Month: August 2024

The Energy Observer, a boat powered by hydrogen and other renewable energy sources, sailing in the Gulf of Thailand in 2022. | Photo by Pitcha Dangprasith / AFP via Getty Images

Mining trucks, cement mixers, and terminal tractors all seem like the perfect use of hydrogen fuel cells. But they run into the same challenges around price and fueling. Twenty years ago, it seemed like hydrogen fuel cell vehicles would have a bright future.
The cars were cool — luxury sedans with sleek interiors and futuristic-looking touchscreens. They were environmentally friendly, with water vapor as their only byproduct. Regulators were on board, promising big investments for the fueling infrastructure. A bet on the most abundant element in the universe in the fight against air pollution, and eventually climate change, seemed like a sure thing.
But despite tens of thousands of vehicles sold and billions of dollars spent on fueling, that bet has yet to pay off. California remains the only state in the country with any sort of hydrogen fueling infrastructure, with fewer than 50 stations currently in operation. Vehicle sales have essentially collapsed: only 322 fuel cell vehicles were sold in the first half of 2024, 82 percent lower than a year ago.
The fueling infrastructure also seems on the brink of collapse. Stations are shutting down, and the ones that are still in operation are routinely offline due to tech problems and fuel shortages. The price of hydrogen continues to climb, as production problems and supply shortages roil the market.
Tesla CEO Elon Musk called hydrogen fuel cell vehicles “mind-bogglingly stupid”
Critics have panned hydrogen as an inefficient and illogical way to decarbonize transportation. After all, battery-electric vehicles already exist. Tesla CEO Elon Musk called hydrogen fuel cell vehicles “mind-bogglingly stupid.”
But hydrogen still has the potential to be a game changer in the fight against climate change, if we can find a better solution. Despite their early failures, major companies are still pouring billions of dollars into the technology. Governments are drawing up infrastructure plans and passing tax credits in the hopes that they can provide a helping hand.
If hydrogen fuel cells are to hang on, it’s time to think bigger.

We attempt to cross California in a car powered entirely by hydrogen gas — a Fuel Cell Electric Vehicle (FCEV).

Out to sea
The boat bobbing in the waters near Wall Street doesn’t look like the other vessels that typically populate New York’s congested waterways. For one, it isn’t belching diesel smoke like all the shipping containers, oil tankers, and garbage barges. Actually, it isn’t emitting any pollution at all.
The ship, named the Energy Observer, is a sleek, 100-foot-long former French racing catamaran retrofitted with solar panels, slowing sipping sunlight to send to the four lithium-ion batteries sitting below deck. The panels cover almost the entire surface of the boat, so you either have to wear special cloth booties to come on board — or just go barefoot.
On an overcast day last April, it had just completed a seven-year voyage around the world, visiting numerous countries to preach the gospel of renewable energy. Energy Observer is basically a floating laboratory, where its six-person crew can conduct experiments on sustainable energy in order to prove how it can be used to power all types of vessels.

Image: Getty
The guts of the Energy Observer, where a Toyota-made fuel cell generates some of the power.

