Cannot refresh Windows 10 drive is locked need help

Hello all,
I have been running Win 10 64 bit Home on my HP laptop for about 6 months or so an it's been working fine. Yesterday I booted up an my screen is all screwed up, it was in 4 sections, also has a white stripe horizontally about 1/2 way up from the bottom that goes all the way across, and one of the quaddrants is totally backward text..

The only thing I can do is work in the upper righ small square an try to use file explorer to try to remove my files which I have been doing.

Then today I pulled the battery and held the power button down for a minute as the manual says this will drain all the power out an supposedly allows you to boot up if you have issues.

Well, I can get booted into a blue screen that has all the options after I pick my US keyboard. It has Refresh, Troubleshoot etc. I select Troubleshoot an I then pick Refresh as tha will keep my files hopefully however it goes to another screen and tells me it cannot refresh because the drive Windows 10 is on is " locked" , please unlock the drive an try again. Thats what I get when I try to refresh.

I went to a command prompt and tried Chkdsk C: /F and it ran but says it failed to move the files etc etc... and I am back to the blue scree. with my Refresh options.

I'm sure if I just tell it to go into Windows it will go crazy again an I'll have the messed up screen. I don't know how it happened but I need some help and suggestions on how I can unlock the drive, possibly from the caommand prompt that I can get to.

I never ran into this before, and I'm open to suggestions on how to unlock whatever drive is locked. Can I unlock with a few commands in Command Prompt ?

Thank you for any suggestions, originally when my screen went all crazy with colors and stripes an a white line I assumed my motherboard went bad but now that I can get to the blue screen with all the text as is should be I don't think it's a mother board issue, I think Windows 10 is screwed an needs recovered of refreshed...

 

Thank you all.... I am not sure what I did, I did a chkdsk:c: /f and when I rebooted it came up normally without all the stripes and lines etc... I rebooted several times and it was ok and when I put it into hybernate mode and brought it out the screen had a stripe on it but it's readable, the line is only about 1/8 inch wide straight upthe display and actually blocks out anything under it. I backed up everything I have on this laptop and downloaded the install tool and put it on a USB flash drive as I did back when I installed Win 10 with a clean install, so my plan is to just run the installer and do a clean installation. I'm thinking if it went back to normal after I did a chkdsk , it has to be something in Windows 10 thats messing up when it goes into hybernation and back out. I doubt the display adapter is bad or it would not come on normally it would be messed up every time.

I'll give the install a try and report back here and let you know how it works....

Thanks again...

 

Lobo11 , I don't have a backup copy. I always used to use Acronis and make an image of windows etc, but this time on this new laptop I neglected to do it.......

Whats puzzling me the most now is I have a White Stripe back vertically in the center of my display so it's definitely not normal and I downloaded the Windows USB media creator and made a Windows 10 boot flash drive BUT when I try to run it this time it's asking me for a Product Key, and the one I had does not work. When I put Windows 10 on here almost a year ago it did not ask for a Key, and it was on a USB drive as well so I'm lost as to how to get past the Product Key page. I also have Win 8 DVD's and I went into the BIOS and my DVD is not listed as a BOOT device I have USB and hard disk option and UEFI or whatever that is but when I look in that section it does not say CD or DVD drive so I can't even boot back into Win 8.... I can boot so I don't see how doing the bootfix BCD etc is going to cure these display problems.

I don't know what else I can try to do a clean install off the USB drive I followed the instructions on How to do a Clean install using the USB tool and it downloaded Win 10 etc, and now can't get past Product Key for Windows Home version...

I guess I'll read more here on the forums and see if there is a clue on what I can do to get a clean install and format the drive as it is now I'm stuck at looking at a white stripe 1/2 wide right down the middle of my screen....

Thank you guys for your help..

 

Thank you Lobo11, I ran those commands, and it tells me there were some corrupt files found and it fixed some of them but could not fix all. I ran the set of commands for the CD/DVD drive. and it found nothing wrong. Heres the situation ... I have a set of Windows 8 DVD's sent to me by HP when my laptop crashed about 6 months ago so I installed that, the I installed Windows 10 Home via the USB tool and installed from the USB Flash Drive. I thought about just re=installing Win 8, off the DVD's but... when I went into the BIOS settings as it says, to scroll down to the UEFI devices or whatever those letters are, and I did, and hit Enter and there is something there but it does not say boot from CD drive. I have the boot options of Boot from Hard Disk, Boot from USB, and in that EUFI area I'm not sure what kind of device that is. I may just try that.

