Can't boot to Windows 7 normally but can still access it.


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I noticed a situation last night where one of my drives was no longer showing in My Computer. Thinking about it, it's probably not been showing for a bit, but how long that bit is i don't know. Few weeks perhaps. Maybe a month or more.

 

So i disconnected the drives apart from one OS drive and the problem drive. The PC wouldn't boot. As it's a dual boot machine i thought perhaps the other drive with an OS on may need to be connected also. I did this and this time it still wouldn't boot.

 

I got to this screen:

 

IMG_8154.thumb.JPG.6797866684ab6e1c8554e4e5a9af2ae0.JPG

 

I selected options which wouldn't work but then when i selected the one i've highlighted in red, i got the dual boot screen. I selected the drive i wanted to boot to and it worked. The drive was also showing, finally.

 

So i turn everything off, connect all drives back up as they always have been & start the PC again. This time it still didn't start up. I forget the error message something selecting correct boot somethingorother. I didn't get a photo, sorry.

 

So i follow the same route as i mentioned earlier with the above photo. I boot in to Windows again and this time the drive that's been missing a while is there but another storage drive has suddenly gone missing. I go in to disk management and unlike earlier, this time this missing drive is actually listed there (the other missing drive wasn't even listed here last night when i looked). So i just assign it a drive letter and that's it - all drives showing in My Computer.

 

Problem is, i still can't boot naturally. I have to smash F8, select the option i highlighted in red, and then it works.

 

As i go in to BIOS and look at other settings i see these:

IMG_8155.thumb.JPG.e61fcca6c3f0667c40c6c708b4e857c6.JPG

 

There's no option of inserting 1NS164 as a bootable drive.

 

When i go to the Hard Disk Drives this is what is selected:

 

IMG_8156.thumb.JPG.ae2687c3e065f2fa3d0bee944fdf8f0e.JPG

IMG_8157.thumb.JPG.ad9eb43c34ca73254b0232b4f6400eaa.JPG

IMG_8158.thumb.JPG.88ef0f8d8cf12c6e840653b6e642dfd9.JPG

 

but when i've had a play around i can't seem to get 1NS164 showing as a bootable drive yet it seems to need to be this in order to boot normally.

 

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Hello,


I have never used an ASUS M4A88TD-V EVO/USB3 motherboard before, but I note that each drive being displayed in the BIOS (UEFI) firmware is prefaced with "IDE:".  Is this normal behavior, or should the drives be displayed as "SATA", instead?  If not, perhaps changing the drive interface type from IDE to SATA (or AHCI or something similar) will resolve the issue.

 

If that does not make any difference, then it could be that the failed/missing drive is the one that contains the boot loader.  If you are unsure of which drive contained the actual boot loader for the operating systems on them, try disconnecting all the drives, then connecting them one at a time to see which ones load an operating system, display a boot loader error, or display a hardware error (no boot loader found at all).

 

Also, given that this is a ten-year-old system, you may wish to make sure the CR-2032 CMOS/RTC backup battery has been replaced.

 

Regards,


Aryeh Goretsky

 

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I wouldn't have thought that it'd be the PSU surely? As once the correct drive it selected it would be 'as normal'. It's whatever is deciding to point in the wrong direction surely, no?

 

First off, i assume IDE is normal for this? They're all connected via SATA cables into the SATA ports. I can show you if you wish for confirmation but the cables are even stamped up SATA.

 

Anyway i Googled the long number that i need to select in order to boot (ST...............1NS164) and it came back as a Seagate 2TB SSHD which made sense as i was fairly sure this was the drive with the boot loader. I'm convinced i actually had this connected on its own yesterday and it didn't work, or maybe it was connected alongside the Samsung SSD, i can't say for 100% now as when something doesn't work you tend to doubt yourself.

 

So i disconnected the lot except for the 2TB SSHD. It worked - it showed in BIOS and it actually booted.

 

From disconnecting everything else i could then see what the 2 DVD (blu ray) drives were listed as. So i don't know what that ATAPI CD-ROM is all about. Anyway i disconnected one of these in case when i connected it back up the 2TB SSHD was once again not listed and reconnected everything except this one blu-ray drive.

 

It booted.

 

So i connected everything else up - it booted.

 

Weird (to me) then that it took for me to disconnect everything, to reconnect everything for it to actually work when i had tried connecting everything and it didn't work.

 

 

So at least it's sorted now and i've posted back in case it happens again or someone else has this issue.

 

 

To go a little further, once i was finally able to have all drives showing in My Computer again, i have 2 storage drives. No Windows files, just documents, videos, music etc. This is where my OCD is kicking in but their letters are now back to front and one of the drives is appearing at the end in My Computer where it's always appeared in second position. Nothing major but like i say, i'm particular. lol.

 

Would it be safe to just remove the drive letters on both, re-assign them and then the drives will show in the 'correct' order in My Computer without causing any problems (drive access, file loss etc)?

 

On the bright side, this whole hoo-ha caused me to back up my files which i'd not done for some time and is something i need to get in to the habit of doing.

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On 12/27/2019 at 9:08 AM, Technique said:

To go a little further, once i was finally able to have all drives showing in My Computer again, i have 2 storage drives. No Windows files, just documents, videos, music etc. This is where my OCD is kicking in but their letters are now back to front and one of the drives is appearing at the end in My Computer where it's always appeared in second position. Nothing major but like i say, i'm particular. lol.

 

Would it be safe to just remove the drive letters on both, re-assign them and then the drives will show in the 'correct' order in My Computer without causing any problems (drive access, file loss etc)?

 

Any takers on the above?

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Hello,

 

Yes, you can definitely re-assign the drive letters using the GUI-based Disk Management (filename: DISKMGMT.MSC) or the command-line based DiskPart (filename: DISKPART.EXE) programs which come with Windows.  Such changes are immediate, but you may wish to reboot afterwards just in case there are any odd programs running in the background which do not recognize the updated drive letters.

 

Regards,

 

Aryeh Goretsky

 

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  • 11 months later...

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  • report the first post of the topic with the reason why it should be reopened.

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