The boat produces all the energy it needs to sail, and it does that through three different methods. The first is solar, through the aforementioned panels. The second is wind power, which is generated through these massive twin masts that look like two airfoils standing straight up. The crew calls these “Ocean Wings,” and they make about 30 percent of the boat’s propulsion power and can move the boat up to 12 knots without impacting its electricity consumption.
The third is hydrogen, which works like this: Seawater is filtered through the hulls to be desalinated and purified before an electrolyzer splits H20 into hydrogen and oxygen. The hydrogen is then converted into electricity courtesy of a Toyota fuel cell, a similar version of the technology that is used in the automaker’s hydrogen-powered sedans, which emit water vapor instead of carbon pollution.
The hydrogen is then converted into electricity courtesy of a Toyota fuel cell
“That’s really the purpose of the ship,” said George Conty, the ship’s affably Swiss boatswain, “producing hydrogen from a mix of renewable energies.”
The Energy Observer isn’t very fast, maxing out at around 11 knots, which is much slower than a typical catamaran. Its racing days are long gone, which makes sense because speed isn’t the ship’s ultimate mission. It’s a demonstration project to prove that hydrogen from renewable sources can be a viable alternative to diesel and other polluting fuels used in maritime.
Shipping accounts for about 3 percent of greenhouse gasses, similar to flying. Transportation on the whole represents over a quarter of all planet-warming emissions. Decarbonizing the sector will be a monumental challenge, and lithium-ion batteries can’t do it alone.
Energy Observer’s team isn’t just banking on a 100-foot-long catamaran to prove its point. A successor, a massive cargo ship called the Energy Observer 2, is still just in the planning phases. And if the companies backing the project can raise enough money to fund its creation — and that’s a big if — it has the potential to demonstrate that liquid hydrogen deserves to be discussed alongside other less carbon-intensive alternatives like biofuels, ammonia, and natural gas.
The Energy Observer 2 will be able to transport 1,100 20-foot-long shipping containers over a distance of 1,800 nautical miles
Once built, the Energy Observer 2 will be able to transport 1,100 20-foot-long shipping containers over a distance of 1,800 nautical miles — not enough for a trans-Atlantic crossing, but enough for intercontinental trips. Like its predecessor, the cargo ship will also run on hydrogen fuel cells provided by car companies like Toyota — just a lot more of them. Over 100 fuel cells, using over 40 tons of liquid hydrogen, generating approximately 4.8 megawatts of power.
“No project in the world has this power,” Victorien Erussard, the ship’s captain, told me. But his venture is already running into familiar problems around cost and refueling infrastructure. It’s not going to be an easy transition. It will require more investors, more supporters, and more true believers in hydrogen to make this work.
“Many, many, many more boats,” Erussard said.

Truck stuff
But also trucks — which General Motors knows a thing or two about. Especially the leviathan-sized ones that are big enough to handle the heaviest loads.
GM was one of the first automakers to stick a hydrogen fuel cell into a vehicle. The company’s 1966 Electrovan, a converted GMC Handi-Bus with hydrogen-oxygen power, could reportedly do 70mph and travel 150 miles.
Today, the company’s fuel cell-powered vehicles look a little different. GM’s Hydrotec division is investing in heavy-duty trucks — think mining equipment, cement mixers, and terminal tractors — as well as a few medium-duty ones. The idea is to use hydrogen to decarbonize heavy industries, which is ill-suited for battery-electric vehicles that are slow to charge.
Even hydrogen’s profound fueling shortcomings could be easily fixed. Heavy-duty trucks typically operate in confined spaces, like construction sites, warehouses, ports, and quarries. Under those circumstances, fueling stations can be centrally located to service a whole fleet of hydrogen fuel cell vehicles. No need for a hydrogen fueling station on every residential street corner.
GM was one of the first automakers to stick a hydrogen fuel cell into a vehicle
It’s still “early days,” Hydrotec’s executive director, Charlie Freese, tells me. GM is still testing its technology to see what works and what won’t. In addition to the trucks, there’s also the fuel cells themselves, bundled together into a cube-shaped package, befittingly called Power Cubes. These cubes, developed alongside Honda, can be used to power several different vehicles. They can even be used for stationary power generators for outdoor events, replacing all those dirty diesel generators used today.
Other automakers, like Toyota, rushed too quickly into the passenger vehicle market before the fueling infrastructure was in place, Freese said. The Toyota Mirai, the first mainstream fuel cell vehicle that was first introduced in 2014, may have been a ground-breaking vehicle at the time, but now it’s an albatross for many of the owners.
“It was clear that that wouldn’t be a very rewarding experience,” Freese said. “The technology really lends itself best to the heaviest vehicles, the ones that carry heavy payloads, travel the longest distances, and need very fast refueling.”
GM has not released a fuel cell vehicle for the consumer market, but its joint venture with Honda just started mass-producing fuel cells at its Michigan plant earlier this year. And a medium-duty truck, based on the Chevy Silverado 5500, is on the way. GM thinks it could be the ideal work truck for farmers.
“It’s not going to be perfect right at the immediate outset,” Freese admitted. Most hydrogen in the US is what’s called “gray hydrogen,” meaning it is produced through a process called steam methane reforming, which emits greenhouse gases. The hope is to eventually switch to “green hydrogen,” made by renewable energy sources like solar and wind. But we’re not there yet.
“If I’m using a hydrogen fuel cell, I’m greening my fleet, even if it’s gray hydrogen,” Freese said. “And over time, the gray hydrogen can be replaced with green hydrogen. But that takes more of a build-out of the infrastructure… they got to grow together.”

