Question Boot order changed on it's own

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punkncat

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The office computer quit allowing any commands, not a lock up per se, but kept throwing up a "server error message within the browser and apps. Did a restart and it said the boot disk was missing. Went into BIOS, both disks were there but the boot order was reversed. I swapped them and all seems well. Check disk finds no errors, running a virus scan now.

Anyone know what could have caused this in the first place?
 

Colif

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Windows cannot change the order of hdd in boot order in the bios so that crosses that off list.

You can change the boot order in the windows boot manager but that is not the same thing... though many bios do have a windows boot manager choice - All that shows in the windows boot manager in BIOS is just the location of the boot partition and what drive its on.

The only changes windows can make are in software on the boot partition,.

How old is PC? it could be the cmos battery needs replacing as it is what records the boot order, as well as time/date PC remembers.
 

punkncat

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This is a coming up on three week old build.

I thought CMOS battery as well, however all the other settings I had changed in BIOS did not default, like XMP profile.
I am a bit stumped. We had a bevy of issues here yesterday, hopefully unrelated.
There was no power outage and the computer is on a battery backup that checks good as well. The disk checks as good within two programs and was also new out of a box for the build.
 

lesterf1020

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Boot order changes when the bios cannot find the boot drive. My guess is that for a brief period your boot hard drive was unresponsive. The bios didn't detect it and then promptly changed the boot order. When the bios changes the boot order it will not switch it back if the previously undetected hardrive comes back online. This used to happen a lot to me many years ago when harddrives had a habit of crashing in an unresponsive state. If nothing is wrong with the harddrive then ignore it.
 

Colif

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what is on the other drive? did it ever have win 7 on it?

maybe during the restart the boot method swapped and the PC thought it was booting off a legacy drive, but it couldn't find a drive.

Can you show us a screenshot of disk management? upload it to an image sharing site and show link here.
 

punkncat

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what is on the other drive? did it ever have win 7 on it?

maybe during the restart the boot method swapped and the PC thought it was booting off a legacy drive, but it couldn't find a drive.

Can you show us a screenshot of disk management? upload it to an image sharing site and show link here.

The other drives have not had OS on them. I did a clean format of those drives upon install. They were put in after the M.2 and OS was installed. They are both one large partition with data on them.
 

mgallo848

Commendable
Boot order changes when the bios cannot find the boot drive. My guess is that for a brief period your boot hard drive was unresponsive. The bios didn't detect it and then promptly changed the boot order. When the bios changes the boot order it will not switch it back if the previously undetected hardrive comes back online.
I agree.

Over the years I have seen this happen on PC's that I would repair for others. Could be a bad power wire to the drive, could be a bad sata cable (I've run into both issues)

If it happens again consider replacing the sata cable, then the power wire if it persists.

If neither one of those work, then the drive may be faulty.
 

punkncat

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Drive is M.2

I will continue to observe for a recurrence, and go ahead and back up the info contained therein, just in case.

One thing I did just note and find interesting is that it states that the device was "migrated, configured, started" yesterday about the time I swapped back the BIOS in properties/events. There are no prior events in history.
All the info on the disk was sound and intact.
 

michw6

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Mar 23, 2014
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Drive is M.2

I will continue to observe for a recurrence, and go ahead and back up the info contained therein, just in case.

One thing I did just note and find interesting is that it states that the device was "migrated, configured, started" yesterday about the time I swapped back the BIOS in properties/events. There are no prior events in history.
All the info on the disk was sound and intact.
I have the exact same issue. Have you figured it out?
 
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