Bootmgr missing

[chimimoryo]

I went on vacation for three days with my computer on, like it always is, and I came back to my motherboard and gpu with different argbs on. When I turned on my monitor there was nothing on the screen. I reset my computer and was greeted with the glorious BOOTMGR missing error. I'm planning on updating the bios as my motherboard, asus crosshair hero viii, has a bios flash feature. 

 

What could have caused this problem while I was away? And any other suggestions? 

[whispous]

A failing drive is the most likely of several explainations.

[chimimoryo]

I do have some old hdds on it. Take them off and try to reboot? 

7 minutes ago, whispous said:

A failing drive is the most likely of several explainations.

 

[whispous]

6 minutes ago, chimimoryo said:

I do have some old hdds on it. Take them off and try to reboot? 

 

It's worth a try, but typically BOOTMGR missing means that it can't be found on the OS drive.

 

Can I ask which version of Windows this is?

[chimimoryo]

This is 10. My m.2 is my boot drive and it should be fine 

[chimimoryo]

5 minutes ago, whispous said:

It's worth a try, but typically BOOTMGR missing means that it can't be found on the OS drive. 

I've unplugged the two hdds and now it says 'reboot and select proper boot device' 

[whispous]

3 minutes ago, chimimoryo said:

This is 10. My m.2 is my boot drive and it should be fine 

"It should be fine" is meaningless. Every part of a computer should be fine, but here we are.

[whispous]

1 minute ago, chimimoryo said:

I've unplugged the two hdds and now it says 'reboot and select proper boot device' 

Ok, it may be that Windows installed by putting a boot partition on a drive other than your m.2 - and it could have experienced corruption or failure.

[chimimoryo]

I had a problem before with a wonky update that was fixed by a bios update. Should I try that again? 

5 minutes ago, whispous said:

Ok, it may be that Windows installed by putting a boot partition on a drive other than your m.2 - and it could have experienced corruption or failure.

 

[Sawa Takahashi]

3 minutes ago, chimimoryo said:

I've unplugged the two hdds and now it says 'reboot and select proper boot device' 

Your boot manager was probably set on one of the HDDs. This is common problem with Windows. Only workaround that works 100% of the time is to unplug all other drives when installing Windows.

I think your best course of action is to backup all important data from your boot drive (with another computer or a USB enclosure). Once the backup done I'd erase the boot drive and then reinstall a fresh Windows.

There are a few guides out there to fix a missing UEFI partition but they never worked for me. Reinstalling is a pain but should be straightforward and works the first time.

Hope that helps.

[OddOod]

If you are VERY fancy and tech handy, you can actually manually create a boot sector on your boot drive and fix the problem, but it is not easy, requires quite a bit of typing, and can lead to some weirdness. 
Sometimes startup repair will work. Just make a windows install USB and go to the advanced options screen and select startup repair. I haven't had great luck with that strategy though. 
Best advice is nuke it and start over. 

[chimimoryo]

7 minutes ago, Sawa Takahashi said:

Your boot manager was probably set on one of the HDDs. This is common problem with Windows. Only workaround that works 100% of the time is to unplug all other drives when installing Windows.

I think your best course of action is to backup all important data from your boot drive (with another computer or a USB enclosure). Once the backup done I'd erase the boot drive and then reinstall a fresh Windows.

There are a few guides out there to fix a missing UEFI partition but they never worked for me. Reinstalling is a pain but should be straightforward and works the first time.

Hope that helps.

Hmm, I've updated my bios and now my boot drive isn't in the bios to select. It was recognized on the start up splash screen though 

[chimimoryo]

Forgot I had to enable csm.

Was able to boot into windows but immediately had a blue screen. Then I was greeted with the 'reboot and select proper boot device' 

[chimimoryo]

41 minutes ago, whispous said:

Ok, it may be that Windows installed by putting a boot partition on a drive other than your m.2 - and it could have experienced corruption or failure.