Allen J. Schaben / Los Angeles Times via Getty Images

Fueling failures
Jacob Brouwer was one of those early adopters of hydrogen. He drove a Toyota Mirai for over seven years, attracted to its smooth acceleration, boastful range, and luxury interior. The $15,000 prepaid fueling card from Toyota didn’t hurt, either.
But these days, he drives a Tesla. It doesn’t reflect well on hydrogen when the director of UC Irvine’s Clean Energy Institute has decided that a car made by Elon Musk is preferable to one that runs on fuel cells. He blames California’s energy regulators for fumbling the rollout, failing to get to the promised 200 stations and leaving the project incomplete.
“We just didn’t fulfill the plan,” Brouwer says. “I feel very bad for the Mirai owners.”
“I feel very bad for the Mirai owners.”
But despite his firsthand experience with the shortcomings, he’s less pessimistic than most when it comes to the future of hydrogen. In addition to boats and heavy trucks, he sees numerous applications as being perfect for fuel cell technology, including tractors, buses, freight, trains, light-duty hybrid vehicles, and even aviation.
Indeed, there have been some compelling experiments in fuel cell-powered flight. Joby Aviation is developing a hydrogen-powered version of its vertical takeoff and landing aircraft for longer trips between cities. And American Airlines recently agreed to buy 100 hydrogen-electric engines from ZeroAvia, a fuel cell aviation startup, to power its regional jets.
Aviation is especially difficult to decarbonize; aircraft need to be just light enough to achieve flight, and heavy lithium-ion batteries would screw up that ratio. Hydrogen is practically feathery in comparison.
There are uses for hydrogen even beyond transportation, Brouwer said. Cement and steel comprise about 12 percent of greenhouse gas emissions. Hydrogen is better suited to decarbonize cement and steel production than batteries. Data centers housing servers powering the AI boom — you could run those with hydrogen, too. The list goes on.
But for an element as abundant as hydrogen, it can be maddeningly hard to find.
“Electricity is available everywhere, but hydrogen isn’t”
For all of these applications to become a reality, to become more than just glorified experiments like the Energy Observer or GM’s Power Cubes, they need the fueling infrastructure to rise up, too. Battery-electric vehicles never quite had it this bad. Sure, the public charging experience for EVs leaves a lot to be desired. But electricity has a big head start.
“Electricity goes to every business,” Brouwer said. “Electricity is available everywhere, but hydrogen isn’t.”
He thinks it can get there. The Biden administration is all in on hydrogen, approving tax credits to support the production of green hydrogen and doling out $7 billion for regional production hubs across the US. Things still look grim for the average Toyota Mirai owner, but the clouds seem to be clearing for everything that’s not a light-duty vehicle.
“We are at the beginning of the beginning,” Brouwer said. It’s a strange way to think about a technology that is decades, if not centuries, old. But it’s finally looking as if hydrogen is ready to pull its own weight.

The Energy Observer, a boat powered by hydrogen and other renewable energy sources, sailing in the Gulf of Thailand in 2022. | Photo by Pitcha Dangprasith / AFP via Getty Images

Mining trucks, cement mixers, and terminal tractors all seem like the perfect use of hydrogen fuel cells. But they run into the same challenges around price and fueling.

Twenty years ago, it seemed like hydrogen fuel cell vehicles would have a bright future.

The cars were cool — luxury sedans with sleek interiors and futuristic-looking touchscreens. They were environmentally friendly, with water vapor as their only byproduct. Regulators were on board, promising big investments for the fueling infrastructure. A bet on the most abundant element in the universe in the fight against air pollution, and eventually climate change, seemed like a sure thing.

But despite tens of thousands of vehicles sold and billions of dollars spent on fueling, that bet has yet to pay off. California remains the only state in the country with any sort of hydrogen fueling infrastructure, with fewer than 50 stations currently in operation. Vehicle sales have essentially collapsed: only 322 fuel cell vehicles were sold in the first half of 2024, 82 percent lower than a year ago.

