PC unbootable

[Time-Bandit]

Hi all,

Not sure what has happened to my PC specs in sig.

Randomly rebooted last night so ended up just turning it off figuring I would deal with it today.

Wake up to turn my machine on and it goes to a black screen saying about attaching bootable media to the machine, nothing hardware wise has been changed, the PC sits stationary at all times so unlikely plug has come out or anything like that.

So after rebooting from there my computer now just hangs at the ASUS post logo where it says I can enter BIOS, I tried to get into the BIOS to see if it was an HDD initialisation issue but I can't even get into BIOS.

Prior to this I rebooted the computer about 5 times to see if any BSOD's would show up as I was looking to ensure system stability before doing a HDD back up. The computer has about a handful of times after rebooting just rebooted and sounded like everything was booting normally but the screen would act as if nothing was plugged into it. (GPU, Monitor, CPU, RAM all new, motherboard). Just realised prior to my old monitor dying on me it did the same thing on and off with no display before the screen eventually died. That monitor was being pushed to upscaled 1080p res via the GPU this monitor is a 1080p monitor with nothing changed so its all stock resolutions etc.

I checked all HDD health prior to getting to the point of not being bootabled and crystal disk reported all drives good.

Any suggestions would be great.

Cheers,

Bandit.

 

[dejo]

I may be a corrupted bios. Can you reflash or move to a second bios. If the hdd was bad i would think that bios would still be available

 

[EarthDog]

Attaching bootable media is a boot/boot order issue. If its windows 10, make sure the windows boot manager is listed first.

....you say you now can't even get i to the bios? Tried resetting the cmos via jumper?

 

[Time-Bandit]

Ok I can get into the BIOS now, its showing all hard drives in there, also all ram is showing like normal as well.

I still can't work out what has caused the system to just not be bootable at all. I thought perhaps my BSODs were relating to the nvidia GPU driver updates I did. I think I may have done two and not rebooted. So I uninstalled all of that reinstalled and everything seemed to be working fine.

I tried a few reboots yesterday and then got to where I am now that the system isn't booting.

I generally just use that computer for gaming and nothing else. No other changes to the system have been made as far as I remember. The computer had been on for about 1 week or 2 hence why I figured I would do a few reboots after the driver update to make sure I wasn't getting anymore BSODs on boot so I could back up then this nonsense happens.

 

[Time-Bandit]

Does system restore fix things like the no boot media error?

If so I might have to make a bootable Win 7 USB so I can try get the OS running again.

Then I am wanting to know if I do an 'upgrade' reinstall would this refresh the OS and keep all my stuff without me having to reinstall everything ?

 

[dejo]

on many computers, the way an OS is loaded is the only way it will boot- secure boot, ahci, raid and csm boot all can make life miserable if not the same as when the os was installed

 

[Robert17]

I have a vague memory of something similar happening some years ago. Unplug everything except for your boot hardware (leave RAM, CPU in place). Everything including fans. Work forward from there. That will take you to the lowest common denominator. I found that my boot disc was corrupted as that was the first re-boot attempt. After I got that sorted out I found that my HDD had also been corrupted, have no idea how this all took place as my system had been stable and I was the only operator. Rebuilt the software from the ground up, drivers, apps, programs. PITA. Got it up and running again, but sometimes random events occur.

 

[BugFreak]

I have an old laptop doing something like this right now. It periodically boots into the hard drive but the BIOS generally will open. Sometimes the drive would show in BIOS, other times it would not. I swapped out the hdd but it still happened occasionally so I chalked it up to the motherboard connector or something like that is going bad. It's too old for me really to worry about it so I just put it in the dead parts bin. I'd try a different hdd to see if that works, if not change the port you are plugging the drive into and see if it fixes it. It might not be the problem but at least this way you can check off those two parts as problems.

 

[Time-Bandit]

I recall making one change to my OS now, I turned the paging file on. Custom sizes. Would this if there is something wrong with it cause the insert boot media error?

Will system restore fix this? If this is the issue?

and after getting bootable will an upgrade reinstall fix anything busted with the OS?

 

[EarthDog]

No.
No.
No.
Yes.

 

[Time-Bandit]

Can I do an upgrade reinstall via bootable USB or do I have to be inside a working OS before I can do an upgrade reinstall of Win 7 ?

 

[EarthDog]

Not sure in 7, but 10 you need to be in the OS for an upgrade.

 

[Time-Bandit]

Will this fix any issues with;

clfs.sys
classpnp.sys
ntoskrnl.exe

as well as work just the same as a complete reinstall of the OS? If so I will do this providing I can boot back into Windows 7. Will this fix up the messed up recovery partition as well ??

and will it be the same as a new install after swapping in new hardware?

 

[Time-Bandit]

Ok its the MBR, windows start up repair booted off USB said something like mbr is corrupt disk metadata repair 0x45d

Can't use keyboard since Win 7 with ryzen CPU so I can't repair via CMD off USB. Trying to use Easeus bootable USB but it won't show the drive at all. Drive is acknowledged in BIOS. Got no PS/2 keyboard just PS/2 mouse.

 

[Time-Bandit]

UPDATE - Managed to boot into Hirens boot cd since Win 7 start up repair wasn't working.

The HDD with my OS is not showing in my computer but when I right click on my computer and go manage and look at storage devices its shows but no data. It then is asking me MBR or GPT. I try MBR but it says error due to o/i failure.

What can I do to get my drives MBR fixed and working?

 

[Janus67]

https://neosmart.net/wiki/fix-mbr/

may be what you're looking for

 

[Time-Bandit]

Can't seem to find a free win 7 version iso to use of this software. In saying that I can't even get the disk to initialize in via Hirens Boot CD since its basically a windows 10 disk with apps on it. It does know its there but shows 0.00kbs file size.

When I do windows startup repair it knows there is a disk there showing as unknown disk.

 

[EarthDog]

https://neosmart.net/wiki/fix-mbr/

may be what you're looking for

give that a whirl... I tried it when I had issues, but without success. That's what it days to do though.

I just reinstalled windows after.

 

[Time-Bandit]

Ok I gave up trying to get the HDD to work not sure if its busted. Replaced with a 4tb WD Blue. Running upgrade install now.

What tasks should I complete after this?

What can I use to check HDD/File corruption to make sure im not going to have more issues?

Prior to the Win 7 upgrade install, I have completed sfc/scannow now with no issues.

chkdsk came up with some corrupted attribute stuff, and deleting orphan files apart from that nothing else. Hopefully this isn't anything major I need to be concerned about ?

also does sfc check mbr??

How do I check mbr is fine? do I just go with if the PC is working its fine or is there a way to test/check its fine?

 

[RJARRRPCGP]

Ok I gave up trying to get the HDD to work not sure if its busted. Replaced with a 4tb WD Blue. Running upgrade install now.



chkdsk came up with some corrupted attribute stuff, and deleting orphan files apart from that nothing else. Hopefully this isn't anything major I need to be concerned about ?

Looks like drive-wipe and clean install time.