[HELP] PC Will Not Boot Windows

[IanMinatani]

Hello everyone! I've been trying to help troubleshoot my friends issue for a while now, to no avail. Please offer any help you can. His PC is the:

Corsair Vengeance 5180

CPU: i7-8700
GPU: GeForce RTX 2080
Mobo: b360
RAM: 2x8gb DDr4 2666
Storage 1: Force MP300
Storage 2: Seagate 2tb HDD
OS: Windows 10

Essentially, on the night of 10/3 he got a blue screen of death and decided to call it a night, he restarted the computer and went to bed. The next morning his PC was on UEFI screen. Restarting PC results in a return to BIOS; enabling Optane Genie in bios (he does NOT have optane drive) results in an endless windows/Vengeance startup loop.

We have tried fiddling with UEFI settings, most notably: boot priorities and BBS Boot Options, Fast Boot On/Off, Optane Genie On/Off, returning to default settings.
We have also tried using Windows 10 Installation Media to attempt to repair or restore his system. The repair/troubleshoot did nothing. The restore had two options, one from 10/3 afternoon, and one from 10/2; both was "not completed successfully."

The pickle of the situation is compounded by: I'm not near his PC, can only discord call him. They can't easily access the internals of the PC (to re-insert ram or unplug and replug drives).

Thank you for all y'alls help!
 

[.Apex.]

59 minutes ago, IanMinatani said:

We have also tried using Windows 10 Installation Media to attempt to repair or restore his system. The repair/troubleshoot did nothing. The restore had two options, one from 10/3 afternoon, and one from 10/2; both was "not completed successfully."

If the Motherboard goes straight into BIOS but it can still see and read the drive then it sounds like the Boot Sector on the drive got corrupted, is there any chance he can do a clean Windows Install? he could save and copy his data if he boots from a Live Linux USB like Manjaro or Ubuntu, his 2TB Drive should be untouched since it doesn't have Windows on it and if he is going to do a clean install I suggest he turns off the 2TB Drive in BIOS so it doesn't get accidentally formatted

[IanMinatani]

37 minutes ago, Syn. said:

If the Motherboard goes straight into BIOS but it can still see and read the drive then it sounds like the Boot Sector on the drive got corrupted, is there any chance he can do a clean Windows Install? he could save and copy his data if he boots from a Live Linux USB like Manjaro or Ubuntu, his 2TB Drive should be untouched since it doesn't have Windows on it and if he is going to do a clean install I suggest he turns off the 2TB Drive in BIOS so it doesn't get accidentally formatted

Linux and Ubuntu are a bit harder... My buddy is newer to PC's than I am, and we both havn't touched linux. Still, I like the idea and will likely move forward with reinstalling windows! Thank you for the help, I'll let you know how it goes (probably in future days, as my friend and I are a bit burntout)

[.Apex.]

1 minute ago, IanMinatani said:

Linux and Ubuntu are a bit harder... My buddy is newer to PC's than I am, and we both havn't touched linux. Still, I like the idea and will likely move forward with reinstalling windows! Thank you for the help, I'll let you know how it goes (probably in future days, as my friend and I are a bit burntout)

Making a Live Linux USB is easily done with Rufus, and booting from it is as simple as booting from any USB, he doesn't need to know how to use Linux since he only has to use the File Manager to navigate to his files if needed, otherwise if he isn't concerned about losing his data then it's not necessary

 

Rufus:

https://rufus.ie/

 

Manjaro:

https://manjaro.org/download/

 

Download the XFCE version of Manjaro, then open Rufus and click on Select and pick the ISO you just downloaded and click Start and that's it, all he has to do is restart and go into BIOS and boot from the USB, but you might want to disable Secure Boot in BIOS if it's enabled since it won't let you boot from a USB if it's on.

[IanMinatani]

33 minutes ago, Syn. said:

Making a Live Linux USB is easily done with Rufus, and booting from it is as simple as booting from any USB, he doesn't need to know how to use Linux since he only has to use the File Manager to navigate to his files if needed, otherwise if he isn't concerned about losing his data then it's not necessary

 

Rufus:

https://rufus.ie/

 

Manjaro:

https://manjaro.org/download/

 

Download the XFCE version of Manjaro, then open Rufus and click on Select and pick the ISO you just downloaded and click Start and that's it, all he has to do is restart and go into BIOS and boot from the USB, but you might want to disable Secure Boot in BIOS if it's enabled since it won't let you boot from a USB if it's on.

Savage! In that case, I think we'll go for that then. Thanks a bunch Syn!! :^ )

[.Apex.]

52 minutes ago, IanMinatani said:

Savage! In that case, I think we'll go for that then. Thanks a bunch Syn!! :^ )

You're welcome and you don't have to install Manjaro or any of that sorts, you can start using it right away running from the USB so he could use the File Manager, once you boot from the USB it will show you a list of options you can select through, just hit Enter on the default selected option and it would boot to Manjaro, and the default user password if needed is "manjaro".

 

[IanMinatani]

3 hours ago, Syn. said:

You're welcome and you don't have to install Manjaro or any of that sorts, you can start using it right away running from the USB so he could use the File Manager, once you boot from the USB it will show you a list of options you can select through, just hit Enter on the default selected option and it would boot to Manjaro, and the default user password if needed is "manjaro".

 

Hey man! We actually got into Manjaro and backed up files. Windows will not install, not even a little bit.

Diskpart wont clean, clean all, or remove partitions, neither will MSI Secure Erase Plus. Diskpart clean says it was successful but does nothing. Windows Installer drive selector delete/format does nothing. We've tried removing disk attributes with attribute disk clear readonly but to no avail.