The fueling infrastructure also seems on the brink of collapse. Stations are shutting down, and the ones that are still in operation are routinely offline due to tech problems and fuel shortages. The price of hydrogen continues to climb, as production problems and supply shortages roil the market.

Critics have panned hydrogen as an inefficient and illogical way to decarbonize transportation. After all, battery-electric vehicles already exist. Tesla CEO Elon Musk called hydrogen fuel cell vehicles “mind-bogglingly stupid.”

But hydrogen still has the potential to be a game changer in the fight against climate change, if we can find a better solution. Despite their early failures, major companies are still pouring billions of dollars into the technology. Governments are drawing up infrastructure plans and passing tax credits in the hopes that they can provide a helping hand.

If hydrogen fuel cells are to hang on, it’s time to think bigger.

Out to sea

The boat bobbing in the waters near Wall Street doesn’t look like the other vessels that typically populate New York’s congested waterways. For one, it isn’t belching diesel smoke like all the shipping containers, oil tankers, and garbage barges. Actually, it isn’t emitting any pollution at all.

The ship, named the Energy Observer, is a sleek, 100-foot-long former French racing catamaran retrofitted with solar panels, slowing sipping sunlight to send to the four lithium-ion batteries sitting below deck. The panels cover almost the entire surface of the boat, so you either have to wear special cloth booties to come on board — or just go barefoot.

On an overcast day last April, it had just completed a seven-year voyage around the world, visiting numerous countries to preach the gospel of renewable energy. Energy Observer is basically a floating laboratory, where its six-person crew can conduct experiments on sustainable energy in order to prove how it can be used to power all types of vessels.

Image: Getty
The guts of the Energy Observer, where a Toyota-made fuel cell generates some of the power.

The boat produces all the energy it needs to sail, and it does that through three different methods. The first is solar, through the aforementioned panels. The second is wind power, which is generated through these massive twin masts that look like two airfoils standing straight up. The crew calls these “Ocean Wings,” and they make about 30 percent of the boat’s propulsion power and can move the boat up to 12 knots without impacting its electricity consumption.

The third is hydrogen, which works like this: Seawater is filtered through the hulls to be desalinated and purified before an electrolyzer splits H20 into hydrogen and oxygen. The hydrogen is then converted into electricity courtesy of a Toyota fuel cell, a similar version of the technology that is used in the automaker’s hydrogen-powered sedans, which emit water vapor instead of carbon pollution.

“That’s really the purpose of the ship,” said George Conty, the ship’s affably Swiss boatswain, “producing hydrogen from a mix of renewable energies.”

The Energy Observer isn’t very fast, maxing out at around 11 knots, which is much slower than a typical catamaran. Its racing days are long gone, which makes sense because speed isn’t the ship’s ultimate mission. It’s a demonstration project to prove that hydrogen from renewable sources can be a viable alternative to diesel and other polluting fuels used in maritime.

Shipping accounts for about 3 percent of greenhouse gasses, similar to flying. Transportation on the whole represents over a quarter of all planet-warming emissions. Decarbonizing the sector will be a monumental challenge, and lithium-ion batteries can’t do it alone.

Energy Observer’s team isn’t just banking on a 100-foot-long catamaran to prove its point. A successor, a massive cargo ship called the Energy Observer 2, is still just in the planning phases. And if the companies backing the project can raise enough money to fund its creation — and that’s a big if — it has the potential to demonstrate that liquid hydrogen deserves to be discussed alongside other less carbon-intensive alternatives like biofuels, ammonia, and natural gas.

Once built, the Energy Observer 2 will be able to transport 1,100 20-foot-long shipping containers over a distance of 1,800 nautical miles — not enough for a trans-Atlantic crossing, but enough for intercontinental trips. Like its predecessor, the cargo ship will also run on hydrogen fuel cells provided by car companies like Toyota — just a lot more of them. Over 100 fuel cells, using over 40 tons of liquid hydrogen, generating approximately 4.8 megawatts of power.

