Urgent Help - Boot Failure

bristol86 · 15 Apr 2014 at 19:39

Ok so have just put an SSD into my system in place of my old HDD.

Connected up via PSU and SATA cable, installed Windows into the SSD and Windows booted. All hunky dory.

Spent ages customising desktop and various preferences in Windows.

Rebooted and now I get

REBOOT AND SELECT PROPER BOOT DEVICE
OR INSTALL BOOT MEDIA INTO SELECTED BOOT DEVICE

So now I cannot boot into my new install of Windows at all.

The SSD is 'seen' in the BIOS, but when I boot from the Windows CD, it now doesn't see the drive as available for installation. Obviously it did when I installed Windows.

Please help! The PC won't boot and I can't install Windows again, so a bit buggered!

wazza300 · 15 Apr 2014 at 19:46

pop in the bios again and make sure the ssd is set to the top of the boot order/list

bristol86 · 15 Apr 2014 at 19:51

wazza300 said:
pop in the bios again and make sure the ssd is set to the top of the boot order/list

Yes it is. It's the only disk hooked up. Even when manually selecting the SSD from the boot menu i get this error. It's like the installation is corrupted or something but windows install now won't 'see' the disk

wazza300 · 15 Apr 2014 at 19:54

boot from windows dvd again and pick startup repair (you might need to repeat it a few times to fix it)

bristol86 · 15 Apr 2014 at 20:02

wazza300 said:
boot from windows dvd again and pick startup repair (you might need to repeat it a few times to fix it)

Have run startup repair 5 times now. Still won't boot and when booting to Windows CD it still doesn't recognise the SSD as a disk

I've gone into DISKPART and when I select LIST DISK I see:

- Disk 0 Online 232Gb free 0b (what the...)

When I do LIST PARTITION I see

* Partition 1 Primary 232Gb Offset 0b

Then when I type SELECT PARTITION 1 I get the error

'there is no partition selected'.

bristol86 · 15 Apr 2014 at 20:11

Ok an update

Startup repair detail shows the following message:

Root cause found: partition table is corrupt on disk
Repair action: partition table repair
Result: completed successfully error code 0x0

So even though it says it's completed the repair successfully, I still can't boot or select the drive to reinstall windows....

wazza300 · 15 Apr 2014 at 20:14

are you running latest mb bios? also tried bootingup in ide mode?

idk why its gone funny or whatelse you could try to fix it,any other machine to test the ssd in?

bristol86 · 15 Apr 2014 at 20:17

wazza300 said:
are you running latest mb bios? also tried bootingup in ide mode?

idk why its gone funny or whatelse you could try to fix it,any other machine to test the ssd in?

I just stumbled across a thread from someone with the same issue who said using the diskpart>clean command on the disk will solve the problem.

Is this safe to do?

I don't have access to another pc to test the disk so out of ideas other than sending the disk back so figure I have nothing to lose in trying!

wazza300 · 15 Apr 2014 at 20:19

idk ive never had to do that,cant make things any worse than they are atm?

somethings up with the boot record,corrupted or something

bristol86 · 15 Apr 2014 at 20:26

wazza300 said:
idk ive never had to do that,cant make things any worse than they are atm?

somethings up with the boot record,corrupted or something

Lol that's what I figured! Might as well give it a try.

Ok good news, that has now allowed widows install to see the disk. Proceeding with a new install now so fingers crossed!

Jamin280672 · 15 Apr 2014 at 21:00

Are you overclocking ? if so, make sure you install windows at default settings, a lot of people don't realize how system demanding windows is, both install and boot, its very strange that your MBR got corrupted so easy and early on.

bristol86 · 15 Apr 2014 at 21:09

Jamin280672 said:
Are you overclocking ? if so, make sure you install windows at default settings, a lot of people don't realize how system demanding windows is, both install and boot, its very strange that your MBR got corrupted so easy and early on.

I do over clock but I was running at default for install.

Using the clean function of diskpart solved the issue. I have since performed the install again and everything seems hunky dory again.

GoogalyMoogaly · 15 Apr 2014 at 21:31

Did you have the HDD in when you installed Windows on the SSD and have then removed the HDD?
I believe there can be a problem where Windows creates the System Partition on the HDD not the SSD, so removing the HDD would cause issues.