So recently I wanted to do some upgrades, and hand down some older parts to a dedicated server. Originally i had a Ryzen 5 3600 in it, and I wanted to upgrade to a Ryzen 7 5700x. So the new CPU arrived and i proceeded to run backups etc. get prepped for the swap but I never got that far. I flashed the BIOS on my Gigabyte Aorus B450 Gaming board to the latest version (64a). So to test i reboot after flashing and windows (WD Black 500gb NVME) wont load, I keep getting a missing or corrupted boot sector, the error specifically says the BCD is missing or contains errors. Ok odd... flashing should not have messed with the drives at all right? So I roll back the flash to the previous stock 2019 version of the BIOS it was running, still wont boot, same problem. So i go thru the usual windows nonsense. Attempt to backup/rebuild/edit the BCD with no luck, when I scanned for OS's for the repair function it finds no operating systems,.
So then i get into diskpart and start poking around. Somehow my old C drive has been changed to E, and the normally inactive rescue partition that typically does not even have a drive letter is now my C drive. Googling around and find a few posts about C changing to E under odd and sporadic/varied conditions and some potential workarounds/fixes. Removing all other drives and starting did not work (probably because its trying to boot to the wrong partition, not drive). I tried 3 times with disk part to fix the changes, but each time I set the changes, they appeared to stick, then on restart they are changed back, and the failure repeats.
So i pull down the image that i just created of the drive before flashing. It wont work, Macrium installs it just fine with no problem but even with formatting the drive it fails to boot, same error. This is with an image that was literally just working hours before. So at this point I'm back to the original bios and the original image of the NVME disk just before flashing and its still dead. So i boot from a rescue image i have set up via USB to check out the drive. Crystal disk finds no problems disc check finds nothing, SFC, WD Dashboard nada.... Everything performs as expected, no problems reported in SMART. I can 100% interact with, copy to/from and access the drive without issue. So this time I do a full proper reformat with a wipe on the suspect drive, back to Macrium to restore the pre-flash image, and.... wont boot. Back to Parted Magic. same thing, drive is fully intact, readable, passes all the tests, reports a 98% condition on its lifetime. What is so confusing here is that at this point I'm back to the known to be working bios, and known to be working image of the drive, with the known to be working processor, I literally never even swapped the CPU out because I always incrementally test all changes to my systems.
At this point I'm just frustrated. So screw it, I wipe the drive again, flash the bios to the latest version again, and reinstall windows 10 from a fresh creation media. I figure I've got the suspect image and the bios versions if I want to play with it more and try and figure it out. All goes smoothly now, the new installation works fine, do the usual updates, reinstall a bunch of stuff, did all the windows updates. As of last night it was 100% up to date, so i set it to work rebuilding my huge plex library, and went to work leaving it on. Now when I came home, the system was off, and the plex job had not completed, so it couldn't have been on for more then a couple hours. There is nothing in the logs regarding a BOSD or system failure etc. during that timeframe, and when i went to reboot the machine the NVME drive was not detected, restart again, nope, 3rd times the charm i guess, this time is shows up in the boot menu and starts. This is the very first time I've ever had an issue with this drive. its barely 2 years old, and only holds the OS and basic software, Its never exceeded like 1/3rd capacity and has a large overprovision in addition. Games/media/personal files are all stored on raid/network drives.
So the system is "working" I'm kind of at a loss as to the problem here, my instinct says the drive is dying, but I can find no evidence of that except the drive no showing in bios, that makes me suspect the bios or the motherboard/NVME slot. What are the chances this problem crops up right after flashing? Any thoughts regarding this problem would be great. I have no idea t this point if its hardware or software or bios related... Open to questions/thoughts. Sorry for all the words lol.
So then i get into diskpart and start poking around. Somehow my old C drive has been changed to E, and the normally inactive rescue partition that typically does not even have a drive letter is now my C drive. Googling around and find a few posts about C changing to E under odd and sporadic/varied conditions and some potential workarounds/fixes. Removing all other drives and starting did not work (probably because its trying to boot to the wrong partition, not drive). I tried 3 times with disk part to fix the changes, but each time I set the changes, they appeared to stick, then on restart they are changed back, and the failure repeats.
So i pull down the image that i just created of the drive before flashing. It wont work, Macrium installs it just fine with no problem but even with formatting the drive it fails to boot, same error. This is with an image that was literally just working hours before. So at this point I'm back to the original bios and the original image of the NVME disk just before flashing and its still dead. So i boot from a rescue image i have set up via USB to check out the drive. Crystal disk finds no problems disc check finds nothing, SFC, WD Dashboard nada.... Everything performs as expected, no problems reported in SMART. I can 100% interact with, copy to/from and access the drive without issue. So this time I do a full proper reformat with a wipe on the suspect drive, back to Macrium to restore the pre-flash image, and.... wont boot. Back to Parted Magic. same thing, drive is fully intact, readable, passes all the tests, reports a 98% condition on its lifetime. What is so confusing here is that at this point I'm back to the known to be working bios, and known to be working image of the drive, with the known to be working processor, I literally never even swapped the CPU out because I always incrementally test all changes to my systems.
At this point I'm just frustrated. So screw it, I wipe the drive again, flash the bios to the latest version again, and reinstall windows 10 from a fresh creation media. I figure I've got the suspect image and the bios versions if I want to play with it more and try and figure it out. All goes smoothly now, the new installation works fine, do the usual updates, reinstall a bunch of stuff, did all the windows updates. As of last night it was 100% up to date, so i set it to work rebuilding my huge plex library, and went to work leaving it on. Now when I came home, the system was off, and the plex job had not completed, so it couldn't have been on for more then a couple hours. There is nothing in the logs regarding a BOSD or system failure etc. during that timeframe, and when i went to reboot the machine the NVME drive was not detected, restart again, nope, 3rd times the charm i guess, this time is shows up in the boot menu and starts. This is the very first time I've ever had an issue with this drive. its barely 2 years old, and only holds the OS and basic software, Its never exceeded like 1/3rd capacity and has a large overprovision in addition. Games/media/personal files are all stored on raid/network drives.
So the system is "working" I'm kind of at a loss as to the problem here, my instinct says the drive is dying, but I can find no evidence of that except the drive no showing in bios, that makes me suspect the bios or the motherboard/NVME slot. What are the chances this problem crops up right after flashing? Any thoughts regarding this problem would be great. I have no idea t this point if its hardware or software or bios related... Open to questions/thoughts. Sorry for all the words lol.
Facebook
Twitter
Instagram