“No project in the world has this power,” Victorien Erussard, the ship’s captain, told me. But his venture is already running into familiar problems around cost and refueling infrastructure. It’s not going to be an easy transition. It will require more investors, more supporters, and more true believers in hydrogen to make this work.

“Many, many, many more boats,” Erussard said.

Truck stuff

But also trucks — which General Motors knows a thing or two about. Especially the leviathan-sized ones that are big enough to handle the heaviest loads.

GM was one of the first automakers to stick a hydrogen fuel cell into a vehicle. The company’s 1966 Electrovan, a converted GMC Handi-Bus with hydrogen-oxygen power, could reportedly do 70mph and travel 150 miles.

Today, the company’s fuel cell-powered vehicles look a little different. GM’s Hydrotec division is investing in heavy-duty trucks — think mining equipment, cement mixers, and terminal tractors — as well as a few medium-duty ones. The idea is to use hydrogen to decarbonize heavy industries, which is ill-suited for battery-electric vehicles that are slow to charge.

Even hydrogen’s profound fueling shortcomings could be easily fixed. Heavy-duty trucks typically operate in confined spaces, like construction sites, warehouses, ports, and quarries. Under those circumstances, fueling stations can be centrally located to service a whole fleet of hydrogen fuel cell vehicles. No need for a hydrogen fueling station on every residential street corner.

It’s still “early days,” Hydrotec’s executive director, Charlie Freese, tells me. GM is still testing its technology to see what works and what won’t. In addition to the trucks, there’s also the fuel cells themselves, bundled together into a cube-shaped package, befittingly called Power Cubes. These cubes, developed alongside Honda, can be used to power several different vehicles. They can even be used for stationary power generators for outdoor events, replacing all those dirty diesel generators used today.

Other automakers, like Toyota, rushed too quickly into the passenger vehicle market before the fueling infrastructure was in place, Freese said. The Toyota Mirai, the first mainstream fuel cell vehicle that was first introduced in 2014, may have been a ground-breaking vehicle at the time, but now it’s an albatross for many of the owners.

“It was clear that that wouldn’t be a very rewarding experience,” Freese said. “The technology really lends itself best to the heaviest vehicles, the ones that carry heavy payloads, travel the longest distances, and need very fast refueling.”

GM has not released a fuel cell vehicle for the consumer market, but its joint venture with Honda just started mass-producing fuel cells at its Michigan plant earlier this year. And a medium-duty truck, based on the Chevy Silverado 5500, is on the way. GM thinks it could be the ideal work truck for farmers.

“It’s not going to be perfect right at the immediate outset,” Freese admitted. Most hydrogen in the US is what’s called “gray hydrogen,” meaning it is produced through a process called steam methane reforming, which emits greenhouse gases. The hope is to eventually switch to “green hydrogen,” made by renewable energy sources like solar and wind. But we’re not there yet.

“If I’m using a hydrogen fuel cell, I’m greening my fleet, even if it’s gray hydrogen,” Freese said. “And over time, the gray hydrogen can be replaced with green hydrogen. But that takes more of a build-out of the infrastructure… they got to grow together.”

Fueling failures

Jacob Brouwer was one of those early adopters of hydrogen. He drove a Toyota Mirai for over seven years, attracted to its smooth acceleration, boastful range, and luxury interior. The $15,000 prepaid fueling card from Toyota didn’t hurt, either.

But these days, he drives a Tesla. It doesn’t reflect well on hydrogen when the director of UC Irvine’s Clean Energy Institute has decided that a car made by Elon Musk is preferable to one that runs on fuel cells. He blames California’s energy regulators for fumbling the rollout, failing to get to the promised 200 stations and leaving the project incomplete.

“We just didn’t fulfill the plan,” Brouwer says. “I feel very bad for the Mirai owners.”

But despite his firsthand experience with the shortcomings, he’s less pessimistic than most when it comes to the future of hydrogen. In addition to boats and heavy trucks, he sees numerous applications as being perfect for fuel cell technology, including tractors, buses, freight, trains, light-duty hybrid vehicles, and even aviation.

