Fixing “error-blue-screen” restart problem on Windows Server 2012.

Windows error blue screen that flashes swiftly before windows computer restarts is possible after a windows hard drive has developed a problem from improper shutdown, or after a windows system is shutdown when a newly created profile account has not been fully propagated or when the server could not load the windows startup files due to some other issues surrounding the hard drive.

In my 10 years adventure of being a system engineer and administrator, I have come across this problem many times, solving this is pretty the same on every windows operating system, but if the problem occurs on windows server 2012, the solution is a bit “pre-catenated” to some advanced knowledge, hence this article would address the situation on windows server 2012 whose hard drive has not gone into irrecoverable permanent damage.

First, the status of the hard drive has to be checked, the fact that the system boots to some certain stage before restarting does not necessarily mean that the hard drive is in the correct settings on the bios.

Checking Hard Drive Status

To do this, boot into windows 2012 installation disk, don’t do a fresh installation, click on the repair option to load to the repair interface, click troubleshoot , to navigate to the advance interface where you would find the command prompt, click it.

The windows command line interface provides a powerful command tools to troubleshoot, copy files or fix the affected windows OS on the hard drive. On the command interface, the first task is to check if the physical hard drive(s)of the server is identified by windows. type “diskpart” and press enter to diskpart command interface, once it is loaded, type “list disk” , press enter, this command would list all the physical hard drives on the system unit.

If your hard drives are listed , then you can proceed to the next step. But if your server hard drives are not listed, don’t panic, your physical hard drives are surely connected, and that was why windows could boot to a certain level. To enable tour hard drive is displayed. restart your server and navigate to the system bios, change the mode of the bios to SATA Legacy support . Then, save (by pressing F10 and enter in many system servers).

Confirming your hard drive through GUI.

You can confirm if your hard drives are detected by windows through the graphical user interface, this would enable you toknow the drive letter windows has attached to the hard drive you need to work on.

The trick is simple, after booting into your windows server 2012 disk. Navigate to the troubleshoot button and select restore system image recovery, this would give you option to browse for the image file, click browse, A dialog box would pop up which would display a cute graphical user interface of the normal “My Computer” page, if it is not displayed by default, you could simply click it on the dialog box.

Once clicked, it would display all your drives (including system drives) with their driver letters. Carefully check the letter on the primary hard drive you need to work on. You may double click the drive to open contents and copy files from one drive to another drive. Though while copying, the copy progress bar won’t show.

Now, once we know the letter of the primacy hard drives that bore the corrupted windows file. Let’s proceed to fix the issue.

Fixing the problem

boot into your windows server 2012 command prompt, if you are already inside the diskpart command line interface, type “exit” and press enter to return to the default command line interface. Now, you already have the drive letter of the primary hard drive that had the windows installation. Type the hard drive name and colon sign then press enter, (for example, f:). The windows command line directory would change to the drive letter. type “chkdsk” and press enter, this would run a process that would check and fix bad sectors on the hard drive, this can take 1hour plus to finish, this time varies on different servers, depending on the configurations.

Once it is done, type “BootRec.exe /fixmbr “, press enter, then typen“Bootrec.exe/fixboot” , press enter, and then type “Bootrec.exe/RebuildBcd” and press enter. Type “exit” and press enter to close the command line interface.

Restart your server, it should load fine now.

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