Laptop won't go past the loading screen

[Roxie]

I have a windows 8 hp laptop that was upgraded to windows 10 a few months ago and just recently when I went to turn it on it won't go past the loading screen. I don't really know what to do especially since I have some very special pictures of my daughter's on it. Any ideas on what I can do to get it to turn on before I lose my pictures?

 

[gbhall]

Can you boot it in safe mode? If you don't know the key-presses at bootup to do that, check your laptop support website.
After booting in safe mode, you should be able to use the laptop sufficiently to 'rescue' your pics onto a USB plug-in or attached drive.

Do I need to remind you to learn about and implement backup procedures before you get a day older, especially as in all likelihood you are risking something you would regret losing for the rest of your life. Yes it is that important.

 

[mike1959]

Hi, When you first switch the laptop on, do you see any info on screen, such as "Setup" or "Boot menu" or similar, in white on a black background, or does it load further than that, beyond a black screen and showing Windows loading screen with circle of dots?
One of many things could have happened, the worst being a failed hard drive, (when you would get a message such as "NO O/S found",) but that's fairly unusual, or could be a booting problem with the Windows installation.
Even if Windows won't boot there is a way of recovering photos , by using a different operating system on a DVD in the disc drive, or on a USB flash drive.

 

[bluejolls]

Try to boot into safe mode and then restart from within windows. If that won't work boot to safe mode and try to restore to a point prior to when the updates were installed. If no luck there try to do a system repair from the boot menu screen. If they all fail we can go from there.