My recent Windows 11 upgrade bricked my PC. Unfortunately, I was not ready for that and paid the price, big time!

Over the past few months, I have been thinking a lot about upgrading my home computer infrastructure to Windows 11. Also, I was considering how to best incorporate Microsoft 365 and OneDrive among my computers. I thought I had it figured out.

My activities included replacing old computers with new Windows 11 mini-pc. This seems to have worked really well, and gave me a chance to explore Windows 11. So now, it was time to upgrade my Main PC. This was my only computer new enough to be compliant with requirements.

So, I pressed the upgrade button in Windows 10 and sat back. All seemed to be going well until the second reboot, which unfortunately went badly.

I found myself stuck in a BIOS Boot Loop. A “BIOS boot loop” occurs when a PC continually restarts or gets stuck on the BIOS screen, often preventing the operating system from loading. It can be caused by hardware problems, bad drivers, or worst of all, corrupted system files. An interrupted or failed Windows 11 upgrade can leave essential system files damaged or missing.

This corruption is exactly what happened. My friends at Memory Express explored my PC and told me that the C: drive was trashed beyond repair. Thanks, Microsoft.

Windows 11 Upgrade Bricked My PC – Be Prepared

A new Windows 11 install fixed things up. Fortunately, all the files on my Main PC were on a separate drive and also backed up. But, I lost all of my applications and had to rebuild from scratch.

Could I have been better prepared? You bet. I had never bothered doing a complete disk image. Dumb. Now, I have used EASUS TODO Backup Free to create images of all my computers onto a separate USB hard drive. If I have a similar failure in the future, it should be relatively easy to roll back to a working PC.