Windows install dissapeared

VidgiaGames · November 26, 2022

After some split second power outages while I was at school 2 weeks ago, my desktop computer began to act weird. Sometimes when it would boot up from uefi it would show the uefi screen but then just go black and the fans would ramp up. At the same time my windows install became unstable. Yesterday I gathered the courage to face the corruption again and won. I then installed the recent updates and then it was fine. This mourning when I went to power it from sleep it was booting from uefi which was weird, and then it black screened. So I asked my older brother from help since he was home from college. He booted to uefi and noticed that the uefi had returned to default settings. He assumed the black screen was due to boot manager being weird and so restricted it to only booting from my Samsung SSD and then on boot it said it couldn't find an operating system installed. He returned the boot options back to what they were before and it still refused to work, we then tried to force boot to every drive and listed partition listed but my windows install was not detected on any of them. It would show the uefi screen and then displays the text "An operating system wasn't found."What should I do? I'm using an ASRock b450m pro 4 motherboard, a Gigabyte OC 6g gtx 1660 super, a 16g 3200 set of ram, a 512 g Samsung 970 evo, a 240g SanDisk ssd that once held windows but now just games, and a 1tb hard drive just for games that might have a windows backup on it.

November 26, 2022

It's possible that the abrupt power loss or surge that occurred when the computer was plugged in and running caused a problem by corrupting system files.

What you can do is try to boot into a command prompt and run scandisk /n on your C:drive and let it try to repair them.

Also clear your CMOS as that contains system files between restarts.

VidgiaGames · November 26, 2022

I would not be able to use command prompt as when I try to boot now it just tells me that there is no os installed, I will check to see if clearing CMOS will work.

Alan G · November 26, 2022

When you did the fresh Windows install, did you unplug the two other drives? Usually when you get an error about no OS installed, it's that it isn't where you thought it might be. Also never assume that our power source will be on 24/7. As you saw a split second power outage can screw things up. Even an inexpensive UPS will prevent this.

Also, do a health check on the Samsung EVO SSD to make sure it is still OK. I've used Samsung SSDs for a lot of years and they've been reliable but you never know when one will fail on you.