I Used ChatGPT to Fix My Computer (Here’s How It Went)
Recently, my Windows computer stubbornly refused to boot, so I turned to a traditional troubleshooting approach that has served me well for decades: I entered some symptoms into Google to see what would happen.
There are tons of tips on the Internet, millions of posts on forums and Reddit asking for PC help, and millions of posts trying to offer solutions to the problem. Depending on your problem, finding the relevant information may take some time, but this approach often produces results.
However, after trying many fixes suggested online, as well as a few of my own ideas, Windows still wouldn’t start properly. So, I decided to see if generative artificial intelligence could lend me a helping hand—beyond writing poetry and finding a job , could it also tell me how to make Windows work again?
We know that AI is trained on large swathes of the open web, including support forums and Reddit threads . But is he smart enough to summarize and synthesize all this data into a form that is actually useful for solving computer problems?
Windows PC problem
My Windows computer has an SSD for the operating system and programs, and a hard drive for games and everything else, and it’s on most of the time, so when there was a power outage in our area, everything shut down. instantly and without warning. After this, the SSD with Windows enabled did not boot as usual.
When starting up, the PC displays a blue screen with the message “UNMOUNTABLE_BOOT_VOLUME”, so this is our first clue. Using a Windows 11 USB recovery drive, I can access the recovery utility on startup, but it just displays a message saying “we couldn’t restore your computer.” The next option is the command line, and from there I can see the files and folders on both the SSD and HDD – assuming the data is there, but the drives can’t be booted.
I then got tips from the internet, including “sfc /scannow” command line lines to scan and fix errors (this told me the fix was done, but it didn’t make any difference), and the “bootrec” series – ” /fixmbr”, “/fixboot”, “/scanos” and “/rebuildbcd” which either all succeeded or told me that access to the SSD was denied. The old trusty “chkdsk” command also did not run and also produced a write-protected message.
At this point, it seemed like the power cut had somehow corrupted the SSD and put it into write protect mode – which seems to be a fairly common occurrence . Although the advice included with online posts that mention these types of problems mostly focus on replacing the drive, the next time I booted up I received a different blue screen message: “The boot configuration data for your PC is missing or contains errors.”
The blue screen recommended that I reinstall Windows so that all my data is backed up. Before giving up the SSD, I tried installing a fresh copy of the operating system from a connected USB drive. However, when it came to the list of drives that I could install Windows 11 on, the SSD was not included.
So I was most likely looking at a faulty SSD drive, even though the files on it were listed correctly when I viewed it through the command line interface. My last resort was the power of generative artificial intelligence, and although I wasn’t optimistic about my chances of successfully solving the problem at this stage, I thought it was worth a try.
I’m trying to find a solution
For the repair, I used ChatGPT’s o1-preview model: OpenAI says it’s the best model for advanced reasoning , and I had a feeling I needed all the advanced reasoning I could get. However, for now, you need a ChatGPT Plus subscription to access o1-preview, which will cost you $20 per month.
After carefully describing the problem in as much detail and with as much context as possible, I let ChatGPT get to work. If you’re using the o1-preview model, responses take longer to appear, but messages such as “identifying possible causes” and “diagnosing SSD health” appear on the screen.
As is sometimes the case for testing purposes, ChatGPT first showed me two answers and asked me to choose the best one, which was a bit difficult since I didn’t know if any of them were correct. The main suggestions that I haven’t tried before are to use the Diskpart utility (which didn’t see my SSD) and remove Bitlocker encryption (which didn’t work either). I also received some more general advice, including backing up your data, testing the SSD on another PC, and using any diagnostic tools provided by the manufacturer.
The advantage of AI bots over regular web searches is their two-way nature: I can ask clarifying questions, give ideas about what went wrong, ask for clarification on anything, and customize suggestions. In most cases, the responses made sense and were valid (the “chkdsk” and “bootrec” commands appeared again), but eventually even ChatGPT had to admit defeat and acknowledge the “clear signs” of a hardware failure.
Having already established that I was probably looking for a fatal problem with the SSD and replacing the entire drive, it was perhaps a little unfair to expect ChatGPT to work wonders. However, he made the right point (I think) and even offered some helpful suggestions to prevent the same problem from happening again (most notably, an uninterruptible power supply). This seems like a more personalized and useful troubleshooting option if its results can be trusted.
Of course the sample size is one: I would need to test several types of PC problems through ChatGPT to see if it is actually useful for computer repair. At this point, it doesn’t appear that Microsoft or Apple have enough confidence in the technology to offer any kind of repair bot—perhaps because they don’t want to be held responsible if a bad AI idea results in significant data loss. While all the answers I saw made logical sense, no one has yet solved the problem of generative AI hallucinations .