Indeed, there have been some compelling experiments in fuel cell-powered flight. Joby Aviation is developing a hydrogen-powered version of its vertical takeoff and landing aircraft for longer trips between cities. And American Airlines recently agreed to buy 100 hydrogen-electric engines from ZeroAvia, a fuel cell aviation startup, to power its regional jets.

Aviation is especially difficult to decarbonize; aircraft need to be just light enough to achieve flight, and heavy lithium-ion batteries would screw up that ratio. Hydrogen is practically feathery in comparison.

There are uses for hydrogen even beyond transportation, Brouwer said. Cement and steel comprise about 12 percent of greenhouse gas emissions. Hydrogen is better suited to decarbonize cement and steel production than batteries. Data centers housing servers powering the AI boom — you could run those with hydrogen, too. The list goes on.

But for an element as abundant as hydrogen, it can be maddeningly hard to find.

For all of these applications to become a reality, to become more than just glorified experiments like the Energy Observer or GM’s Power Cubes, they need the fueling infrastructure to rise up, too. Battery-electric vehicles never quite had it this bad. Sure, the public charging experience for EVs leaves a lot to be desired. But electricity has a big head start.

“Electricity goes to every business,” Brouwer said. “Electricity is available everywhere, but hydrogen isn’t.”

He thinks it can get there. The Biden administration is all in on hydrogen, approving tax credits to support the production of green hydrogen and doling out $7 billion for regional production hubs across the US. Things still look grim for the average Toyota Mirai owner, but the clouds seem to be clearing for everything that’s not a light-duty vehicle.

“We are at the beginning of the beginning,” Brouwer said. It’s a strange way to think about a technology that is decades, if not centuries, old. But it’s finally looking as if hydrogen is ready to pull its own weight.

Read More 

Illustration by Samar Haddad / The Verge

Having your Windows PC start up is something that’s normally taken for granted — until it pauses mid-boot. You may be faced with a serious problem that needs some serious troubleshooting.
Here are some key steps for dealing with problems that may come up when you’re booting a Windows PC. With loads of possible hardware and software combinations out there, it’s hard to be definitive about what might have gone wrong or how to fix it, but this should at least get you pointed in the right direction.

A reminder: sometimes you’re going to need to replace or reformat your main Windows drive when this happens, and that’s why it’s essential that you always have all your files and folders safely backed up.
One more note: if you’ve got an Arm-based Windows PC, try the three-boot method described below. If that doesn’t work, you may have to ask the manufacturer for a recovery image that you can put on a bootable flash drive.
Windows won’t load
First up is where your computer appears to start up as normal and gets past the basic system checks (usually displaying the motherboard or manufacturer logo on the screen) but then won’t load Windows. The problem could be hardware-based, like a defective storage drive, but you might be able to fix it with tools built into Windows itself.
First up, try turning your PC on and off again, a fix that works surprisingly often:

Power down the PC by pressing and holding the power button.
Remove all peripherals (except the keyboard, mouse, and monitor on a desktop).
Wait five minutes.
Boot up the PC by pressing the power button again.

You might be back in business. If not, you might get sent to the Windows Recovery Environment (WinRE), which has a pale blue backdrop and simple interface and offers some troubleshooting options under the Troubleshoot heading.
If the WinRE screen doesn’t show up after a failed boot, you can launch it with the three-boot method:

Start up your computer, and when the boot process begins, press and hold the power button for about 10 seconds to turn the PC off.
Repeat the process twice.
In the third boot, you should be in the WinRE.

Black Screen of Death
This strategy can also be useful if you get what is popularly known as the “Black Screen of Death” — in other words, your PC turns on but doesn’t show anything on the screen. In that case, relaunching it three times could put you in WinRE. You can also try restarting the video driver by pressing the Windows + Ctrl + Shift + B keys.
But first, try adjusting the brightness settings or checking your connections. Sometimes it’s the simplest solutions that work.
Safe Mode

Screenshot: Microsoft
The WinRE feature (which is similar for Windows 10 and 11) gives you access to some basic troubleshooting tools.

