5 Solutions for Automatic Repair, Your PC Did Not Start Correctly Error

The error

I received a message that there is a problem with my computer and Windows 10 will repair it. So I left the computer to do its work but it gives a blue screen and displays an error message saying “Automatic Repair, Your PC did not start correctly. Press ‘Restart’ to restart your PC…”. What should I do? Restart option does not work at all!! Thanks a lot!

What causes your PC did not start correctly?

It might drive you mad when you encounter the error “Your PC did not start correctly” in Windows 10/8/7 computer. Once it happens, you will not be able to boot your PC successfully, not to mention getting access to your computer data. This error can be triggered by one of the following factors:

> Sudden power failure

> Recent PC operating system upgrade

> Third-party program or a recent hardware change

> Corrupted MBR or BCD files

5 Methods to solve "Your PC did not start correctly" error

When the error pops out during Windows boot, you can first try to restart your PC as the error message prompts. If it works, you can save lots of time and energy. If it does not work, you can apply the following methods.

Method 1. Perform a system restore

As mentioned above, the “windows did not start correctly ”issue can be caused by a third-party program or a recent hardware change on your system, so you can run a system restore to see if it can restore your system to a point back where the issue didn’t occur.

Step 1. On the error screen, click “Advanced options”. Or you can insert Windows installation disc and boot your computer from it, select your language preferences, and click “Next”>“Repair your computer”, select “Troubleshoot” under “Choose an option” to get into“Advanced options” window.

Step 2. In the “Advanced options” window, select “System Restore”.

Step 3. Choose a target operating system.

Step 4. In the subsequent “System Restore” window, follow onscreen instructions to restore operating system.

Method 2. Uninstall new third-party programs

If the “Automatic Repair” error happens after you installed new third-party software, you can boot into Safe Mode and uninstall them directly to see if the error can be fixed.

Step 1. In the “Advanced options” window, click on “Startup Settings”>“Restart”.

Step 2. Press the F4 key to boot Windows into Safe Mode.

Step 3. If computer boots up successfully, uninstall the new software immediately.

Method 3. Run Startup Repair

If the first two methods do not solve your problem, you can run “Startup Repair” in the “Advanced options” window, which will scan your Windows computer and try to diagnose and fix “windows 10/8/7 not starting properly” issue. If Startup Repair does not work, either, proceed to the next method.

Method 4. Run SFC to check system file integrity

To repair corrupted or get back missing system files, you can run System File Checker by taking below steps.

Step 1. In the “Advanced options” window, click on “Command Prompt”.

Step 2. In the new “Command Prompt” window, input “sfc /scannow” and press “Enter”. The sfc /scannow command will scan all protected system files, and replace corrupted files with a cached copy.

Step 3. After that, type “exit” and press “Enter”.

Step 4. Restart your PC and check whether the "Your PC did not start correctly" error exists.

Method 5. Rebuild damaged Boot Configuration Data (BCD)

When it comes to Windows boot failure issues, you ought to consider the BCD is corrupted. Thus, you can use bootrec.exe tool to rebuild the damaged data.

Step 1. Open Command Prompt window as you do in Method 4.

Step 2. Type “bootrec /fixmbr” and press “Enter”.

Step 3. Type “bootrec /fixboot” and press “Enter”.

Step 4. Type “bootrec /rebuildbcd” and press “Enter”.

Finally, type “exit” and press Enter. If you think running commands to fix or rebuild MBR is too complicated, you can use a free GUI tool AOMEI Partition Assistant Standard (working on all versions of Windows from XP up to Windows 10).

First of all, you need to create a bootable USB drive since your Windows cannot boot up successfully: connect an empty USB drive to a working Windows computer, download the freeware, install and launch it, click “Make Bootable Media” on the left-hand pane and follow the wizard to complete the process. The bootable drive will contain the pre-installed AOMEI Partition Assistant.

Then, insert the bootable USB into the computer which reports “Your PC did not start correctly” error. Boot computer from the USB by changing boot order in BIOS. Now you can rebuild damaged MBR in three steps.

Step 1.Once you logged in, you will see the AOMEI Partition Assistant Standard running. Right-click the system disk and select “Rebuild MBR”. 

Step 2. Choose a proper MBR type for your current OS and click “OK”.

Step 3. Back to the main interface, click “Apply” and then “Proceed” to commit the pending operation.

In addition, you can also use this tool to check bad sectors and fix them on your system drive. For more advanced functions including migrating OS to SSD, recovering lost partitions, convert MBR to GPT for Windows 11, you can upgrade to Professional.

Final words

Here, 5 different methods are offered to help you solve “Automatic Repair, Your PC did not start correctly” problem in Windows 11/10/8/7. If all of them do not make any difference, your last resort is to reinstall Windows from scratch.