We've tried installing windows to the largest partition which gets us until it needs to restart, then it goes back into the Installer beginning. Going into BIOS we can't successfully boot right from the desired drive.

My takeaway from all this, is that Manjaro is savage. If I had that in highschool I could be doing all sorts of shenanigans on school PC's.

At this point I suspect the drive is too far gone.

[homeap5]

First try to install Windows on some spare drive (it can be some old hdd) to be sure it's really Windows problem. System should not broke by itself, there is always a reason.

[.Apex.]

8 hours ago, IanMinatani said:

Diskpart wont clean, clean all, or remove partitions, neither will MSI Secure Erase Plus. Diskpart clean says it was successful but does nothing. Windows Installer drive selector delete/format does nothing. We've tried removing disk attributes with attribute disk clear readonly but to no avail.

We've tried installing windows to the largest partition which gets us until it needs to restart, then it goes back into the Installer beginning. Going into BIOS we can't successfully boot right from the desired drive.

hmm where were you trying to use Diskpart? were you trying to erase the drive while you are using Windows? to clean an OS drive you must boot from something else, if you create a Windows Installation Media on USB then you can boot into it and erase the drive, you did mention that you used Windows Installer drive selector but I don't know what you mean by it does nothing, it should erase the drive or at the very least give you an error if it doesn't, but you must boot to the installer using the USB, not WHILE using Windows.

 

Windows 10 Installation Media:
https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/software-download/windows10

[IanMinatani]

4 hours ago, Syn. said:

hmm where were you trying to use Diskpart? were you trying to erase the drive while you are using Windows? to clean an OS drive you must boot from something else, if you create a Windows Installation Media on USB then you can boot into it and erase the drive, you did mention that you used Windows Installer drive selector but I don't know what you mean by it does nothing, it should erase the drive or at the very least give you an error if it doesn't, but you must boot to the installer using the USB, not WHILE using Windows.

 

Windows 10 Installation Media:
https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/software-download/windows10

Right I see what you mean. While using diskpart we were booted from the Windows Installation Media.

During the Windows Install process, where you select the drive to install onto, there is an option to delete or format partitions and that did nothing. One time we got the drive to read as all unallocated space, but then the partitions and the data magically reappeared.

We have yet to get back into Windows on his PC :  (

[homeap5]

Looks to me like dead drive. Not completely dead but enough to prevent any write operations.

 

Do as I said - install Windows on some other drive.

[thomas2000]

If you can get into recovery media, go to cmd and do chkdsk d: /r . Change partition to wherever your system is on. 

otherwise, you can remove all partitions from Manjaro using Gpart or KDE partition manager and retry the windows install.

[.Apex.]

2 hours ago, IanMinatani said:

During the Windows Install process, where you select the drive to install onto, there is an option to delete or format partitions and that did nothing. One time we got the drive to read as all unallocated space, but then the partitions and the data magically reappeared.

The partitions would be recreated if you choose that drive to be configured as an OS drive, though it should be empty, have you tried continuing with the Windows installation process regardless?

 

Also a video or pictures would help a lot to understand what's going on when you try to format it using the Windows Installation Media, I have never seen this kind of behavior before

 

He could also create a partition on the 2TB Drive and install Windows on that, though when he buys another drive to install Windows on, it can be a bit tricky to get rid of the previous Windows UEFI partitions that were installed on the 2TB drive, if you are sure that his drive is dead or unresponsive then I suggest that he should hold off and get a new one to not have to deal with that mess

[IanMinatani]

19 hours ago, Syn. said:

The partitions would be recreated if you choose that drive to be configured as an OS drive, though it should be empty, have you tried continuing with the Windows installation process regardless?

 

Also a video or pictures would help a lot to understand what's going on when you try to format it using the Windows Installation Media, I have never seen this kind of behavior before

 

He could also create a partition on the 2TB Drive and install Windows on that, though when he buys another drive to install Windows on, it can be a bit tricky to get rid of the previous Windows UEFI partitions that were installed on the 2TB drive, if you are sure that his drive is dead or unresponsive then I suggest that he should hold off and get a new one to not have to deal with that mess

This is really the only picture I have to work with personally. 

We have tried continuing with the installation process, selecting Drive 1 Partition 3. It will "successfully" (it says) install windows, then proceed to restart. It then boots back from flash drive like nothing happened. Note: Bios boot order is set to desired drive first, compounded with that we have tried to boot from desired drive directly from bios with no avail. When attempted from bios, the screen flashes black for a moment and nothing happens.

If my friend is down for it, I think we'll try using Gpart in Manjaro like @thomas2000 suggested, but diskpart didn't do anything before so I don't have high hopes.

Thanks for the continued efforts by the way!

[.Apex.]

2 hours ago, IanMinatani said:

If my friend is down for it, I think we'll try using Gpart in Manjaro like @thomas2000 suggested, but diskpart didn't do anything before so I don't have high hopes.

Yeah using Gparted would be a good idea, the drives are structured as sda/sdb/sdc and the last letter being the differentiator for the drive (as in drive A, drive B etc) and each drive has partitions differentiated by numbers like sda1/sda2, select the drive you want from the top-right dropdown menu and then right click each partition and go to "Format To" and select "Cleared" which would set it as Unallocated, once you're done then click the checkmark on the top to execute the operations, it won't actually do anything unless you apply the changes.

[homeap5]

If you installed Windows on hdd while your ssd is connected, it write boot data to ssd and system to hdd because Windows uses existing boot partition. And because you have problem with ssd - you can't boot. Disconnect ssd and then install Windows on hdd.