[SOLVED] PC only boots in to Safe Mode after I had to auto repair the boot drive ?

[Alan Alan]

I replaced a non boot drive, then had to auto repair the boot drive.
Now it only boots to safe mode and after shutdown it stays in safe mode ?

This is Windows 11 on an Asus Z370 board. They say a standard reboot takes it out of safe mode but it doesn't. Any ideas on how to stop it from rebooting into safe mode. I suspect msconfig is set to restart in safe mode. There doesn't appear to be anything unusual but I thing the auto repair might modify msconfig to always reboot in safe mode. Hopefully that's all there is to it. If it's not in msconfig, is there anything else that would make it reboot into safe mode?

 

[ubuysa]

There is a checkbox in msconfig that specifies a Safe Mode boot, you should go into msconfig and check the normal boot box.

I'm a bit puzzled why replacing a non-boot drive (and non-system drive?) required a repair of the boot drive? How did you repair the boot drive? What was the drive you replaced and what was on there?

It's very possible that you damaged or moved something in the case whilst replacing the drive and that's why it only boots into Safe Mode. Check everything in the case and ensure that everything is properly fitted, is fully home, and that all cables are properly connected - at both ends.

 

[Ralston18]

Try clearing CMOS using the procedure provided in the Motherboard's User Guide/Manual.

https://dlcdnets.asus.com/pub/ASUS/mb/LGA1151/PRIME_Z370-A/E13271_PRIME_Z370-A_UM_WEB.pdf

Reference Page 1-11

 

[Alan Alan]

There is a checkbox in msconfig that specifies a Safe Mode boot, you should go into msconfig and check the normal boot box.

I'm a bit puzzled why replacing a non-boot drive (and non-system drive?) required a repair of the boot drive? How did you repair the boot drive? What was the drive you replaced and what was on there?

It's very possible that you damaged or moved something in the case whilst replacing the drive and that's why it only boots into Safe Mode. Check everything in the case and ensure that everything is properly fitted, is fully home, and that all cables are properly connected - at both ends.

I agree it was strange for that to happen. Win11 performed the auto repair and checked the safe mode before it booted. Something was wrong with the sata bus that was causing it to take 30 minutes to boot. I removed the sata cables to 4 hard drives on the sata bus one at a time with the power off trying to find the bad drive. I thought it would boot right up when I disconnected the faulty drive but it never did. That's when I held the power button down for 4 seconds to shut it off. I also turned the power supply off before disconnecting the sata cables. So I was being careful there.

When nothing worked I went into the bios and turned off the sata buss. Then it turned on and went thru the auto repair and booted into safe mode. So I think by shutting it down during boot so many times the operating system flagged it as though it had a bad driver or something and modified msconfig to boot into safe mode. Also three of those sata drives were in raid 0 mode and one of them failed. I had to break the raid configuration in the bios to get it to boot, so by disconnecting them one at a time didn't actually stop the confusion on the sata bus, so hard lesson learned that time.

It seems the sata bus was interrupting the boot process causing it to take so long to boot and shutting it down during the long boot so many times is what caused the repair mode to activate. Thanks for the response, now I think we both know to check for a failed raid array in the bios and that can cause problems with any other drives on the sata bus. I could get it to boot prior to opening the case after waiting 30 minutes but after booting even the solo non raid drive on the sata bus did not show. Yes, very strange indeed.

 

[Alan Alan]

Thanks, that might have saved some trouble be disabling the raid array. I have learned a confused raid array can raise havoc on the sata buss.