It can be very frightening when your computer won’t boot or Windows 10 crashes when you turn it on. What could have happened? And more importantly, what can you do to try to fix it? Today we bring you a guide with a few solutions for the most common problems when Windows 10 does not boot correctly or shows failures when booting.
We are going to explain it in the simplest and most basic way possible, and we will try to cover as many cases as possible. We will talk about everything from how to try to repair slow startups to when a computer does not boot, through the possible failures you may have after updates or blue screens.
If the problem is not so much that the computer does not boot, but that it boots too slowly, the best measure is to always prevent some particularly heavy applications from starting up together with the operating system. To do this, press Control + Alt + Delete and choose the Task Manager option. In it, click on More details to access all the information.
Once you are in the full version of the Task Manager, click on the Startup section in the top row. You will see a list of all the applications that try to start at startup. There are two important columns here, the Status column because if it says Enabled it is because the application starts automatically when you turn on your PC, and the Startup Impact column because it tells you how much this application penalizes your computer when it starts at startup.
With this data you can now make informed decisions. Now, click on the application that you want to stop starting automatically when you turn on the computer (1), and once you have selected it click on the Disable button to stop it from starting, so that to run it you have to be the one who starts it deliberately. Try to do this with the applications that have the greatest impact on the startup of your computer, something that will be indicated in the Startup Impact column.
No USB or memory cards are connected.
Sometimes, a Windows update can cause the computer not to start because of a conflict with an external memory drive. And even if there has not been an update, it is also possible that the BIOS may be set to attempt to boot the operating system from external storage first.
In either case, an important step to take is to remove all connected external memory, whether USB drives, microSD cards, or anything else. Then, restart the computer again. If you have a DVD or Bluray player, also remove the disc just in case.
An accessory or peripheral is not working properly.
In other occasions, even though Windows seems to boot correctly, it is some peripheral or component of your computer that does not seem to work correctly. In these cases, it is advisable to update your computer’s drivers. Generally, this is something that Windows 10 does by itself, but you can also resort to third-party applications to update Drivers, and sometimes they are even more effective. Of course, the best ones are usually paid.
A driver is a small file present in each component, accessory and hardware of your computer. Its function is to act as a ‘link’ between the operating system you have installed and the hardware or peripherals connected, both internal and external. For it, these files have information with which your operating system knows what is connected, how to get to the component to use it, and how it works or what it can do with each one.
Updating a driver can be used both to avoid bugs and errors that have been discovered and to solve problems or fix them in case they have stopped working properly. To find out which drivers are missing on your computer, just open the file explorer and right-click on This computer. In the pop-up menu, click on the Manage option in the second position.
This will open a window with the Computer Management options, which includes all the information about your computer components, system tools and some advanced services. Here, in the column of the left you must deploy the options of System Tools, and once they are shown click on the option Device Manager that will appear in the last place inside them.
We will cover some more tips in the next article on this topic.