It’s possible that you can launch Windows in Safe Mode: pick Advanced options > Startup Settings > Restart, then tap 5 for Safe Mode with networking. This starts Windows with just the basics in terms of settings and drivers, and if this works, you can try rolling back recent app updates or uninstalling tools you’ve recently added.
If you can’t get into Safe Mode, another option from the WinRE Troubleshoot menu is Startup Repair. This does exactly what it sounds like: Windows will attempt to reset settings and configurations related to the boot-up process that may have become corrupted.
Also on the Troubleshoot screen, you’ve got Uninstall Updates. If you think a recent Windows update may have caused your boot-up woes, then you can roll back the latest update.
Should you still not be able to get into Windows and you’re returned to WinRE, after Troubleshoot, choose Command Prompt. This gives you access to a text interface where you can run some basic disk checks and fixes: Microsoft has a list of commands you can try.
More WinRE and BIOS / UEFI troubleshooting options
If you’re getting no joy from WinRE, head to the BIOS (Basic Input/Output System) screen, now called the UEFI (Unified Extensible Firmware Interface) on newer computers. This is the software running on the motherboard, which kicks into action before Windows is loaded from disk.
If Windows isn’t starting, you may get dumped into the BIOS / UEFI automatically, or you may need to tap a key while the system is loading to get there. The key will typically be something like F2 or Del, but you should see a message on the screen that tells you more.
There’s not a whole lot you can do from the BIOS / UEFI, but you can at least run some diagnostic checks and look under the storage section to see if your system drives are actually being recognized at the motherboard level. There should also be an option to reset the BIOS / UEFI back to the defaults — this is worth trying, too, to put the boot-up process back to its factory state.

Screenshot: Microsoft
You may need to install Windows again from a USB drive.

If you’ve come all this way and still can’t get Windows to load, the most logical next step is reinstalling Windows. The reinstall option may appear as Reset this PC under Troubleshoot in WinRE, but not always — it depends on your system and what’s gone wrong. If it is there, you’ll be able to choose Keep my files (which will repair Windows without touching your data) or Remove everything (which wipes the drive and then puts a clean install of Windows on top).
If WinRE isn’t offering you these options, you can borrow a Windows PC from a friend or family member and create a USB drive or DVD you can install the operating system from. Microsoft has full instructions for how to do this. This will wipe and reset everything, and it should restore Windows to its original state.
Once the USB or DVD has been created, you’ll need to boot from it on the faulty PC: this requires another trip to the BIOS / UEFI, where there will be an option to boot from the installation media you’ve just created, rather than the system drive.
Hardware failure problems
If all else fails, there may be a hardware failure, which limits what you can do yourself to fix it.
If you press the power switch on your Windows PC and nothing happens — no lights, no whirring, no nothing — the fault could have something to do with the motherboard or with the power coming into the computer.
If the power supply or battery appears to be working but you’re not seeing anything onscreen and none of the Black Screen of Death solutions work, there’s a chance the motherboard might have died. You may get a beep or two — these are error codes and you can try looking up the beep combination and your motherboard model on the web. After that, it depends how confident you feel replacing components yourself. If you want to give it a try, iFixit is a good place to start.

Illustration by Samar Haddad / The Verge

Having your Windows PC start up is something that’s normally taken for granted — until it pauses mid-boot. You may be faced with a serious problem that needs some serious troubleshooting.

Here are some key steps for dealing with problems that may come up when you’re booting a Windows PC. With loads of possible hardware and software combinations out there, it’s hard to be definitive about what might have gone wrong or how to fix it, but this should at least get you pointed in the right direction.

A reminder: sometimes you’re going to need to replace or reformat your main Windows drive when this happens, and that’s why it’s essential that you always have all your files and folders safely backed up.

One more note: if you’ve got an Arm-based Windows PC, try the three-boot method described below. If that doesn’t work, you may have to ask the manufacturer for a recovery image that you can put on a bootable flash drive.

Windows won’t load

First up is where your computer appears to start up as normal and gets past the basic system checks (usually displaying the motherboard or manufacturer logo on the screen) but then won’t load Windows. The problem could be hardware-based, like a defective storage drive, but you might be able to fix it with tools built into Windows itself.

First up, try turning your PC on and off again, a fix that works surprisingly often:

Power down the PC by pressing and holding the power button.
Remove all peripherals (except the keyboard, mouse, and monitor on a desktop).
Wait five minutes.
Boot up the PC by pressing the power button again.

