Windows boot fail

gerico

gerico

gerico

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Joined
12 Dec 2009
Posts
624
Location
Gloucester, UK
Hi there,

Recently just build my new rig. I had an old install of my previous computers windows so i used my install disk and just fotmatted the SSD, booted from disk and installed windows again.
Howver now when I boot it says:

"preparing your computer for first use" and after a few minutes it just blue screens and it vanishes too quick to see the error code.

Prior to this I was getting boot disk inaccessible. If i got into my boot menu and look at what it can see i get the following:

Windows boot manager (Corsair SSD)
UEFI DVDRAM (my dvd drive, but no idea what UEFI is)
Corsair SSD (again?)
DVDDRAM (again?)
Samsung HDD
Samsung HDD

I set the first in the list to windows boot manager as this is the only one that goes as far as preparing windows. If i set my corsair SSD to primary boot then it just tries to boot - I see the gigabyte logo, screen goes black then it starts all over again in an endless loop.

Any ideas? Really appreciate any help, getting quite worried here.
 
Ok so i reformatted (again).

I booted from disk and once the welcome screen appears i hit SHIFT + f10 and typed "diskpart"

then "list disk" - i then saw my SSD so i typed:

"select disk 0" then "clean"

I then reinstalled windows on the SSD and when it gets to the windows completing install part, where it restarts and it should then prepare for first use, it blue screens and then restarts - but again its too quick for me to see the errors.

Any ideas? I'm totally lost as to why that didnt work. Also the SATA mode is set to AHCI already. And i also noticed after it tried to reboot itselfa few times it then says there wa a problem, do you want to run windows as normal or in safe mode and if i choose normal I then get to the "setup is preparing for first use" - but again after a few minutes it blue screens and restarts. Back to square one. Driving me slightly mad now.

The SSD in question is a Cosair F120 - is it possibly fubar?
 
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I managed to fix the boot by updating to some beta bios drivers. However this morning i connected some LEDs i bought for the case - so i added a new molex power cable and went to boot and it said the same thing.. Again.

Smething about the drive not being accessible - could it be a dodgy cable somewhere? Last night it was all running fine and i literally did one thing in conmecting the leds , thats it
 
Damn literally just sold my old rig. Ill have to beg some friends to let me borrow their psu to test things out on.
 
Haha :) yeh i agree its very odd. I did start with these issues too so you might be spot on. Kinda annoying as i thought id got past the problems. Ill see if i can get hold of one tonight and see
 
Ok so bad news so far. Ive disconnected the SSD thinking perhaps its the SSD. Cant even boot from disk, its just saying:

Windows failed to start. A recent hardware or software change might be the cause.

Status: 0xc000000e

Boot selection failed because a required device is inaccessible

Getting very worried. The fact sometimes i can see the drives in the bios but still cant access them confuses me. I dont get what the hell is going on. When i got home i managed to boot to windows and it was fine, i then click restart just to test things and it rebooted but then i got the above message after a simple restart. Since then its not worked again..
 
Ploppy2k3 said:
this usually means that the OS partition is on a different drive that is no longer available or that the small 100mb partition that windows created is missing ie on a different drive.
Click to expand...

Yeh its very strange... if the SSD is plugged in and the bios sees it, i tell it to boot from the SSD and i still get the message, despite windows being on that.

I even told it to boot from CD again, and i got the same message :S

*edit - just a second again it keeps cutting out just as it gets to the motherboard screen then restarts itself and does the same all over. I had to manually turn the power off and start it again to get further than the bios.
 
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Crap it. So frustrated now. I'll have to try do some begging and get another PSU over here. Do you it might be that sometimes power cuts to the drives?
 
Ive been able to boot multiple times today with only the SSD plugged in. The two other HDDs are unplugged and so far no problems. Is it possible that other HDDs are causing issues? Would the order they're plugged in be causing inaccessibility issues?
 
I was about to reply when mid-way through watching a youtube tutorial, the pc locked up, i got a buzzing sound through my headphones and then a blue screen, though it dissappeared before i could jot down any information. It then said please select bootable device, press any key to continue...

What the hell is going on!

Going to grab a PSU from a mate tomorrow, running memtest atm in some random hope it might throw an error. Is this new symptom any more useful than previous?

Managed to get a pic after it happened again:
new-error.jpg
 
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I can consistantly recreate the inaccessible error by plugging one of the two slave HDDs back in. Ive tested it serveral times over. It seems if i plug either in the error re-appears and removing them allows me to boot.

Though why this would be, is beyond me
 
lucifer-mnm said:
Just the SSD connected at the moment with a fresh install of windows on (install done with other hard disks unplugged?)

Is this pc you are having issues with the one in your sig? (the project log?)

Ploppy suggested possible PSU issues - perhaps you could remove the 2 x 290 cards and run off the onboard vga to hugely reduce the power draw of the system and see what happens before borrowing a psu ?
Click to expand...

Well at the moment i have all plugged in. Often it takes two boot attempts to get windows to load. The first attempt results in 'please select a bootable device' - i reckon the ssd just doesnt fet detected for some reason. Often another power down/up fixes it. However sometimes it takes more, and ive gone into the boot menu to find no ssd appearing.

Ill try the gpu removal idea. Ive also noticed since installing a fan controller that sometimes if i boot up from a shut off state that the fans that are set to 65% speed on the controller dont start up and require me to pump up to 100% in order to get them going. Would this suggest another glimse of psu issues?

Yep its the build from my sig.


lucifer-mnm said:
Have you been able to run any hard drive diagnostics tools over the mechanical hard disks? some thing seagate seatools?

Are these drives formatted? Do they have data on them? Windows installed?
Click to expand...

The ssd is freshly formatted and ive run diagnostics on the drives and found nothing yet. I did fix an issue where the two hdds had an active flag set on them. Over at the windows 7 forum, someone helped me remove this and make just the ssd the active primary. Which did help me boot more successfully, it removed the error about inaccessible drive.. Its now just the please select a boot device that troubles me which is clearly a seperate issue.

VeNT said:
how big are the hdd/ssd
Click to expand...

The two hdds are 1TB and 750GB with previous info on but no OS installed. The SSD Is freshly formatted and has hardly anything on.
 
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Thanks for this lucifer. I had trouble finding firmware updates for the ssd, as its so old. Plus that and of course im not sure how to update it. I will take a look when im home tonight. Mobo bios is def up to date. Might try get another newer ssd to test
 
lucifer-mnm said:
If you do decide to get another SSD then make sure you get one that other people are using successfully on the board you have. I say this as RAMGUY over on the Corsair forums does say on one of the forum threads that it wasn't just Corsair Force SSD's that were experiencing these cold boot issues but other manufacturers drives as well.

I would hate to see you buy a new drive and have the same issue.
Click to expand...

Cheers for the heads up buddie. I will make sure i check, i reckon at the end of the month ill buy a new one anyway as it has a small capacity, though its its not the issue then ill be bummed.
 
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