HP System with weird boot/drive issues

[spl3001]

Trying to diagnose problem with the following system:

 

HP Z420 Workstation (Motherboard model: FMB-1101)

 

System has two 1 TB Seagate SATA hard drives plugged into the motherboard.  Windows 7, vers 7600 as far as I can tell.

 

One is a boot drive and the other is a data drive.  System was booting correctly approximately one week ago.  Hard drives are detected during post.  BIOS is password protected so I cannot get further details.  One drive appears to have a recovery partition as the system goes into recovery mode after failing to boot.  However, recovery mode does not detect the Windows installation and a diskpart command in the command line reveals NO FIXED DISK.

 

I've tried both a Windows 7 7600, and what I believe was Windows 7 SP 1 USB boot drive.  Diskpart in these two only shows the USB boot drive in the list.  However, when I use diskpart on the latest Windows 10 Boot Media USB (made today), it shows all disks (the two 1 TB disks and the USB drive).  Partitions and volumes all look healthy, and the C: drive is present and labeled as "System".  The contents all appear there as well.

 

I tried to do a bootrec /fixboot but get an "Access is denied" message.  I only performed this after apparently successfully performing a bootrec /rebuildbcd and bootrec /fixmbr.  Note: I did have to do the old rename and change attribute trick to the existing bootbcd folder.

 

I downloaded the storage drivers from HPs website and put them on a separate USB drive and attempted to load them during the Windows 7 repair process, but none of the "Setup Information" files are valid hardware drivers according to the Windows 7 "Load drivers" dialog.  Is there another way to get the storage drivers loaded?  I'm not sure if that's even the issue.

 

Needless to say, I'm stuck.  This is not a system I am familiar with and was only brought in yesterday to take a look.  It is an equipment manufacturer computer designed to interface with an SEM EDAX, and we decided to forego the maintenance contract this year...

 

Any help is appreciated.

[seagate_surfer]

Have you tried to do an FW upgrade on those Seagate drives? you can do so with the serial number using this link:

• https://apps1.seagate.com/downloads/request.html

It can be a connection problem between the hard drive and the computer, or unfortunately a hardware problem, or others. Reattach / Reseat the hard drive in the computer and restart the computer to verify if the problem was solved, this sounds simple but it makes sure the unit is properly connected. Due to the fact that you already used the Windows Startup Repair and also run the repairs via command lines, I would try to rebuild the MBR with any partition available that you can find.

[spl3001]

There appears to be no firmware updates available, and suggests to look for "CERTIFICATE" Firmware Update below the firmware section, and there doesn't appear to be any of that either.

 

I've done a chkdsk with no errors.  I've moved the drives to different SATA ports and have swapped in different SATA cables.  I really need to be able to run a Windows 7 Boot USB and see those drives as I can at least attempt a Startup repair, but only the Windows 10 Boot USB can see the drives.

 

Unfortunately, from what the Windows 10 USB boot drive can surmise, there doesn't appear to be any System Restore Points.  I've encountered this before and am astonished that automatic/regular system restore points weren't DEFAULT in Windows 7 (are they even default in Windows 10?).

 

Are there some kind of drivers I can use with the Windows 7 boot USB to force these drives to be detected?  Motherboard/disk controller drivers?  I didn't find any for the FBM-1101 that would work (mentioned in original post).  And Seagate doesn't appear to have any for the two serial numbers I checked with that utility above that seagate_surfer mentioned.

[seagate_surfer]

The only time I heard something like that was when the NVMe SSDs were a new thing and Windows 7 didn't detect them because it didn't have or it didn't support native drivers for NVMe... Regarding the restore points, I've seen many cases where the users disable that option on Windows and not the system by default so you better create a restore point from now on, just in case!

This has to be some sort of corruption or alteration in the OS. Does it have to be mandatory Windows 7? Why don't you just install the Windows 10? The cases I have seen where a machine cannot boot from USB were fixed doing a BIOS upgrade and if even after a BIOS upgrade the machine cannot boot from USB is because it doesn't do it. You can try different methods, for example, create another bootable media via CD/DVD or use one partition from one of your drives to put the installation media there and then boot the computer from that partition and install the OS in the other storage device. Some people have told me that they have installed the OS in the same drive but just in another partition and I guess it works that way but I've never tried that myself and scares a little bit too, I've always used one device to boot the machine and another one to install the OS.

[spl3001]

Ok, so some updates:

 

After resetting the BIOS password via jumper, I changed the drive controller from RAID+AHCP to just AHCP.  This allowed all the Windows 7 boot media to then recognize the drives and the Windows install on the boot drive.  After repeating the bootrec commands, I had no success.

 

I allowed the system to boot normally, as far as it could and noticed a flash of a BSOD.  I recorded via video and got a 0x0000007b error: INACCESSIBLE_BOOT_MEDIA.

 

I tried Startup Repair again, and this time Window says: 

 

Startup Repair cannot repair this computer automatically

 

Under details: AutoFailover and CorruptRegistry are some of the ProblemSignatures that seem important.

