Cannot boot to windows after moving PC

[Humvee202]

Hello,

 

I moved house yesterday and when turning on my PC last night it wouldn't boot windows. Presumably something was damaged when moving, despite my care. Here is the information:

 

Hardware:

- Samsung 950 pro m.2 nvme (windows drive)

- Samsung 870 Evo ssd (SATA)

- WD 2TB drive (SATA)

- Z170A Motherboard

 

The rest of the hardware I can provide later when I'm home from work if needed. 

 

Issue:

 

- Upon first boot, it goes to the 'American Megatrends' screen in the attached screenshot

- Opening the UEFI BIOS shows the two SATA Drives, and it also detects my m.2 drive in the boot priority list.

- The boot priority list is:

1. Windows boot manager
2. Windows boot managed (WD Drive)
3. Samsung 950 Pro
4. Samsung 870 Evo
5. WD Drive

- Given that the 950 pro is not shown in brackets after the first windows boot manager, maybe this is an issue? When I remove the drive though it doesn't appear at all in the boot priority list, so it definitely detects the drive.

- Quitting the BIOS then prompts a Windows Automatic Repair, leading to the 'Advanced Options' page of the windows repair. I tried letting it run the Startup Repair but had no luck. 

- The Z170A can only handle either: an M.2 Drive, or the Sata Express ports. In the UEFI BIOS, under the Advanced --> Onboard Devices Configuration I see that it is set to Sata express, not M.2. I change it to M.2 and reboot,  but then when I check it, it has changed back to Sata express. I'm not sure what it was set to before my PC started having these issues.  However, I see that when I was first building this PC I suffered from the same issue, and I seemed to resolve it but didn't explain how I did so in this post 

 

 

I would like to stress the fact that this is not an installation of a new drive - it was working before, so everything should simply work straight away with my current BIOS settings. 

 

Thanks in advance for any advice!

 

Kind regards,

Humvee202

[Mumintroll]

Are you sure that the bios settings has not reverted to default?

It could happen if the battery is old and drained, and once you pull the power plug from the pc the bios settings are reset.

[Humvee202]

5 minutes ago, Mumintroll said:

Are you sure that the bios settings has not reverted to default?

It could happen if the battery is old and drained, and once you pull the power plug from the pc the bios settings are reset.

Is there a way I can check what the default settings are? I did notice that the date/time in the BIOS was incorrect. If it has reverted, what would I need to change back?

However I don't think it's reverted though since I've unplugged the power cord plenty of times in recent months without issue. 

 

[Mumintroll]

17 minutes ago, Humvee202 said:

Is there a way I can check what the default settings are? I did notice that the date/time in the BIOS was incorrect. If it has reverted, what would I need to change back?

However I don't think it's reverted though since I've unplugged the power cord plenty of times in recent months without issue. 

 

If the date and time was incorrect then the bios settings has been reverted to default.

First buy a new battery and replace the old one.

 

Is it Windows 11 you're using?

It needs TPM and Secure boot enabled.

Once you're happy with the bios settings and it works there should be somewhere to save the settings to a file, incase you need it later.

[Humvee202]

5 minutes ago, Mumintroll said:

If the date and time was incorrect then the bios settings has been reverted to default.

First buy a new battery and replace the old one.

 

Is it Windows 11 you're using?

It needs TPM and Secure boot enabled.

Thanks for the suggestion. I'll get a new Motherboard battery and try again this evening and post a reply with the results. I'm surprised that there aren't other errors occurring if the battery is dead, and it's very unfortunate timing that it happened now. 

 

It's Windows 10 - should I also enable TPM and Secure boot? (Presumably I can find these options relatively easily in the BIOS settings). And is there anything else I should change?

[Mumintroll]

2 hours ago, Humvee202 said:

 

It's Windows 10 - should I also enable TPM and Secure boot? (Presumably I can find these options relatively easily in the BIOS settings). And is there anything else I should change?

 

Windows 10 doesn't need TPM.

If Secure boot is enabled you can try disable it to see if that helps.

Perhaps there are some boot settings in bios to check aswell, if UEFI or Legacy boot mode is set.

[Humvee202]

4 hours ago, Mumintroll said:

 

Windows 10 doesn't need TPM.

If Secure boot is enabled you can try disable it to see if that helps.

Perhaps there are some boot settings in bios to check aswell, if UEFI or Legacy boot mode is set.

I replaced the battery but no luck still. It remembered the correct time and date settings through the battery replacement, and it still won't stay on m.2 mode instead of Sata express (but I think that is a non-issue given that I didn't need to fix it when I first built my PC).