You might be back in business. If not, you might get sent to the Windows Recovery Environment (WinRE), which has a pale blue backdrop and simple interface and offers some troubleshooting options under the Troubleshoot heading.

If the WinRE screen doesn’t show up after a failed boot, you can launch it with the three-boot method:

Start up your computer, and when the boot process begins, press and hold the power button for about 10 seconds to turn the PC off.
Repeat the process twice.
In the third boot, you should be in the WinRE.

Black Screen of Death

This strategy can also be useful if you get what is popularly known as the “Black Screen of Death” — in other words, your PC turns on but doesn’t show anything on the screen. In that case, relaunching it three times could put you in WinRE. You can also try restarting the video driver by pressing the Windows + Ctrl + Shift + B keys.

But first, try adjusting the brightness settings or checking your connections. Sometimes it’s the simplest solutions that work.

Safe Mode

Screenshot: Microsoft
The WinRE feature (which is similar for Windows 10 and 11) gives you access to some basic troubleshooting tools.

It’s possible that you can launch Windows in Safe Mode: pick Advanced options > Startup Settings > Restart, then tap 5 for Safe Mode with networking. This starts Windows with just the basics in terms of settings and drivers, and if this works, you can try rolling back recent app updates or uninstalling tools you’ve recently added.

If you can’t get into Safe Mode, another option from the WinRE Troubleshoot menu is Startup Repair. This does exactly what it sounds like: Windows will attempt to reset settings and configurations related to the boot-up process that may have become corrupted.

Also on the Troubleshoot screen, you’ve got Uninstall Updates. If you think a recent Windows update may have caused your boot-up woes, then you can roll back the latest update.

Should you still not be able to get into Windows and you’re returned to WinRE, after Troubleshoot, choose Command Prompt. This gives you access to a text interface where you can run some basic disk checks and fixes: Microsoft has a list of commands you can try.

More WinRE and BIOS / UEFI troubleshooting options

If you’re getting no joy from WinRE, head to the BIOS (Basic Input/Output System) screen, now called the UEFI (Unified Extensible Firmware Interface) on newer computers. This is the software running on the motherboard, which kicks into action before Windows is loaded from disk.

If Windows isn’t starting, you may get dumped into the BIOS / UEFI automatically, or you may need to tap a key while the system is loading to get there. The key will typically be something like F2 or Del, but you should see a message on the screen that tells you more.

There’s not a whole lot you can do from the BIOS / UEFI, but you can at least run some diagnostic checks and look under the storage section to see if your system drives are actually being recognized at the motherboard level. There should also be an option to reset the BIOS / UEFI back to the defaults — this is worth trying, too, to put the boot-up process back to its factory state.

Screenshot: Microsoft
You may need to install Windows again from a USB drive.

If you’ve come all this way and still can’t get Windows to load, the most logical next step is reinstalling Windows. The reinstall option may appear as Reset this PC under Troubleshoot in WinRE, but not always — it depends on your system and what’s gone wrong. If it is there, you’ll be able to choose Keep my files (which will repair Windows without touching your data) or Remove everything (which wipes the drive and then puts a clean install of Windows on top).

If WinRE isn’t offering you these options, you can borrow a Windows PC from a friend or family member and create a USB drive or DVD you can install the operating system from. Microsoft has full instructions for how to do this. This will wipe and reset everything, and it should restore Windows to its original state.

Once the USB or DVD has been created, you’ll need to boot from it on the faulty PC: this requires another trip to the BIOS / UEFI, where there will be an option to boot from the installation media you’ve just created, rather than the system drive.

Hardware failure problems

If all else fails, there may be a hardware failure, which limits what you can do yourself to fix it.

If you press the power switch on your Windows PC and nothing happens — no lights, no whirring, no nothing — the fault could have something to do with the motherboard or with the power coming into the computer.

If the power supply or battery appears to be working but you’re not seeing anything onscreen and none of the Black Screen of Death solutions work, there’s a chance the motherboard might have died. You may get a beep or two — these are error codes and you can try looking up the beep combination and your motherboard model on the web. After that, it depends how confident you feel replacing components yourself. If you want to give it a try, iFixit is a good place to start.

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