It's been a while since I've messed around in bios, but I can't find my boot drive. It's a 4.0 1tb drive. The bios has the two others listed, but not the boot drive. After the bios upgrade on the initial splash screen, it was recognized though. 

[chimimoryo]

So this is very strange, the boot drive has been 'renamed?' to USB

And shows up as USB partiton 1

[Vicarian]

Wait, what's the problem?  The Sabrent Rocket is a PCI-E Gen 4 NVMe SSD with 2TB of storage.  The boot drive wasn't "renamed" USB.  You likely still have your recovery media attached to the PC, and your boot order is prioritizing removable media. Note the identical partitions sizes and volume names for boot entries #1 and #3.  The only difference is that #1 is configured to run with UEFI (as all modern bootable media should).  The third is not configured that way.

 

Should your machine have more than one NVMe?  Or did it have a single NVMe partitioned into two separate volumes?  Did you build this machine yourself, or did a system integrator do it?  I'm not sure what the Lexar volume is about, and why it would be on a PCI-EX16 slot.

[whispous]

3 hours ago, chimimoryo said:

Forgot I had to enable csm.

Was able to boot into windows but immediately had a blue screen. Then I was greeted with the 'reboot and select proper boot device' 

Please don't change settings like CSM while trying to recover a windows installation.

[Vicarian]

2 minutes ago, whispous said:

CSM

Isn't CSM for booting without UEFI now?  Can 10 even install a non-UEFI boot manager?

[Sawa Takahashi]

58 minutes ago, Vicarian said:

Isn't CSM for booting without UEFI now?  Can 10 even install a non-UEFI boot manager?

Win10 could be installed on a MBR drive in the past. It probably still could.

But that doesn't mean you can switch an already installed Win10 from UEFI to CSM. Most likely the Win10 install will need to be nuked because it spawned corrupted files all over now

 

[Sawa Takahashi]

4 hours ago, chimimoryo said:

Hmm, I've updated my bios and now my boot drive isn't in the bios to select. It was recognized on the start up splash screen though 

Only the devices with an UEFI partition are selectable as boot device. That supports the hypothesis that the UEFI partition was on a HDD, not the actual boot drive.

[chimimoryo]

4 hours ago, Vicarian said:

Wait, what's the problem?  The Sabrent Rocket is a PCI-E Gen 4 NVMe SSD with 2TB of storage.

My boot drive is a different m.2. It's a 1tb drive. 

I think I found another problem. I had a 256g usb drive that my father put all the family photos on. It looks like windows might have tried to install windows to that. I think that was the usb partition it wanted to boot from as that selection is no longer available in the boot order after I removed that drive 

[chimimoryo]

The 1tb m.2 was recognized after flashing the bios last time so I unplugged all the USB devices besides my mouse, keyboard, and speakers. 

 

The 1tb m.2. was recognized. But now there are no drives selectable in my boot drive options 

[chimimoryo]

4 hours ago, whispous said:

Please don't change settings like CSM while trying to recover a windows installation.

Without enabling CSM, the boot drive order isn't selectable. After flashing the bios, it defaults back to disabled. Don't I have to enable it? 

[chimimoryo]

Okay, again, I was able to get into windows after flashing the Bios but windows immediately blue screening. On self reboot, the boot drive isn't recognized again. 

 

After the bios flash, before attempting to load into widows, I ran that motherboard level self drive test and it passed 

[chimimoryo]

So around and around it goes. After flashing the bios my boot drive is recognized. I can get into windows and then it blue screens during start up. I've done this three separate times. 

 

I flashed the bios yet again, made a windows boot usb, and tried a repair. It said it couldn't repair. I then removed the least quality update and tried the repair tool again. This time it went through the repairs, took me to windows, bkue screened and back to the boot drive not being recognized in the start up splash screen. 

 

I've ordered a m.2 reader, but it won't come until tomorrow. Is everything just pointing to that drive being bad or can I try something else.