Help ! Hard Drive is switching from MBR to GTP after a Windows 7 update !

[firefalcon124]

Hullo there,

Before I ask my question, I'm going to give a bit of context as to what exactly has happened to this PC in the last week or so.

Last week, the PC was unable to boot Windows 7 due to a partition error on the HDD it was booting from. Due to this, not knowing how to solve the problem otherwise, I reinstalled Windows (on the same drive). This HDD is a 4 year old Samsung Hard Drive of 2TB capacity.

After reinstalling Windows 7, connecting to the internet and reinstalling/redownloading all of stuff, everything seemed to work fine. I was prompted to install 5-6 years worth of windows updates, which I decided to do while I was out.

When I came back, I switched the PC off and back on to apply the updates (about 30 of them, it seemed). Everything worked fine for 5 minutes, then without warning, the computer just went black, completely off. No blue screen, nothing.

I turn it back on, but the OS won't load, as if the HDD is undetected. I then get the Windows 7 disk to find out what's going on. I try the "repair system" option, but that won't load, saying the versions are different and I should try a different installation disk, which shouldn't happen because it is the same Windows 7 disk which I've always used for that PC.

I then try to install Windows 7, yet again, and this is where I find the problem: the HDD, for no particular or apparent reason, switched from MBR partitioning to GTP partitioning, which the motherboard on this PC does not support.

I managed to fix the problem, and I am now installing Windows again, but here come my questions:

Why did the HDD partition suddenly change ? Was it the Windows Update ? Could it have something to do with Windows licensing ? How do I prevent this from happening again ?

And also, why was that when I tried "repair system" on the OS installation disk, it wouldn't let me due to a "different version of windows" ?

I hope someone can help me clear up this mystery.

Owen.

 

[The Original Ralph]

i don't have an answer for you but do have a suggestion - i do a clone of my OS drive every week - using EaseUS ToDo Backup (their freeware version), and running from one SSD to the backup SSD thru sata ports, it takes me 28-30 minutes to clone approx 177 GB.

I install windows updates manually, AFTER completing the backup, in case the updates screw the system up. And in fact, 2 weeks or so ago, my computer (i'm running win 7 x64) started doing the same "screen goes black, no bsod etc" - and started right after downloading windows updates. But in my case, it was more like an accelerated going into sleep mode, as simply hitting any key on the keyboard would bring it back awake.

I didn't look to see if my OS drive had changed partitioning, but i set it up as GPT to accomodate the samsung xp941 M.2 SSD,

Cloning back from the backup SSD took 1/20th of the re-installation time

just a suggestion

i will be watching this thread to see what solution(s) get posted

 

[firefalcon124]

Thanks for the sound advice Ralph. I don't currently have the money for any SSDs, but I am getting an external HDD or two soon, after your recommendation

 

[The Original Ralph]

cloning HDD to HDD is fine - running HDDs my time was in the neighborhood of 1.5 - 1.75 hours for a complete clone copy, and do use the clone feature, not the backup - the EaseUS ToDo Backup interface is super easy to decipher. Also be sure to select the "sector by sector" choice in EaseUS

try to go with a backup HDD of equal or greater size than the OS drive

something else that a clone copy serves is to restore a system when a bad malware takes over. I've spent hours researching the "cure" for whatever virus had hit my system, when it occurred to me, cloning back from a backup copy of the OS would be a lot faster and easier.