Power flicker, BSOD, Winload.exe, Booting from HDD?

[ThePanduuh]

Starting off, this is not my computer. This is my friends computer I'm helping him to troubleshoot.

His power flickered, the pc BSOD, windows error 0xc000000e Winload.exe, option to retry or go to startup settings. It didn't work for a little then somehow, it booted. Yes he's using a surge protector, I don't know why it didn't protect it.

I'm here now, typing this post from it, and it's a weird situation.

I changed HDD BBS priorities to boot from SSD and CD drive second. It tries to boot from SSD, kicks to bios, where I override to the HDD. It boots. Weirdest part? Windows isn't installed on the HDD and it's showing the 500GB SSD as the C: drive when booted in windows. Is this a software error or could this be a motherboard error? SSD is still under warranty, so would cloning this drive to another drive, then trying that drive be a possible solution? Or would it require reinstall of Windows? There's about 235GB of data on this drive, I'd say half or more is games (lots of download time to replace, hence not jumping right to reinstalling Windows).

I read online about the issue and tried using bootrec /fixboot, bootrec /fixmbr, and it shows 0 installations of windows when running the commands. It's still booting, still running fine.

Specs:
i7-6800k
ASUS X99 Gaming Strix motherboard
32 GB Corsair Vengeance LP DDR4 2133MHz
500GB Samsung 860 Evo SSD
2TB Toshiba HDD
EVGA GTX 1070 SC
EVGA NEX750G PSU
Windows 10 Pro

Any help is appreciated, I'm sorry if this isn't the correct location for this thread but it's the one that made the most sense given the Windows 10 error.

 

[Colif]

Maybe he needs a new surge protector, they only protect for a number of strikes, it might have a led indicator on it that shows if its working or not

if you on PC now, look in disk management and upload a screenshot to a image sharing web site and show link here. He is likely looking for an efi partition, so see which drive its showing as.

top drive here is what ssd should look like if formatted to run win 10 (obviously has more space)

Its possible the boot partition is on the HDD instead of the SSD. That can happen if both drives were in PC when you installed. If win 10 finds empty space on another drive, it will put it there.

GPT drives boot different to the old style PC. The boot partition can be on any drive and the boot drive doesn't have to be 1st. Is there a choice in his boot order called windows Boot Manager? It would be top choice in some motherboards if its set up for uefi boot. win 10 defaults to UEFI boot in systems that support it (like his)

 

[ThePanduuh]

Maybe he needs a new surge protector, they only protect for a number of strikes, it might have a led indicator on it that shows if its working or not

if you on PC now, look in disk management and upload a screenshot to a image sharing web site and show link here. He is likely looking for an efi partition, so see which drive its showing as.

top drive here is what ssd should look like if formatted to run win 10 (obviously has more space)

Its possible the boot partition is on the HDD instead of the SSD. That can happen if both drives were in PC when you installed. If win 10 finds empty space on another drive, it will put it there.

GPT drives boot different to the old style PC. The boot partition can be on any drive and the boot drive doesn't have to be 1st. Is there a choice in his boot order called windows Boot Manager? It would be top choice in some motherboards if its set up for uefi boot. win 10 defaults to UEFI boot in systems that support it (like his)

Not on the PC anymore, but I did look at both drives and both had a "system reserved" partition. nothing explicitly labeled recovery. No windows boot manager either. Either HDD, SSD, or Disc drive. It is booting using UEFI and fastboot is enabled. Both drives were definitely installed when windows was installed.

 

[Colif]

The EFI partition is the boot partition, it sounds like its on the hdd.

now if he wants the EFI to actually be on C, he would need to do option 2 here: https://www.easeus.com/partition-master/restore-repair-deleted-efi-boot-partition-in-windows-10-8-7.html
but then you also need to tell the bios where the new EFI is or it still won't boot. This might help there: https://www.lifewire.com/how-to-rebuild-the-bcd-in-windows-2624508

cloning the ssd doesn't help as its the drive that is missing the efi.

Are the games in steam folders? you do know you can copy the entire folder to another drive and then just redirect the Steam clients default library location to new drive, no need to redownload steam games. JUst saying as there is a chance the easiest way to fix this is clean install win 10 on ssd without any other drives in PC at time. Then Win 10 has no choice but to use ssd for everything.

That drive example above is my PC, I installed win 10 with the hdd in PC but it seems 129mb of unallocated space on hdd didn't tempt windows at all. Lucky?

 

[ThePanduuh]

The EFI partition is the boot partition, it sounds like its on the hdd.

now if he wants the EFI to actually be on C, he would need to do option 2 here: https://www.easeus.com/partition-master/restore-repair-deleted-efi-boot-partition-in-windows-10-8-7.html
but then you also need to tell the bios where the new EFI is or it still won't boot. This might help there: https://www.lifewire.com/how-to-rebuild-the-bcd-in-windows-2624508

cloning the ssd doesn't help as its the drive that is missing the efi.

Are the games in steam folders? you do know you can copy the entire folder to another drive and then just redirect the Steam clients default library location to new drive, no need to redownload steam games. JUst saying as there is a chance the easiest way to fix this is clean install win 10 on ssd without any other drives in PC at time. Then Win 10 has no choice but to use ssd for everything.

That drive example above is my PC, I installed win 10 with the hdd in PC but it seems 129mb of unallocated space on hdd didn't tempt windows at all. Lucky?

Some games are steam, some are origin, some are through other methods of install (battle.net, ubisoft, etc). So I'm avoiding a clean install as much as I can. I'm going to try the easus partition software to clone the EFI partition to the SSD and then rebuild the BCD. But when I tried to rebuild the BCD, it said it found 0 installs of windows.

 

[Colif]

How to move Origin Games folder to another drive: https://answers.ea.com/t5/Origin-Client-Web-Technical/Origin-Moving-Games-to-Another-Hard-Drive-or-System/td-p/5776562

How to move Uplay games to another drive: https://forums.ubi.com/showthread.php/1551464-HOWTO-Move-uPlay-and-games-to-a-new-drive-Forums

which Blizzard games as I know you can move the wow folder just by copy/paste and then point launcher shortcut at new folder.