What I am faced with is sometimes the screen is in 4 sections, one of them being backwards and there are 2 white stripes tha cross each other to make those 4 areas. If I boot several times I can get a regular screen with ONE white stripe vertically from top to bottom. Now another thing I when I go to reboot and it gets to the very beginning before entering Windows in each corner of the black screen I have a have circle a red, blue, and a green one and they have HP in black lettering , and there is a set of white stripes on my display and the dots that go around while windows is loading are not in the center they are over to one side and they are green they should be white. I'm wondering if there are corrupt BIOS files maybe? Or maybe corrupt BOOT files I'm not sure. I was to the point of calling HP and shipping it back for repair or replacement, I think I still have warranty on it. But if it's a windows issue I'd like to try anything I can first. I wish it would allow me to boot off of my DVD drive but I haven't been able to because of whats in the BIOS Settings.

You think I should just go into BIOS and scroll down into that EUFI area and pick that item and see if it is in fact the DVD device ? I can try it with my Windows 8 CD's....

As far as skipping the product key, I can't when I boot from USB flash drive to put a clean copy of Win10 it gets me all the way to ready to install and has a box for the Product Key but NO place does it say " SKIP THIS" maybe I have the wrong installer tool?

Thank you for your trouble and patience, for a few days this was working fine after whatever I did when I took out the battery for a few days then it began to act up again showing me those colored circles with HP on them in each corner as it's getting ready to load windows...that tells me something bad is wrong somewhere or it would only show up in Windows.

 

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I uploaded a few pics to a site that lets you share your photos but apparently I didn't post the link correctly I forgot how to link them... anyhow, I called HP an told the guy about it and he said I have 51 days left on warranty an he would send me a box to send it back in, an it won't cost me anything. He said it sounds like a motherboard issue, or a combination display screen, and motherboard sine the white stripes never go away even in the BIOS setup they are there. If it were a corrupt file in Windows or a Boot file you shouldn't see it in the BIOS manager. So off it's going to go they will repair it for free. I took the drive out of it and I have a 3 in 1 sata ide, usb adapter that lets you hook the drives up to your pc via a usb cable and look at them or format etc...So I made sure the drive was clean and put it back in... They will test every part an replace whatever is needed and I'll be happy. If I can link up those pics I'll still post them here..... I wanted to say thank you to all of you guys who responded and offered your expertise and help. I like this place and have learned a lot. Now when I get my laptop back I'll have to put Windows 10 on it again because it came with Window's 8 ... Nice machine though, it has a backlit keyboard, 750 gig hard disk, 16 gb of ram, led high def display, Beats Audio with sub woofer, Intel i7 latest processor as of last year, 4 usb ports, overall it's a nice laptop an I'll be glad to get it back in working order.... thanks again guys...

 

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Hi Guys,

The Laptop came wih Windows 8 on it... I'd like to upgrade it to Windows 10 but I'm a little leary although it ran fine when I did upgrade it. I can only go to Windows 10 Home, I can't put the Pro version on because I don't think the product key would support it..... I might put the Win 10 Home on again, I ran Start 10 from Stardock which boots you right into the Desktop and gives you that Windows 7 look...

So today I got an email from HP stating they have shipped it via Fedex, and gave me a tracking number so it may only be a few days and I'll have it back. Hopefully without the white stripe. That display was screwed up even when I booted into the BIOS menus it was there all the time even during the POST when I first hit the power button. I was hoping it was as simple as a video driver or something that had corrupted but not so... they show a motherboard,, and new display screen on the repair ticket so I'm assuming they just about rebuilt it. Lucky me for that warranty.... I stuck the stock RAM in it when I sent it in but I have 16 Gig's of Crucial high speed ram I put in shortly after I bought it so I'll put the 16 GiG of ram back in. I'd like to add an SSD for the main drive to make it a wee bit faster I wonder if any of you use a SSD on your machine and do you notice that it's quicker and gets longer battery life.... ?

Thanks again.... Nick