PC not booting, at a loss and need some help.

[eggyoke]

This is a long one sorry, I've been through everything but need some expert help.

I have a relatively old PC that I've kept in good shape with no problems for the last 9 years (changed the PSU last year and an old storage HDD few years back.)

Specs: 2500k (not OC'd), Asrock Z68 Ex4 Gen3, 16gb, HD7970, 120gb SSD windows + 2x HDD's, 650w PSU.

Basically I cleaned my AIO radiator and gave the PC a general dusting etc. During it I removed the HDD tray and disconnected the Sata and power cables and carefully put everything back together. However when I turned it on the Windows 10 logo appears (little blue window) with the little loading circle beneath it. It would stay like that and then the screen would go black.

So I look in BIOS, all the drives are recognized etc, nothing out of the ordinary to my eyes. So thinking something might be loose, I remove and re-seat everything carefully. But it doesn't work. However I noticed that in the BIOS my old Kingston 120gb SSD that I use as my boot drive would show with it's named scrambled and gibberish. So I started thinking the SSD has packed in...

Not giving up on it I made a Windows Media Image thingy on a USB pen. I boot from the pen, windows logo would show and go black and stay like that. I kept trying and left it on for 20 minutes and the screen went purple and eventually started to work, but it was extremely slow. I tried the startup repair which took ages and eventually it said nothing was wrong. I tried to reinstall windows but an error box kept showing saying it wasn't possble. I kept trying all of the options until eventually the Repair ran quicker and it showed the Windows Boot Manager error screen:

File: \Boot\BCD
Status: 0x0000098
Info: The Boot Configuration Data file doesn't contain valid information for an operating system.

Right. Broken SSD? I buy a new WD 240gb SSD.

I install it, the BIOS doesn't recognize it, doesn't come up in the boot list. I put in my old media HDDs and they show. If I leave it to boot, it just says use a Bootable drive/media device. If I boot from the Windows Media Image pen it just shows the BCD error above without even showing me the install windows or repair options.

I'm at a loss. I've cleared the BIOS, re-connected everything and changed cables in my PSU but get nothing.

Is it a PSU problem...? But why would the BIOS not see the new drive but still see the older drives, even after clearing the BIOS...?

The motherboard maybe? How could I check?

I'd be grateful for some kind soul to help me salvage this mess. The thing is, I haven't got money to throw around, especially after spending out on the SSD. I also haven't got a friend with a PC that would allow me to test the PSU theory

 

[Sparx]

Have you a spare SATA cable to try? Also tried a different SATA port on the motherboard?

If you can boot the Windows recovery tool, on the CMD try this: bcdboot c:\windows

Bit more detailed walkthrough guide here http://www.kapilarya.com/fix-the-boot-configuration-data-file-is-missing-some-required-information

 

[EsaT]

Certainly at least change "BIOS" battery into that old PC.
Though not sure if it can cause such errors.

Those hint more toward motherboard/drive/memory/CPU starting to fail.

And when installing Windows ahve only intended target drive connected.
Microsoft just can't make installer which would work surely with multiple drives.
Though every drive should be recognized by BIOS.

 

[eggyoke]

Thanks for the replies.

I seem to have discovered the problem. Yesterday I reconnected the boot drive, like I've done many times, only this time it magically worked as if nothing was wrong. I couldn't believe it. Once I started connecting the other drives things started to go wrong. I noticed Windows wouldn't boot and would just hang on the loading screen, other times it would load but only the boot drive or one more HDD would show. Also the BIOS was only reading certain drive names with seemingly no rhyme or reason. I started thinking the PSU was damaged and not delivering the power down the rails with multiple drives connected or something...

But then randomly I tried just the boot drive again and changed the SATA port it was connected to and suddenly windows wouldn't boot. Like the original problem. I then started testing the ports and the drives individually and finally discovered that two SATA ports are dead and one of my HDDs has been fried and causes the system to hang whenever I connect it up...

I must have done something when I was cleaning my machine and when I put the power back on it blew these ports and took out one of my storage HDDs (the one with all my photos and decades of collected music on )

So just out of sheer bad luck I was randomly connecting the boot drive to one of the damaged SATA ports each time and whenever I connected the blown HDD, it was causing the system to hang giving me all kinds of random results and generally ruining my day. It explains the BIOS only reading some drives.

So... yeah. PC is back up and seems to be working fine (so far at least, benchmarks seem to be fine.) But clearly I need a new PC
I just wish I knew how to get the data from the HDD back.

 

[Benass]

U can get the data back.
Your data is written into the disks.
U have few options.
Take hdd to a specialist.
Or buy identical hdd and swap disks. Then make a data transfer.
It is complicated and risky but possible.
U can learn more about it on utube

 

[eggyoke]

U can get the data back.
Your data is written into the disks.
U have few options.
Take hdd to a specialist.
Or buy identical hdd and swap disks. Then make a data transfer.
It is complicated and risky but possible.
U can learn more about it on utube

So if I buy the exact same HDD, remove the working controller board and connect it to the original disk it'll work?

 

[Benass]

That is possible.
One thing to note.
Once u open a hdd old or new u pretty much kill it due to dust.
But they work long enough to take the data out.

Do some utube on the matter and few hours later u will be a hdd specialist. )