Solved Need help Lenovo won't boot up

My bro-n-law's computer was working great then it gave a message to reset computer. After it did that i can't get it to boot up other than to the picture i am posting but it won't let me do anything like chose next or nothing works. So can and how do i get it to boot to a flash drive to reload Windows 10 media center on it ?? I have been having hsehestedt help me try to get it up & running, i really appreciate your help ! So how do i get this computer up & running ? Maybe by booting to a flash drive ??
Any help, and i have googled for days & visited Lenovo page for no help, so any Lenovo users or computer guru's ??

You have to answer all the questions then press next

flashh4,

I welcome other responses, but I just responded to you on the PM thread we had going.

So, my understanding is that nothing is working on the screen that you just shared. The keyboard is not accessible nor will the mouse respond.

Is the keyboard and / or mouse plugged directly into the computer or into a hub? If plugged into a USB hub, please connect directly to the computer.

If it is already plugged into the computer directly, have you tried plugging the keyboard into a different USB port to see if it will work there? Do you have another keyboard that you can borrow from another system to see if we can get it to respond?

If we can get the reset operation to proceed, that would ultimately be best, but if we needed to do so, I could get a complete unattended setup configured for you so that keyboard and mouse access would not be needed during setup, but that would be a final resort. It's highly unusual for KB and mouse to not work at this point.

I have one more question: What led up to the reset operation? Was this something that you elected to run? Was the computer experiencing some sort of difficulties that led to this?

EDIT: One more question - does the KB even seem to be getting power? If you toggle Num Lock, does the num lock light come on and go off? In other words, is the KB responding at all?

hsehestedt,
So, my understanding is that nothing is working on the screen that you just shared. The keyboard is not accessible nor will the mouse respond.
Correct !!

Is the keyboard and / or mouse plugged directly into the computer or into a hub? If plugged into a USB hub, please connect directly to the computer.
YES ! It is directly into computer !

If it is already plugged into the computer directly, have you tried plugging the keyboard into a different USB port to see if it will work there? Do you have another keyboard that you can borrow from another system to see if we can get it to respond?
I switched keyboards last night, now the f, f10, and f12 keys work ! Ket board & mouse work in Bios utility menue, but not whentrying to go to the next button on the picture !

If we can get the reset operation to proceed, that would ultimately be best, but if we needed to do so, I could get a complete unattended setup configured for you so that keyboard and mouse access would not be needed during setup, but that would be a final resort. It's highly unusual for KB and mouse to not work at this point.
What ever we need to do is great !

I have one more question: What led up to the reset operation? Was this something that you elected to run? Was the computer experiencing some sort of difficulties that led to this?
Not sure all i know is a popup came on screen while i was cleaning junk out & it sai computer needs reset, so i clicked ok !

EDIT: One more question - does the KB even seem to be getting power? If you toggle Num Lock, does the num lock light come on and go off? In other words, is the KB responding at all?
It responds in Bios Utility Menu !

SlicEnDice, the key board & mouse does not work unless i am in the Bios Utility Menu's !

Okay, thanks for responding to all those questions.

If the keyboard works in BIOS setup, that's a good thing, but not working during the reset process is strange. That would seem to indicate that a special driver might be needed, but I have never encountered that for a just a keyboard.

For anyone reviewing this thread, we are talking about a Lenovo ThinkCenter M91p system here.

Let me do a little research and I will respond back again shortly.

Ok thank you ! I have cleaned Virus, Trojans, & junk out of computers even removed things in the registry for 25 yrs. all over the world but never ran into a problem like this ! I really appreciate your (anyone's) help here ! I never was good at the hardware aspects of a computer so i leave that to smarter than me guys !!
It was running Windows 11 on it when it ask to reset !!

what is keyboard plugged into usb or ps2

edit: looks like it doesnt have ps2 ports on the small versions, how weird


is there some kind of port 90 emulation or it might be called 60/64 in the bios you could try?

It seems the os is having difficulty with the usb drivers on that page for unknown reasons which could be why you are stuck there.

Otherwise, you could try booting a usb stick and doing a refresh or whatever it is called now.

What happens if you try booting into safe mode?

S1W2, plugged into a usb port !

