My Asus will not boot. It loops from loading and diagnostic, attempting repair, but will not load OS. trying to save Documents through safe mode but can not access safe mode.Machine stuck in "Diagnosing your PC". Asus support SAYS to hit f4 during restart for safe mode, to no avail.how old?
any click click click noises coming from the hard drive?

you're going to have to remove the drive if you need personal files recovered.
than you can try reinstalling the OS.No noises. Has been attempting system restore for about 3 hrs. after finally loading troubleshoot option. don't know how to recover personal files if I remove drive.  sounds like a big question mark over the hard drive integrity. (sadly)

your first hurdle is to recover your data (if at all possible) and since the PC isn't starting, that will entail removing its drive.
if a desktop, removing the side cover will give you access to the drive.
if a laptop, it will either have a separate access panel underneath, usually one for the drive and another for the memory slots, but this varies per make/model of laptop.
some require the entire back plate to be removed while others have the drive sitting under the keyboard (for some god *censored* unexplained reason - please let me one day meet that designer!)

once removed you can either insert it into another PC (if desktop) or put it into an external drive ENCLOSURE (if desktop or laptop).
the drive goes into this external enclosure which in turn connects via USB to you other PC.  so obviously you'll need access to another PC.

more often than not, drives fail enough that a PC won't boot from them, but not enough that they still can't have data retrieved.
it's all going to depend on how it has 'died'.  if indeed it has died.  my first priority would be to safeguard my data, if that isn't important to you or you don't have anything you wouldn't care to lose, than I would move to the next step; reformatting and reload WINDOWS from scratch.

On You Tube you can find disassembly instructions for Asus X550C Notebook repair
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YN7X5WXNRVM

You want to test the hard drive, the RAM and the battery. Beyond that there is not a lot yum can do.


Mark Stated:

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you're going to have to remove the drive if you need personal files recovered.
than you can try reinstalling the OS.

Just wanted to add that removal might not be necessary to gain access to the data on that drive ... as for while the hard drive might be toast.... if its not toast and you want your data recovered without opening the laptop to remove the hard drive, if your able to make a bootable thumb drive of Linux MINT for example you can boot the system off of the USB port and then have a healthy Linux Mint OS running in a LIVE environment aka LIVE Distro where this USB stick acts like a hard drive for Linux to operate and does not require an installation to the system its used on to function. Then if the hard drive is healthy enough to mount the drive which it should do automatically, you then will be able to navigate to this hard drive and then if the file system isnt completely trashed you could plug in an additional USB thumb drive while also keeping the Linux USB drive inserted for the OS to function or external hard drive in addition to Linux USB stick and be able to copy the data to external media before you go with any attempt to reinstall an OS to that drive.

From my own experience the Windows recovery system is a high risk tool. It has the knack  of sometimes making things worse.

There's generally no need to completely disassemble the laptop because they're designed with an eye toward ventilation. Make sure to keep the lid open as it dries out, though, so air can circulate around the keyboard.

First of all, it is important to know that you need to power off your device immediately after the spill. Do not power it back on until you have cleaned it. I cannot stress this enough. If you rush it, you could fry the internals and then it's game over. So, prepare yourself for being without your laptop for at least a couple of days. Unplug the power cable and remove the battery, if possible.

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