lenovo ideapad in automatic repair loop

I have a friend who has the problem of her Lenovo ideapad being in automatic repair loop. Obviously it came with no disk and I can't access the recovery partition as I have tried a PE environment, (not tried FRST Recovery Mode yet), but neither PE nor safe mode works.

I managed to get into the 'bios' but it has a UEFI and not a proper BIOS. The only options are set to "UEFI boot mode" or usb.

My question - is it safe to do a repair with a different Windows 10 disk or will this be dangerous to the system because of the UEFI?

Any ideas if I can't use the disk?

BTW, not very Windows educated so please don't assume too much knowledge on my part.

Nina

Give Kyhi's Rescue ISO a try.   See here: Windows 10 Recovery Tools - Bootable Rescue Disk
 
Use Rufus to create a UEFI/GPT flash drive from the ISO. That should boot the Lenova. Then you can try things like chkdsk and SFC (with the /offbootdir and /offwindir parameters.
 
For instance, if the Windows 10 drive is D: (may be C:, D: or even E:) then you would enter this from a Command Prompt:
 
sfc /scannow /offbootdir=d:\  /offwindir=d:\windows

You could also try a System Restore if it was enabled. It isn't by default.

Thanks Ztruker; I'll give Kyhi's Rescue ISO and Rufus a try. Also thanks for the added instructions.

Won't have time for 24 hours but will report back with any progress or info about the current situation.

Nope, didn't work. USB enabled in the bios setup but it started directly with the error message and then continued the loop.

Did you create the flash drive for UEFI/GPT?

📎Uefi-GPT.jpg

If the disk GPT or MBR?

Open Disk Management, click on View then Top then Disk List.

[external image: U201508161439761577.jpg]

To open Disk Management, press Windows key+r, type diskmgmt.msc and press Enter or click GO.

If it's MBR then in Rufus select MBR partition scheme for BIOS or UEFI.

Definitely GPT and I followed the instructions including as above.

I managed to use the 'Novo' button and changed the Bios settings to 'legacy' instead of 'UEFI' which allowed me to use another Windows 8 install disk but it said that it couldn't do a recovery or repair. The only option would be to carry on with an install but deleting the partitions and re-installing would invalidate the warranty.

I think her only option is to bite the bullet and pay Lenovo to fix it.

It seems that this is a very common problem with Lenovo machines and Windows 8.

Thanks for your help all the same.

Nina