and thank you.

"In this particular case, the user did a in-place upgrade and it resolved the issue."

No doubt.

dbdan22 · Nov 19, 2023

to paraphrase ubuysa's signature, what i don't know rose up and bit me and that is quite alarming.

JSntgRvr · Nov 19, 2023

Why don't we delete temp and crap files from the hard drive and see if we can gain some space:

Download the enclosed file
Save it in the same location FRST64.exe is saved.
Run FRST (FRST64) as you did before
This time around Press the Fix button and wait
When finished, a log file (Fixlog.txt) will pop up and saved in the same location the tool was ran from.

Please attach this file in your next reply.

dbdan22 · Nov 20, 2023

@JSntgRvr I'd like to put this to rest. There's nothing wrong with the drive, and there'e plenty of free space. Please let's move on. Thanks.

396265028 KB available on disk.

Code:

X:\Sources>diskpart

Microsoft DiskPart version 10.0.19041.964

Copyright (C) Microsoft Corporation.
On computer: MININT-29PJ2HQ

DISKPART> list disk

  Disk ###  Status         Size     Free     Dyn  Gpt
  --------  -------------  -------  -------  ---  ---
  Disk 0    Online          465 GB      0 B        *
  Disk 1    Online           14 GB      0 B        *

DISKPART> sel disk 0

Disk 0 is now the selected disk.

DISKPART> list vol

  Volume ###  Ltr  Label        Fs     Type        Size     Status     Info
  ----------  ---  -----------  -----  ----------  -------  ---------  --------
  Volume 0     F                       DVD-ROM         0 B  No Media
  Volume 1     C                NTFS   Partition    465 GB  Healthy
  Volume 2         Recovery     NTFS   Partition    529 MB  Healthy    Hidden
  Volume 3                      FAT32  Partition     99 MB  Healthy    Hidden
  Volume 4     D   WIN10PRO-22  NTFS   Removable     14 GB  Healthy
  Volume 5     E   UEFI_NTFS    FAT    Removable   1024 KB  Healthy

DISKPART> exit

Leaving DiskPart...

X:\Sources>chkdsk c:
The type of the file system is NTFS.
The specified object was not found.


WARNING!  /F parameter not specified.
Running CHKDSK in read-only mode.

Stage 1: Examining basic file system structure ...
  993792 file records processed.
File verification completed.
 Phase duration (File record verification): 10.32 seconds.
  35006 large file records processed.
 Phase duration (Orphan file record recovery): 0.00 milliseconds.
  0 bad file records processed.
 Phase duration (Bad file record checking): 1.02 milliseconds.

Stage 2: Examining file name linkage ...
  63852 reparse records processed.
  1344472 index entries processed.
Index verification completed.
 Phase duration (Index verification): 19.82 seconds.
  0 unindexed files scanned.
 Phase duration (Orphan reconnection): 3.89 seconds.
  0 unindexed files recovered to lost and found.
 Phase duration (Orphan recovery to lost and found): 0.66 milliseconds.
  63852 reparse records processed.
 Phase duration (Reparse point and Object ID verification): 154.21 milliseconds.

Stage 3: Examining security descriptors ...
Security descriptor verification completed.
 Phase duration (Security descriptor verification): 107.43 milliseconds.
  175341 data files processed.
 Phase duration (Data attribute verification): 1.29 milliseconds.
CHKDSK is verifying Usn Journal...
  37192224 USN bytes processed.
Usn Journal verification completed.
 Phase duration (USN journal verification): 242.05 milliseconds.

Windows has scanned the file system and found no problems.
No further action is required.

 487726087 KB total disk space.
  89982548 KB in 375988 files.
    352112 KB in 175342 indexes.
         0 KB in bad sectors.
   1126399 KB in use by the system.
     65536 KB occupied by the log file.
 396265028 KB available on disk.

      4096 bytes in each allocation unit.
 121931521 total allocation units on disk.
  99066257 allocation units available on disk.
Total duration: 34.58 seconds (34582 ms).
Failed to transfer logged messages to the event log with status 6.