The keyboard is a HP & mouse is a HP, monitor is also a HP ! And everything was working great for the 2 days after i got it from my son-n-law !!

your keyboard is working in bios, which indicates it is ok. So when the os starts up and gets to the page where youare stuck, the keyboard is not working. Ergo something is wrong with os loading of the usb drivers.

If you can enable ps2 emulation of your usb in bios you can hopefully get it to work. It is often called 60/64 emulation in bios somewhwere.

Then if you can get past the os setup pages you are stuck on by using the ps2 emulation , with a bit of luck the usb drivers will load.

I also have a flash drive with a Media Creation Tool install on it !

Are you booting from a USB install drive? If you are, can you try making it again. To me it sounds like the USB driver is not loading from the drive.

Okay, since you indicated that it is okay for us to do a clean install, here is what I propose:

Let's do an unattended installation of Windows 11.

I have created an ISO image for you. If you could follow the steps below, let's see where this gets us:

1) Connect to the following link. You should find two files there. Download both.


2) Double-click the Win11.ISO file. That will cause it to be mounted. Take note of the drive letter that was assigned to this image.

3) Plug in a USB flash drive that we can turn into a Windows bootable installation drive. This drive should be 8GB or larger in size. Be aware that we will wipe all info on that drive.

4) Unzip the file called "Create Boot Disk.zip". This will give you a file called "Create Windows Boot Disk.bat". Double-click that batch file to run it.

5) The introduction screen will be displayed. Hit ENTER to advance to the next screen.

6) On the next screen, press "W" to wipe the thumb drive.

You will be asked for the source drive. Above I asked you to note the drive letter of the mounted ISO image. As an example, assume it was E:. Enter the drive letter like this:

E:\

Use the correct drive letter for your situation.

7) A list of disks in your system will be displayed. Enter the disk number for your USB flash drive. Below is an example of what I saw on my system. I know that the flash drive is a 16GB drive, so I can clearly see that the Disk ID is "6". So, in my case I would enter 6.



8) A summary screen will be displayed. Press "Y" to continue.

9) You will be asked to supply two drive letters. Use any drive letter that is not in use. You can look at File Explorer to see what drive letters are not in use. Enter only the drive letter, no colon (:).

10) The flash drive will now be created. This will take a while. Allow this process to complete.

11) When done, take the flash drive to the Lenovo and boot from it. NOTE: You may have to press a key to tell the system to boot from the flash drive. If you don't know what that is, we can try to figure this out together.

12) Windows setup will begin. It should pause at the screen where it displays all the disks in the system.

13) BEFORE YOU PROCEED - please test the keyboard and mouse to see if either works here. Please also snap a picture of this screen and post a copy here.

We are going to pause here until I receive the snapshot AND you inform me whether or not the keyboard or mouse works here.

hsehestedt, working on it !! Thanks

Winuser, yes i am booting from a USB drive ! Thanks

I think your problem is that Windows missing BCD store file.

In this video, i will guide you on how to Rebuild the Boot Configuration Data (BCD) to fix some Windows startup issues.

Just a quick update while we await the current results....

The ISO image that I provided is a standard Windows 11 ISO image with the latest updates slipstreamed in and an unattended answer file.

Since I don't know details about how many disks are in this system and what disk number to install the OS to, I designed the answer file in such a way as to pause at the disk selection screen.

If we can get the keyboard or mouse working, then we will be able to select the proper disk and proceed with the installation. If not, we should at least be able to ascertain from this screen what disk we need to install Windows to. In that event, my plan is to simply modify the answer file so that it will be 100% fully unattended and install Windows completely without the need for keyboard or mouse access. The hope is that when Windows is fully installed, it will be able to use the keyboard or mouse.

In addition, the batch file that I am using to create the bootable flash drive, uses a method that I've found to be totally foolproof.

Finally, the answer file contains the elements for bypassing the Win 11 system requirements so that we don't get hung up if some requirement is not met.

One way or another, we'll get this taken of.

FreeBooter said:

I think your problem is that Windows missing BCD store file.

In this video, i will guide you on how to Rebuild the Boot Configuration Data (BCD) to fix some Windows startup issues.

Click to expand...

No, there is more than that going on here.

hsehestedt said:

No, there is more than that going on here.

Click to expand...

If BCD store file missing, that screen is displayed OP won't lose anything by rebuilding the BCD store.