Windows Won't Start - Infinite Spinning Circle of Dots

Please try this first, if you have any USB devices plugged into your system (especially a wireless Mouse or keyboard receiver), unplug them. Then try booting your system and see if it boots correctly. If it does, you can plug your Devices back in.

If your system does not boot, try some of these recovery options:

Start your System, then just after the Manufacturers logo disappears and Windows 10 tries to boot, press and hold the power button down for 5 - 10 seconds to perform a hard shut down

Do this Twice

On the third boot attempt, Windows will boot into the Windows 10 Repair Environment, from there you can access Startup Recovery, Safe Mode, Command Prompt . . . etc.

Go to Troubleshoot - Advanced Options - System Restore, see if you have a recent restore point you can revert to

If you do not have a recent restore point, go to Troubleshoot - Advanced Options - Startup Settings, click restart.

Upon restart press 4 to boot into Safe Mode, if you can get into Safe Mode, backup your data, reboot and see if your system boots normally

If all this fails go to Troubleshoot - Advanced Options - Reset this PC, choose to keep all your files and Apps

This will be the same as a clean install of Windows 10 whilst keeping your data and applications

Have you had a power failure or an electrical storm in your area on or about the time of the failure of your device that you know of?

Where any significant changes made to the system just before the problem manifested that you know of?

Being that you are able to enter the BIOS it would seem that the device is able to post (up)?

Have you done or attempted to do a disc (HDD or SSD) check from within the recovery menu options?

Have you attempted a clean install or a repair install from the installation media?

In a situation like this the more detailed and complete info the better for then others will be better able to help you, if and how, they can.

Please don't take this wrong, and Good luck!

-Richard 

I removed all USB connections.  No change.

Indeed, every third boot attempt reveals the "Preparing Automatic Repair" message, but then the spinning circle appears above the message and nothing else happens.  The circle of dots spins indefinitely and the Windows 10 Repair Environment never appears.

Likewise, when I insert my Windows 10 installation DVD, the spinning circle appears and nothing else happens.

No power failures or electrical storms.  No changes made to the system (though when I shut down four hours earlier, it took a bit longer than usual, leading me to believe that an automatic update may have been installed).  Was there an automatic update pushed out on March 1st?

Yes, POST and BIOS appear to be fine.  No warnings, beeps, or logged errors.  The BIOS configuration appears to be unchanged.  Drives are all recognized and the RAID 1 array shows both drives "functional."

Again, I cannot get to the recovery menu.  All attempts to power up this machine end up at the infinite spinning dots.

Same thing with the Windows 10 installation DVD - spinning dots.  I cannot get to the recovery menu or even re-install Windows.

There's not much more detail I can provide.  It's always the same:

1. Press the computer's power button
2. Computer displays routine startup BIOS status messages - no warnings; all SATA drives are recognized
   
3. Computer displays black screen with "Asus" logo and message at bottom of screen:  "Please press DEL or F2 to enter UEFI BIOS setting."
   
4. Computer's USB keyboard and mouse are functional - I can press Del or F2 to enter BIOS
5. Computer displays RAID configuration with all drives status "functional"
6. Computer's USB keyboard and mouse are still functional - I can press Ctrl + I to enter RAID config utility
7. Black screen with "Asus" logo appears
8. Spinning dots appear under "Asus" logo
9. NumLock light on keyboard goes out
10. Pressing Ctrl + Alt + Del has no effect - keyboard appears to be non-functional
11. Nothing else happens - spinning dots keep spinning indefinitely

The only change to this routine is that every third reboot produces the "Preparing Automatic Repair" message in Step #7, underneath the "Asus" logo.  Otherwise, everything is the same.  The routine continues from Step #8 to Step #11.

And if I boot from my Windows 10 installation DVD, I'm given a message after Step #6:  "Press any key to boot from CD or DVD....."  Whether or not I press any keys, the routine continues without change from Step #7 to Step #11.

Yes, and I've never had a problem booting from the CD/DVD drive before.  But when I tried to boot from my Acronis recovery CD, it also failed - never reveiled the "hit any key to boot from DVD" prompt.  I had to go into BIOS and choose the "override" option in advanced boot settings and choose the P3 version of the drive, rather than the default UEFI.

I'm loading the Acronis system diagnostics right now - long process.  If it finds no problems, I'll try to launch the Windows install DVD again with the P3 option too.  If there's something wrong with my boot partition, hopefully it can correct it.  I'll post my findings.

Any other recommendations?

For the record, the Acronis diagnostic report is rather cryptic - mostly hexadecimal gibberish - but verifies that my disk drives are readable.  A listing of root subdirectories on all of my disks was included in the report - not possible if my hard disks aren't readable.  But when I tried to restore from Acronis backup, the program wouldn't display a file browser for choosing a backup set - an hourglass mouse pointer appeared and the program froze - that is, the mouse cursor continued to function but nothing I clicked on would respond.  For the record, the Acronis recovery disk uses Linux.

Back to Windows 10, I rebooted, reinserted the Windows 10 installation DVD and went into BIOS again and chose the "override" option in advanced boot settings and chose the P3 version of my Pioneer DVD drive, rather than the default UEFI.  This succeeded in presenting Windows 10's blue, four-pane window logo on a black screen.  Then, eventually, another perpetual spinning circle appeared.  The Windows 10 installation and recovery tools never appear.

I can't boot.  I can't restore.  I can't re-install Windows.

What can I do?

Problem solved.  The short answer?  Hard disk failure.

It's nice to have this resolved, but frustrating to realize that a problem as typical as an ailing hard disk can be so disabling - the failed disk is a secondary drive, for cripes sake - and so difficult to diagnose.  No program, OS, BIOS or POST could tell me "your hard disk is failing."  All reported nothing or simply froze.  The only clue I had to work with was that all of the diagnostic utilities that failed usually did so while reading or analyzing the hard disks.

One program, from the freely downloadable Hiren's Boot CD kit, Parted Magic, was able to produce a SMART report that indicated some historical disk failures, but not having anything to compare it against, I couldn't be sure the disk was operating inside or outside of acceptable parameters.  But here's what's really odd:  Though the hard drive is a Seagate ST4000DX000, Seagate's own SeaTools for DOS failed to recognize the disk at all - "no hard disks detected" and "no disk controllers detected."  Weird.  Parted Magic's hard disk utility was able to produce the SMART report but couldn't analyze the disk - all three methods stopped at the 90% mark.

In the end, what confirmed my suspicions was this post on Stack Exchange in which a question was asked, "Why do damaged hard drives freeze the entire system?"  The discussion went on to describe my experience exactly, so I opened up my PC and pulled the secondary drive and - voila! - the computer booted into Windows 10 perfectly.

The aforementioned discussion thread does a nice job of clarifying the limitations of the SATA protocol responsible for these debilitating and elusive problems.

Anyways, I'm just happy to have my mission-critical audio workstation back, and without any loss of data.  Amazon should have a replacement backup drive to me by Tuesday.  Back in business.

I hope this is helpful to anyone else sharing my experience.

Hi David,

Thanks for replying back with the good news and such a detailed update, it should most definitely be of help to others and I have marked it as such.

Very interesting that it was a secondary drive failure that pulled the whole system down, I had heard that that was possible awhile back but have never had the experience myself (knock on wood). The information at the link that you supplied is very informative indeed, it is now a shortcut in my "toolbox", thanks.

Good job on the diag. Dave, well done!

-Richard

My pleasure, Richard!  I'm glad my report is helpful.

All the best.