The Steel Guitar Forum

I got a new (used) Sony laptop w/ Windows 10.

Starting up, the cursor (blinking line) comes up on the upper left of the screen, and the little wheel of dots starts circling midscreen.

After seconds of that, the screen goes dark and stays that way; the only recourse seems to be forcing a shutdown by holding the start button.
(The time before last, a prompt indicated that the checkdisk was at work and counted down until it restarted. The prompt indicated that checkdisk was making a repair.)
Pressing start again, it will boot--blinking cursor, then the wheel of dots, then going to the Sony start screen.

At times, clicking the start button at just the right moment will bring the start screen, but usually I have to shut it down manually.

Any ideas what is going on?

With it being a used PC, anything is possible, from a hardware problem to the hard drive to just Windows needs reinstalled.

I would try Windows Repair first.
Download and create a Win 10 Install USB Flash Drive, using the "Media Creation Tool". Link to the tenforums.com tutorial, is listed below. Boot with the created Win 10 install USB Flash Drive and select "REpair" (linked instructions below). If the Repair fails, I would do a "clean" install of Win 10 as the next step. Use the USB install that you created to do a clean install (which is reformat hard drive and install).


Win 10 USB Creation


Startup REpair

Thank you, Jack. Looks pretty advanced but I'll give it a shot.