X:\Sources>

dbdan22 · Nov 20, 2023

So I dug out my password changer that's been around since Jesus was 12. It still works on Windows 10, but on hard drives, not NvRAM SSD's. No doubt a Unix driver issue. Booting from a different Unix kernel is beyond my knowledge.

That would solve the problem though, change the pass and do a recovery from the drive itself, as noted above .

dbdan22 · Nov 20, 2023

I have a request in to pull the original invoice for this PC. That and a picture of the service tag should be sufficient to prove ownership. if I can produce this, can someone help me reset the admin pass? would appreciate a reply from an admin, and the info would have to be sent privately, i'm not going to post this publicly.

thanks in advance.

ubuysa · Nov 20, 2023

All that chkdsk shows is that the NTFS file system is good, it doesn't prove that the drive itself is good. If it's an SSD then download the drive vendor's diagnosis tool and use that to check the drive. If it's an HDD run a chkdsk /r. And, it may well not be the drive 'surface' that's the problem but the drive controller. IMO you're not yet in a position to declare the drive faultless.

In addition, you're focusing on the admin password and excluding what caused the PC to fail in the first place. Not knowing the password is an annoyance, what caused it to fail is the problem.

dbdan22 · Nov 20, 2023

may I ask, what specifically points to hard drive failure, as opposed to an interrupted windows update, as the root cause?

dbdan22 · Nov 20, 2023

@ubuysa

Since this problem started, numerous memory.dmp files which are very large files have been written to the drive. sfc's have been run. dism's have been run. all of which access a tremendous number of files. yet the chkdsk still shows no issues. i would submit that if the drive were damaged as you say, it would have shown up and reared its ugly head by now.

crucial does not have an offline diagnosis tool for nvram ssd's. i am wary of running any tools designed for mechanical hard drives on a ssd. and that goes for chkdsk /r as well. i would have to pull the user's files off the drive before risking that. if someone knows of an offline bootable tool for nvram ssd's please let me know.

ok i have addressed your issue.

can you please address these 2 issues:

what specifically points to hard drive failure, as opposed to an interrupted windows update, as the root cause?

and will you please help me reset the pass if i can prove ownership?

thanks.

ubuysa · Nov 21, 2023

dbdan22 said:
@ubuysa

Since this problem started, numerous memory.dmp files which are very large files have been written to the drive. sfc's have been run. dism's have been run. all of which access a tremendous number of files. yet the chkdsk still shows no issues. i would submit that if the drive were damaged as you say, it would have shown up and reared its ugly head by now.

As I mentioned, I don't think it's the storage media that's at fault but possibly the (built-in) controller

dbdan22 said:
crucial does not have an offline diagnosis tool for nvram ssd's. i am wary of running any tools designed for mechanical hard drives on a ssd. and that goes for chkdsk /r as well. i would have to pull the user's files off the drive before risking that. if someone knows of an offline bootable tool for nvram ssd's please let me know.

Crucial does have a Storage Executive Tool that will allow you to check and update the driver firmware, that may be worth considering. It could simply be a firmware issue.

dbdan22 said:
ok i have addressed your issue.

can you please address these 2 issues:

what specifically points to hard drive failure, as opposed to an interrupted windows update, as the root cause?

As I wrote in post #64, the blue screen message you posted in post #48 contains the 0xC000000E exception code, that is a NO_SUCH_DEVICE exception, meaning that the referenced device does not exist in the system. Whilst that message doesn't explicitly reference the SSD, since it happens on booting the system drive is the most likely. That's what makes me suspect the drive.

dbdan22 said:
and will you please help me reset the pass if i can prove ownership?

thanks.

That's beyond my knowledge and experience I'm afraid.

I can see that my honest attempts to help are annoying you, so I'll bow out for now but keep watching the thread in case I can help further at a later time.

[SOLVED] Dell Optiplex won't boot into W10; don't know local Admin pass. FIX: I was able to change PW, went in recovery mode, did reset keeping settings&files

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