- Joined
- Jan 10, 2012
- Location
- Idaho
Has anyone ever had something similar to this happen?
To begin with, I was tweaking my memory yesterday trying to optimize performance. I would run a benchmark, change the bios and re-run the benchmark, etc. When I got to a point it wouldn't boot I used the MemOK button which resets the bios to the last known good memory settings. Got into bios and made sure everything was where it should be and rebooted fine. Then, I went back into bios and upped the voltage on the memory then tried the settings which had just failed. Again, it wouldn't boot. So, back to the MemOK button. This time when I went back into the bios I saw that my NB voltage was set to 1.55V!! I had set the memory voltage to 1.50625V (the next increment the bios supports) so I know I didn't somehow accidentally change the wrong one. Anyway, I fix the bios and reboot. Nothing. Won't even post so I can't double check bios. Unplug, wait 30 seconds, plug back in and it posts but no boot. Double, triple, quadruple check and on and on. Everything is set where it should be. I even tried defaults. Once defaults were loaded it would go beyond post but it said (and I can't remember the exact wording) Install boot drive or insert disk and press key when ready.
Ok, my mind flashes to a loose cable. Nope. Look in bios and the computer can see the drive just fine. Mind flashes to the drive somehow got corrupted. Did all sorts of research, read probably a hundred different examples of the exact same error message coming up (though very few had any common perceived causes) and tried everything. Nothing. I figured my drive must be either fried or corrupted, so I prepared to recover one of my images created using Acronis. I put the disc in the computer and booted, watched the Acronis logo flash and I turned around. When I came back a few minutes later it was in Windows ready to log on! ??? Seemed like a boot sector or boot manager issue, so I recovered the boot section. Still nada. Said screw it and recovered the whole image. Still nothing. Did even MORE research and tried everything there from inspecting the registry values for ensuring the AHCI drivers were being loaded, to any other idea someone had. Absolutely nothing worked, yet I could boot from the SSD when I had a bootable disc in. I was pulling my hair out.
I then found a single person complaining of the same issue who discovered his cause was a new HDD he installed. With the drive installed he had my problem, without it the computer worked fine. I hadn't made any hardware changes, but I figured what the heck, I'll try anything at this point. I unplugged all SATA cables except the SSD and DVD. Booted just fine with no disc in the DVD. I then turned it off, plugged a SATA cable in and rebooted to see if it would worked. I repeated the process until I had everything plugged back into the motherboard in the exact same slots as before....and the computer worked just fine.
So in the end, I made zero changes to the OS, zero changes to the hardware other than unplugging and reinserting the data cables, and zero changes to the bios (because I set everything back to where it was before the glitch) and it works. Obviously it has something to do with resetting the connections, but why and how the heck did this get caused in the first place?? To me, this falls into the realm of "sometimes computers just do weird crap for no reason whatsoever, and the gnomes creep out from their homes in the dust bunnies and fix it with their magical toe jam".
To begin with, I was tweaking my memory yesterday trying to optimize performance. I would run a benchmark, change the bios and re-run the benchmark, etc. When I got to a point it wouldn't boot I used the MemOK button which resets the bios to the last known good memory settings. Got into bios and made sure everything was where it should be and rebooted fine. Then, I went back into bios and upped the voltage on the memory then tried the settings which had just failed. Again, it wouldn't boot. So, back to the MemOK button. This time when I went back into the bios I saw that my NB voltage was set to 1.55V!! I had set the memory voltage to 1.50625V (the next increment the bios supports) so I know I didn't somehow accidentally change the wrong one. Anyway, I fix the bios and reboot. Nothing. Won't even post so I can't double check bios. Unplug, wait 30 seconds, plug back in and it posts but no boot. Double, triple, quadruple check and on and on. Everything is set where it should be. I even tried defaults. Once defaults were loaded it would go beyond post but it said (and I can't remember the exact wording) Install boot drive or insert disk and press key when ready.
Ok, my mind flashes to a loose cable. Nope. Look in bios and the computer can see the drive just fine. Mind flashes to the drive somehow got corrupted. Did all sorts of research, read probably a hundred different examples of the exact same error message coming up (though very few had any common perceived causes) and tried everything. Nothing. I figured my drive must be either fried or corrupted, so I prepared to recover one of my images created using Acronis. I put the disc in the computer and booted, watched the Acronis logo flash and I turned around. When I came back a few minutes later it was in Windows ready to log on! ??? Seemed like a boot sector or boot manager issue, so I recovered the boot section. Still nada. Said screw it and recovered the whole image. Still nothing. Did even MORE research and tried everything there from inspecting the registry values for ensuring the AHCI drivers were being loaded, to any other idea someone had. Absolutely nothing worked, yet I could boot from the SSD when I had a bootable disc in. I was pulling my hair out.
I then found a single person complaining of the same issue who discovered his cause was a new HDD he installed. With the drive installed he had my problem, without it the computer worked fine. I hadn't made any hardware changes, but I figured what the heck, I'll try anything at this point. I unplugged all SATA cables except the SSD and DVD. Booted just fine with no disc in the DVD. I then turned it off, plugged a SATA cable in and rebooted to see if it would worked. I repeated the process until I had everything plugged back into the motherboard in the exact same slots as before....and the computer worked just fine.
So in the end, I made zero changes to the OS, zero changes to the hardware other than unplugging and reinserting the data cables, and zero changes to the bios (because I set everything back to where it was before the glitch) and it works. Obviously it has something to do with resetting the connections, but why and how the heck did this get caused in the first place?? To me, this falls into the realm of "sometimes computers just do weird crap for no reason whatsoever, and the gnomes creep out from their homes in the dust bunnies and fix it with their magical toe jam".