 

I'm pretty sure there isn't a backup of the registry or a System Restore point, so at this point I think I am up the creek without a paddle.  Is there anything left to do besides a clean install?

[TheDelphiDude]

This is a long, long, long shot, but here goes:

1. Attach the HDD with the OS to another system.

2. Using DISM or ImageX to capture the Windows partition. Do not capture any other partitions.

3. Next, mount the captured image and use DISM to remove all drivers apart from those used for interfacing with SEM EDAX, or drivers you can't get from the HP website. Unmount the image and commit it.

4. Get another 1TB harddisk. Create the same partition layout as the original harddisk using Diskpart, ie, the system partition, the OS partition etc.

5. Apply the previously captured image to the new harddisk
6. Place the new harddisk in the HP system, boot from a Windows 7 DVD.
7. Select recovery, and open a command prompt
8. If all goes well, your OS partition should be C:.
9.Type C:\Windows\System32\BCDBOOT C:\Windows /l e-US and press Enter

10. Exit Windows setup, and try booting from the new harddisk

This will have essentially "cloned" your OS installation with a new boot manager, but without the drivers (they'll need reinstalling).

[spl3001]

If the registry is really corrupt, won't I just be cloning a system with a corrupt registry?  I'm willing to go through the process, I'm just not sure what the likelihood of success will be.

 

I do see if there is a driver issue causing all the problems how it might be circumvented though.  Is there any relationship between the BSOD "INACCESSIBLE_BOOT_MEDIA" and the Automatic Repair complaining about a corrupt registry?

[seagate_surfer]

I would try to rebuild the MBR (master boot record). Unfortunately, the built-in Windows tools cannot help with this and you will have to make use of third-party software. If the rebuilt MBR still cannot resolve "there are no fixed disks" to show problem, you should consider if there are errors on the physical hard drive. Connect the hard drive to a running and known working Windows PC, if this is physical damage on the hard disk the problem will follow the hard drives, you’d better change a new hard drive if this was the case. The following is a list of 10 tools that can help you rebuild the MBR:

• https://www.lifewire.com/free-disk-partition-software-tools-2624950

[spl3001]

1 hour ago, seagate_surfer said:

I would try to rebuild the MBR (master boot record). Unfortunately, the built-in Windows tools cannot help with this and you will have to make use of third-party software. If the rebuilt MBR still cannot resolve "there are no fixed disks" to show problem, you should consider if there are errors on the physical hard drive. Connect the hard drive to a running and known working Windows PC, if this is physical damage on the hard disk the problem will follow the hard drives, you’d better change a new hard drive if this was the case. The following is a list of 10 tools that can help you rebuild the MBR:

• https://www.lifewire.com/free-disk-partition-software-tools-2624950

I don't have the "No Fixed Disk" issue any more.  I've got an "INACCESSIBLE_BOOT_MEDIA" mixed with a "CorruptRegister" issue with the drive.  I am going to attempt TheDelphiDude's plan of attack and see where that gets me.

[spl3001]

Ok, I'm about a third through the image/driver removal process.  DISM and Windows PE is all new to me, but I'm making my way through semi-successfully.

 

I've made an image of the system partition and mounted it to a directory on another partition for servicing.  I did a:

 

dism /Image:D:\mount /Get-Drivers

 

to see what to remove, but the list is longer than can be displayed and scrolled through (must be a line limit in the Windows PE command environment, not sure how to change).  From what I can see, there are a LOT of third party drivers for various things and a LOT of EDAX related drivers.  Are there any filtering/wildcard commands to get a list of the non-EDAX drivers (like: *ed?x*)  And if so, can I compile this list as input into the: 

dism /Image:d:\mount /Remove-Driver /Driver:etc.inf /Driver:etc2.inf (and so forth)

command I will need to call next to strip them out?  Because there are probably several dozen drivers that could be stripped out.

 

By the way, I'm using this site for my DISM guide (and the various pages linked from there for other DISM steps and procedures):

https://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/dn898469(v=vs.60)

 

And I know this is a "long, long, long" shot, but any guidance to get this to a testing point is appreciated.

[seagate_surfer]

Ok, either trying to repair the MBR with third-party software or try to clone it only with the SEM EDAX controllers will attempt to fix the partition problem. You can also check for a corrupted hard drive as it might be the cause of the error, you can use SeaTools for Windows to check:https://www.seagate.com/support/downloads/seatools/ 

 

Then, I have failed sometimes to switch to boot into safe mode, which can also help solve problems easier, so don't forget to try the safe mode and also change the BIOS settings to AHCI because it seems to reactivate some keys that can help you get a higher percentage of success when trying to repair the partition, some other people have reverted back to AHCI instead so if you are in AHCI already you can try reverting back to compatibility mode.

[seagate_surfer]

By the way, I forgot to add that if you want to recreate the installation media of Windows 7 and then try to start the automatic repairs (or by CMD) again after making the changes in the BIOS, you can obtain a new copy of the OS with the activation key number from the following link:

https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/software-download/windows7