Question BSOD: "Inaccessible Boot Device" error after hard reboots ?

[Minaz]

Whenever I have to reboot my computer using the power button, e.g. in case of a system crash, the next time the system boots up I will get a BSOD Inaccessible Boot Device. This won't happen if I reboot normally using Windows, only if I have to hit the power button to do the reboot. No crash dump is left, probably because it doesn't detect the drive. After the BSOD, it will reboot my system again and enter the "automatic fix your system" mode, but that will fail and enter the windows recovery menu. Anything I try, such as a system repair will fail, except I found that if I then try to enter UEFI settings on next reboot and let it do so, after it enters BIOS, and I immediately exit the BIOS without changing anything, the next boot will then proceed as normal and I can enter Windows. Once I am in Windows, the system will work normally as if nothing has happened. This happens every time a hard reboot is done.

SFC /scannow usually reveals no errors. (I put "usually" because I have run SFC several times in the past with no errors, but just as a precaution, I just checked again and it did find and fix something this time. Since in the past SFC did not find errors and this problem still occureed, I do not necessarily think the errors it fixed this time would fix the problem, although it would be great if so).

DISM also does not report errors. CrystalDiskInfo and chkdsk do not report errors.

I have updated the BIOS to the latest version, mainly in an attempt to see if that fixes the problem (it doesn't).

What could be going on?

Sysinfo:

OS Name Microsoft Windows 11 Pro
Version 10.0.22631 Build 22631
Other OS Description Not Available
OS Manufacturer Microsoft Corporation
System Name
System Manufacturer Micro-Star International Co., Ltd.
System Model MS-7D25
System Type x64-based PC
System SKU Default string
Processor 12th Gen Intel(R) Core(TM) i7-12700KF, 3600 Mhz, 12 Core(s), 20 Logical Processor(s)
BIOS Version/Date American Megatrends International, LLC. 1.G0, 1/16/2024
SMBIOS Version 3.6
Embedded Controller Version 255.255
BIOS Mode UEFI
BaseBoard Manufacturer Micro-Star International Co., Ltd.
BaseBoard Product PRO Z690-A WIFI DDR4(MS-7D25)
BaseBoard Version 1.0
Platform Role Desktop
Secure Boot State On
PCR7 Configuration Elevation Required to View
Windows Directory C:\WINDOWS
System Directory C:\WINDOWS\system32
Boot Device \Device\HarddiskVolume1
Locale United States
Hardware Abstraction Layer Version = "10.0.22621.2506"
User Name
Time Zone Pacific Standard Time
Installed Physical Memory (RAM) 64.0 GB
Total Physical Memory 63.8 GB
Available Physical Memory 47.8 GB
Total Virtual Memory 67.8 GB
Available Virtual Memory 45.5 GB
Page File Space 4.00 GB
Page File C:\pagefile.sys
Kernel DMA Protection On
Virtualization-based security Not enabled
Windows Defender Application Control policy Enforced
Windows Defender Application Control user mode policy Off
Device Encryption Support Elevation Required to View
Hyper-V - VM Monitor Mode Extensions Yes
Hyper-V - Second Level Address Translation Extensions Yes
Hyper-V - Virtualization Enabled in Firmware Yes
Hyper-V - Data Execution Protection Yes

 

[Fix_that_Glitch]

First you have to determine why the pc is crashing in the first place. What is going on when this happens?

 

[Minaz]

Because this has actually been happening for a while now, there have been several instances where a forced hard reset was necessitated, but not always for the same reason. Most recently, I have been using a piece of software that I am aware has some bugs that I believe is causing driver conflict issues, although I am not a developer so I am not 100% on this. But I do suspect a software incompatibility issue. Previously, there had been other reasons. The first time I discovered this problem oddly enough, there wasn't actually a crash, but human error. I had accidentally pressed the power button on my PC and this attempted to put the PC to sleep. For whatever reason, my PC, unlike my laptop, never goes to sleep when the power button is pressed, it actually shuts down instead. When I pressed the power button to start the PC again, that was the first time I got the Inaccesible Boot Device error.

 

[ubuysa]

What system drive do you have? What other drives are installed?

 

[Minaz]

What system drive do you have? What other drives are installed?

My system drive is a Corsair 4TB M.2. I actually have a lot of other drives installed as I use my PC for data storage, I have 4 internal M.2 drives, 3 internal HDDs and a few external drives as well. But it is a simple SATA IDE connection, no RAID.

 

[ubuysa]

When you installed (or reinstalled) Windows were all these drives online and available? It's possible that the Windows installer wrote the boot files to a drive other than the system drive - it does do that if it can. If that other drive is having issues then this would account for what you're seeing.

Open Disk Management (right-click on the start icon) and look at the graphical disk maps in there. The 100MB EFI partition is where the UEFI boot data is stored. Ideally you want that on your system drive so that all system data is in one place. Where is your EFI partition?

 

[Minaz]

I installed Windows a long time back, it was years ago, Windows 10 which I upgraded to Windows 11 maybe 6 months after Windows 11 launched. Since then, I've migrated to a larger SSD (maybe 18 months ago?), but the issues started more recently (a few months back). From what I recall though, even at the beginning, there were other drives in the system other than C:.

Looking at disk management, I do now see that there are two external HDDs that have EFI system partitions. These were added later, and they shouldn't have boot partitions. Windows should not be installed on them since these were added much later. However, I wonder if there is any chance a bug in the BIOS is causing it to read the boot sequence out of order? Would it be safe to delete the two EFI partitions on the external HDDs? They should only be storing data and applications.

 

[ubuysa]

Before you delete the two external drive EFI partitions I would first remove the drives and then see whether the system boots. If it does then you can safely delete those two external EFI partitions.

When you talk about a 'hard reboot' do you mean a cold boot - ie. from power off? Most people I think use the term cold boot to mean a boot as the power is switched on and a warm boot to mean a restart from within Windows. Are you saying that a cold boot (at switch on) fails whilst a simple restart (warm boot) works ok?

I installed Windows a long time back, it was years ago, Windows 10 which I upgraded to Windows 11 maybe 6 months after Windows 11 launched. Since then, I've migrated to a larger SSD (maybe 18 months ago?), but the issues started more recently (a few months back).

A Windows system that was installed 'years ago' may no longer be completely stable, especially if software and/or devices have been installed and then uninstalled. Many uninstallers are less than thorough and it's common to have shared dlls and even exe files left behind, they can cause problems in the future. That in itself would concern me.

Also, when you say that you 'migrated to a larger SSD (maybe 18 months ago?)' how did you do that? If you used a disk cloning tool they do sometimes introduce issues. Even though you only noticed problems recently they could still be rooted in either that clone or the great age of the install Windows system.

Unfortunately there is no way of determining whether this is a hardware issue and the drive really is inaccessible, or whether it's some kind of partition or filesystem (or other) error that makes the boot partition unusable.