PC is broken. Cannot boot to hard drive. Startup sequence also altered.

[Technique]

I'm not having a good day if you've been keeping up with my previous threads  

 

Basically i restarted my PC & i got some error message on startup which i forget what it said. I had the option to press a key to continue which i did.

I noticed when i accessed my hard drive a lot of websites that had auto logins had been erased - i had to manually enter the details. I chose to restart the PC again (mistake!)

as the PC went to restart it was stuck at "loading asus express gate". The thing here is, when the PC was working it never even went to this screen, never mind actually getting stuck at it.

 

So i turned the PC off & then back on. Before all this went wrong the first thing you would see on startup is a load of writing on the screen, loading various USB whatever-they-are's, it'd mention something about 6 cores unlocked (can you tell i'm not really fluent in jargon?)

but this time it never made it to that screen. It was a green ASUS screen instead that stated the motherboard type & some various F-key options, delete, tab.

 

Within this PC there are 3 hard drives. 2 of which have Windows 7 installed & the 3rd is basically just a dumping ground for files. I was able to boot to the 'other' hard drive which had Windows 7 on it - that's how i'm able to post this now. I'm currently in the process of accessing the faulty hard drive (or rather, the one that it wont boot to) via this hard drive & transferring the files on to an external hard drive for backup (i know, i should have a better backup system in place).

 

I'm wondering what has likely happened. I haven't deleted anything.

 

Also, what is this green ASUS screen at the start & how do i revert it back to it was?

 

Is there any way i can fix this booting issue or is a clean install the only way?

[T3X4S]

If you never saw the Express Gate before, and never saw the ASUS title screen before - it sounds like your BIOS was corrupted and it went back to default settings.  (in default - both the title screen and Express Gate are enabled)

If you are able to transfer your important files to another drive - I would focus on that 1st - for sure.

Then, once you are sure you have all of your important stuff moved over to another drive - then you can try rebooting - and going into BIOS setup and fixing the settings.

It could be simply that the CMOS battery went dead, and when you powered everything off - you lost your settings... not sure at this point - that is a guess.

But - keep doing what you are doing and moving the data to somewhere safe.

Then, and only then, reboot and change your BIOS settings.

[Technique]

Thanks.

 

Typically it would happen late at night. 10:40pm. I'm up for work at 5:50am & i've a lot to transfer.

 

Have you any idea how i remove the title screen? And also possibly the express gate as i don't ever remember it being there, although i don't know why i would've removed that in the first place but the title screen definitely wasn't there.

 

Motherboard is: M4A88TD-V EVO/USB3

[Max Veteran]

This may be symptom of a bad SATA cable. Change it with the DVD drive and/or other hard drive cable and boot it to test. Rule this out first before attempting any other repairs.

 

If that tests OK, what happens if you try to boot to the primary Win7 drive? If it hangs or displays a message when doing so, the BCD may be corrupt.

[T3X4S]

  On 04/12/2016 at 22:43, Technique said:

Thanks.

 

Typically it would happen late at night. 10:40pm. I'm up for work at 5:50am & i've a lot to transfer.

 

Have you any idea how i remove the title screen? And also possibly the express gate as i don't ever remember it being there, although i don't know why i would've removed that in the first place but the title screen definitely wasn't there.

 

Motherboard is: M4A88TD-V EVO/USB3

Expand  

See if this helps.
 

 

  On 04/12/2016 at 23:18, Max said:

This may be symptom of a bad SATA cable. Change it with the DVD drive and/or other hard drive cable and boot it to test. Rule this out first before attempting any other repairs.

 

If that tests OK, what happens if you try to boot to the primary Win7 drive? If it hangs or displays a message when doing so, the BCD may be corrupt.

Expand  

A bad SATA cable wont revert his BIOS settings to default though. (ie enabling Express Gate & title screen)

[SIE]

The bios will revert to default settings if it detects an issue with booting, the thing is, the Asus boot up screen would be a default parameter, so at some point, somebody has changed various bios settings and from your posts, I very much doubt it was you.

9 times out of 10 this would be caused by either the CPU or memory settings being wrong, which in turn can corrupt data being written to the hard drive.

I'm only speculating here but It could be that the CPU or  memory was either overclocked or ran at the wrong voltage, and is no longer able to sustain the frequency at the current voltage. This often happens over time when overclocking.

 

The best thing to do is leave things as they are and see how you go, see if you can repair the windows installation, set it to boot from the drive and keep hitting F8. Not being able to boot to a drive doesn't mean it's faulty, it could just be that Windows files are corrupt.

Edited December 5, 2016 by SIE

[Technique]

The only way I could see it being over locking is if I somehow got hacked online & they did it via that. Nobody else has physical access to the PC other than my wife & she wouldn't do that. 

 

I have the Windows 7 DVD. How do I go about attempting to repair this drive? 

 

[Technique]

When I went to repair from the windows 7 disc, I made it to the attached screen but where this says windows 7, mine was just blank. 

[Steven P. Administrators]

This all sounds strange, I'm glad you are still able to access the drive that will no longer boot the other Windows 7, but my suggestion is that when you have completed transferring files from that drive to another location, to do a chkdsk, you can do this on the faulty drive from within Windows (the one you are booted into) select that drive, right click and select properties, then the tools tab and then 'check' then we can rule out if the drive has problems or not.

 

 

If your bios settings got reset, you might have to find a screen in your bios where you can select the boot order of disks. It probably chose the first bootable disk as default, which sounds like not your normal Windows installation, simply changing the boot order of the disks might help too.

[Technique]

Well i've ran the error checker as you say but nothing found.