 

When I turn on the PC it starts up for a second, then turns off then restarts. When it gets through trying all the boot options it gave a windows circlular spinning dots icon below the Asus logo but then went back to trying to boot up again. 

 

Secure boot is set to Windows UEFI mode. The other option is 'Other OS'. CSM is enabled with boot device control set to UEFI and Legacy OPROM. The settings for Boot from network devices, storage devices and PCI-E/PCI Expansion devices is set to legacy only. The other option is 'UEFI driver first'

 

I see now on the Mobo itself the boot device LED lit, implying that it can't find a boot device even though it detects my NVme with windows on it. Maybe I need to clear the CMOS as well as replacing the battery?

 

Edit: it went to windows automatic repair, and I selected startup repair, but it failed and generated a log file. I think this comes from the version of windows installed in my HDD, which I had before I had the m.2 drive? In the log file it says the root cause is that there is no hard disk found. So even though the BIOS can detect my drive, it seems that it can't find windows on it, or vice versa? This is in line with the boot device LED on my motherboard... 

 

Any suggestions? I'm going to try restoring to a previous system restore point. Maybe my boot disk is corrupted, or maybe I didn't correctly reset the CMOS when I removed the battery as it retained the date/time

 

[Humvee202]

Update:

 

I reset the CMOS properly (removed the battery, shorted the jumper etc.) so that the time reset but still no luck.

 

When turning on the PC it does the POST tests then restarts. The boot device LED went off for a while and I had a windows loading screen, then it went on and the PC restarted again and went to automatic recovery and I'm back to where I started before.

 

I could try updating the BIOS? Or I could try launching windows from a USB?

[Mumintroll]

25 minutes ago, Humvee202 said:

Update:

 

I reset the CMOS properly (removed the battery, shorted the jumper etc.) so that the time reset but still no luck.

 

When turning on the PC it does the POST tests then restarts. The boot device LED went off for a while and I had a windows loading screen, then it went on and the PC restarted again and went to automatic recovery and I'm back to where I started before.

 

I could try updating the BIOS? Or I could try launching windows from a USB?

 

Hmm this is weird.

Has Windows become corrupted?

 

You could try a clean reinstall. Create usb stick with Win 10 install media, https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/create-installation-media-for-windows-99a58364-8c02-206f-aa6f-40c3b507420d

 

Backup your files first.

 

[Humvee202]

1 hour ago, Mumintroll said:

 

Hmm this is weird.

Has Windows become corrupted?

 

You could try a clean reinstall. Create usb stick with Win 10 install media, https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/create-installation-media-for-windows-99a58364-8c02-206f-aa6f-40c3b507420d

 

Backup your files first.

 

Was thinking this would be the next step.

 

How can I back-up my files without access to windows? Maybe it's best I just take it to a local repair shop

 

Firstly I'm going to update my bios since it's very out of date and give it one last go

[Humvee202]

An update:

 

I updated the bios and now at least in the boot priority list it shows Windows boot manager (Samsung 950 pro), which it wasn't doing before, and I got a BSOD that said the boot drive was inaccessible. So it seems that it can't access my drive. Not sure how to proceed for here...

[Mumintroll]

31 minutes ago, Humvee202 said:

An update:

 

I updated the bios and now at least in the boot priority list it shows Windows boot manager (Samsung 950 pro), which it wasn't doing before, and I got a BSOD that said the boot drive was inaccessible. So it seems that it can't access my drive. Not sure how to proceed for here...

 

Could the drive have gone bad?

Or has it been unplugged for too long? For how long was the pc off and unplugged? Several months?

 

You could pick out the boot drive, then install Windows on another drive (just anything even a spare harddrive), then put the ssd back in and try to access the data while booting up on the spare drive. You could then do some health checks on the ssd aswell, reading the SMART data on it.

[Humvee202]

On 9/16/2024 at 10:08 PM, Mumintroll said:

 

Could the drive have gone bad?

Or has it been unplugged for too long? For how long was the pc off and unplugged? Several months?

 

You could pick out the boot drive, then install Windows on another drive (just anything even a spare harddrive), then put the ssd back in and try to access the data while booting up on the spare drive. You could then do some health checks on the ssd aswell, reading the SMART data on it.

I dont think so. It was only off and unplugged for a day. 

 

An older version of windows 10 is installed already on my HDD, from before I got the ssd. This is in the boot priority list, but it doesn't boot to that so I guess I can't just open windows via that installation and access the ssd.

[Humvee202]

Took it to the repair store in the end and they just reinstalled windows - could have done it myself but oh well!