Windows 11 Home 10.0.26200
Acer predator PO3-620 prebuilt machine
Bios : American Megatrends Inc. R01-A2, 19/01/2021 (Updated few years ago, is current latest version) My machine is not in the supported list for acer/windows secure boot update incoming, assume this is to blame?
RTX 2060
i7-10700 @ 2.90GHz 8 cores 16 logical
Downloaded a windows 11 update this morning at 12:30AM I am now having issues getting into my PC. Upon boot, 'Preparing automatic repair', few seconds later 'Your device ran into a problem and needs to restart. We'll restart for you'. Stop code: KERNEL_SECURITY_CHECK_FAILURE (0x139).
So I have a 4Tb Nvme that runs Windows 11 and two 1Tb SSD's for extra storage. It is stuck in this boot loop. Changing TPM to off and secure boot to off or on changes nothing in the boot loop. I enabled secure boot in order to play Call of Duty Warzone around 8pm, no issues then.
I put windows 11 creation media onto a USB to hopefully try and actually do a windows repair, but that does not work either. So reformatted one of my SSD's and installed windows onto it to try some cmd.exe fixes. I was able to log in on the new windows install, so no faulty hardware. The Nvme and other SSD were encrypted, weird, I never requested that. To access the drives I had to input a bitlocker recovery code, login to my microsoft account and 3 recovery keys were created at 12:30AM this morning, the exact time I restarted to try and finish the windows update.
I unlock the Nvme drive with the key and play Manor lords which is installed on the Nvme for 5mins, so the Nvme is fine. And so is all of my hardware. I de-encrypt the 4Tb drive which took around 2 hours. Restart my PC. Gives me the option to boot from OS on partion 2 (SSD) or partition 8 (Nvme), select partition 8. Solved, yay. I ensure encryption is turned off, I add a line into the regedit to prevent bitlocker automatically locking me out again and switch to signing in via a local account instead of a microsoft account. Run disk cleanup and delete windows updates cache or whatever disk cleanup deletes.
Assumed issue was solved so reformatted SSD as it no longer needed windows. Restart. Back square one, boot loop.
First of all...what the actual fuck. Second, what do I do? I'm going repeat the same process, but, how will it be different?
Update 1: This time recovery did not take long at all. Just installing windows onto another drive allowed my Nvme to boot. No decryption needed no bitlocker keys required this time, I suppose because I've already done that. I am a bit scared to uninstall my 2nd copy of windows. I'm looking into to file hosting services so I can post a video. How does this make sense? Ran sfc scannow and Dism the first re-install, no errors. At some point I restarted and it 'uninstalled' the previous update.
"2026-08 Preview Update (KB5120998) (26200.9278) We couldn't install this update, but you can try again (0x800f0845)" In windows update menu.