Question "ex_" error message at boot ?

walidantar

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Feb 25, 2013
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18,510
hello, when turning pc on, i'm getting an error message at boot says "ex_ " and the underscore blinks.
Connected to the pc are just keyboard & mouse and one stick of ram and an ssd with windows 10 installed.
No other peripherals or pcie cards like gpu or network related.

I'm still be able to enter to bios at boot, the ssd and the ram stick are detected. i can access the ssd externally from another pc via usb to sata and can read it and write to it .. no issue seems to be related to the hardware of the ssd and i haven't delete any files of the system on the ssd .. i couldn't enter the windows 10 auto repair at boot.

View: https://imgur.com/x5CPXfB
 
mb: gigabyte z97mx-gaming 5
cpu: intel pentium processor g3258 with it's stock cooler
ram: kingston hyperx ram fury ddr3 8gb - 1 stick
psu: generic - but it still works and enters the bios normally
ssd: samsung 850 evo 500gb
os: win 10 h2

i can not boot onto safe mode .. just into the bios or select boot drive which in this case is only the ssd attached to the motherboard. i had tried different sata cables into all available sata ports but didn't work

if the system files were corrupted, is it possible to fix it externally via another pc?
 
If there's nothing of importance on that SSD, you could install it in a similar PC (remove all other drives) and see if you can boot up from it, or get through the system repair process. This is not the "correct" way to fix OS errors, but if you can get the drive to boot on another system, at least you know the SSD is OK.

I recently fitted an SSD from an AMD 760K system into an Intel i5-3570K system and the drive booted into the Window 10 desktop. I had intended to wipe the SSD in the Intel PC and perform a fresh install of Windows 10, but the drive survived the transfer and this computer is only used for testing components.

Of course, there is no guarantee you'll be able to get the SSD to boot in another computer, but you might get lucky.

If there are any files on the SSD you'd like to keep, it would be better to fit a brand ne w 120GB SATA SSD in its place and see if you can perform a fresh install of Windows from USB. Any spare drive will do, you could even use a hard disk if you have one.

I've not seen that "ex_" error before and you need to find out if it's a motherboard error.

You could try testing the RAM by creating a bootable USB stick with MemTest86+. If you can boot up the PC and run MEmTest86+, it will give you confidence that the mobo, CPU and RAM are OK, which would then point to the SSD as being the problem.
https://memtest.org/
 
thanks you Misgar, i have windows 10 installed on another ssd it boots normally without changes on the pc or sata cable or port or the ram, the hardware seems all fine, i believe the matter is the hidden drive that is created when installing windows could be got corrupted when i connected it externally via usb to another pc .. i moved the files our of it .. i've searched a lot about the error message but couldn't find any resource about it

the system files should be all ok but it's about the partition that's been automatically created by the windows installer, i don't know if it's repairable or the only solution is to format and make a new installation
 
I've seen a method described elsewhere on this site that repairs the boot partition of corrupted drives but I can't remember how it's done. Perhaps you can perform a search and find the instructions or someone will post them here
 
View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F72D7uL6cZg
i followed the setps in this video, it worked, the os booed normally, it was the boot partition corrupted when the ssd was connected externally via sata to usb

although two cmd commands didn't work, i kept going forword and the problem now is resolved
c:\>bcdboot C:\Windows /s g: /f ALL
it couldn't copy all the files
bootrec /fixboot
access denied
there is a similar solution i found at https://windowsreport.com/restore-recovery-boot-partition-windows-10/