 

Very frustrating

[Steven P. Administrators]

Did you try looking to see the boot order of disks in your BIOS? It's good that check disk didn't find any errors though, means the hard drive is ok

[goretsky Supervisor]

Hello,

 

ASUS Express Gate is a tiny distribution of Linux with a web browser, media player and a few other apps that runs off a USB flash drive embedded on the motherboard.  It was designed to give you a way to quickly get to simple Internet applications without having to wait for an operating system like Microsoft Windows XP or Microsoft Windows Vista to load from the hard disk drive.  ASUS still has a marketing web site on it at http://event.asus.com/mb/expressgate/ [Adobe Flash Player required.].  The last time I used it was on an Asus P6T-Deluxe [X58 chipset] around 2007 or 2008.  I don't recall it being particularly useful, and only used it a handful of times.

 

From looking at the specs for the ASUS M4A88TD-V EVO/USB3 motherboard, it appears that ASUS was still using it at least as recently in 2010 when that motherboard was designed.

 

Given that you have a motherboard that's about seven years old, the most likely reason you received this error and the computer was unable to access its disk drive(s) is that the little CR-2032 coin cell battery which provides a trickle of current to power the CMOS/RTC memory has finally died.  Replacing it by following the instructions in the motherboard's manual, then go into the BIOS and set the clock to the current time, plus whatever options you normally set in there, and you should be back up and running.  The batteries are about $3 and available wherever batteries are normally sold (grocer, supermarket, drug store, electronics store, etc.)

 

Regards,

 

Aryeh Goretsky

 

[Technique]

I'm curious about the battery theory.

 

If that is so, then why can i simply just disconnect the problem hard drive & my PC then works as normal with the other drive that has Windows 7 on it?

 

It'll be pretty obvious that i'm no computer guru but it makes sense to me that if the battery was duff, then it'd be duff for everything, not just 1 hard drive & not the rest?

 

 

As for the boot order, everything was as it should be tbh.

[CougarDan]

Sounds like a dead CMOS battery and a bad partition table on the HDD.

 

https://neosmart.net/wiki/fix-mbr/#Fix_the_MBR_in_Windows_7

 

Follow those steps for it, otherwise just grab your data and reload.  No point and spending anymore time than that on it (unless you have very specialized requirements).

[Technique]

Could anyone please explain to me how the battery can be dead for one specific hard drive but not the others?

 

Everything so far has made sense to me ... except for that.

[Technique]

  On 06/12/2016 at 20:52, CougarDan said:

 

 

https://neosmart.net/wiki/fix-mbr/#Fix_the_MBR_in_Windows_7

 

Follow those steps for it, otherwise just grab your data and reload.  No point and spending anymore time than that on it (unless you have very specialized requirements).

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For that, should i disconnect all other hard drives (leaving only the duff one connected) or should i just leave all hard drives connected?

[goretsky Supervisor]

Hello,

 

The CMOS memory contains a table of information about the computer's hardware.  In this case, it sounds like the entry in memory for one particular hard disk drive is corrupt.

 

Keep in mind you have have CMOS errors due to a low battery without seeing error message about setting the clock, or being prompted to enter the BIOS settings to check/confirm their values.  I've seen problems occur when a +3.0VDC battery drops just a little to +2.95VDC.

 

Regards,

 

Aryeh Goretsky

 

[CougarDan]

Best practice would be to disconnect the other hard drives, not a necessity though.

 

As for the battery, it has nothing to do with it being associated with a particular drive.  It seems that the original issue was due to the battery reverting some BIOS settings, which is why you ended up with the Asus Express Gate and the Splash screen.   During the course of the reboot(s)/freeze(s) your partition was corrupted so even though all the files are accessible, Windows does not see it as a valid boot drive.  If you fix the MBR that should again allow you to boot that drive.

 

Up to you to decide time vs effort. 

[Technique]

The fix mbr thing didn't seem to work. I've attached photos of what was said in case I did it wrong. 

 

Some things popped up that that that link didn't mention, such as the Y N question. 

 

 

I'd upload the other but it seems I'm at my limit. 

 

I followed the second half of that link but it said the system partition was not found. 

[Technique]

This was the other image

[Steven P. Administrators]

In the first screenshot it says a Windows installation was found and asked if you wanted to add it to the boot list, you did n (No) Why? Seems this would have fixed the issue.

 

Then in your second screenshot, it looks like you tried to run that command on D:\ (which looks like a CD/DVD or a fix Windows state) that's why the partition wasn't found.

 

Is the Windows installation on C:\ the one that doesn't boot? Because from the first screenshot, it seemed like the first command you typed might have fixed things for you.

[Technique]

I saw the word installation & didn't know if all my files would get installed over & deleted. I thought best to choose no. 

 

Plus on that link it never said anything about that question but I can try again tonight by selecting yes this time. 

 

Also the second shot has D listed because as I understood it the latter part of the link given said you should basically list the drive that the DVD is in, so that's why I selected D in the second screenshot. 

 

Yes windows will be on C drive. 

[Steven P. Administrators]

Yeah to be clear, the first question of the first screenshot only asks if the installation (your missing Windows start up) can be added to the bootlist. You should select yes. I reckon yo'll be able to select it upon boot after that!

 

 

It should then appear in msconfig (to view it, right click Start > Run > type msconfig and enter). I assume the second Windows installation isn't listed there at all because the bootlist is corrupted, but when it is.. you can select  the now fixed one as default.. good luck!

[wahoospa]

Could you have the BIOS set to IDE mode instead of AHCI, or whatever?

 

[Technique]

AHwhat? You've lost me. 

 

And i'd unplugged all other drives when I did that last night. Including the other one with windows installed.