[SOLVED] Problems with UEFI Boot

[txbdrz]

Sorry for the long message but I think the history is essential for anyone who can help me.
I built up a computer for my granddaughter using parts from Newegg. It has a GIGABYTE GA-970A-DS3P (rev. 2.0) AM3+ AMD 970 SATA 6Gb/s USB 3.0 ATX AMD Motherboard, and the processor is AMD FX-6300 .Vishera 6-Core 3.5 GHz Socket AM3. This worked find for almost 2 years and then failed to boot. She took it to some local computer shop and they guy could not figure out the problem but according to his notes he tried "resetting the bios" and both UEFI and Legacy boot methods with no success. Then he tried rebuilding the MBR and associated tests.
By the time I got it I could see that there was no EFI partition and there were 3 partitions, all NTFS. The partitions were System reset, Data, and Recovery. Unable to fix it by trying the ideas I found on the web, I bought a repair program called EasyRe Pro. It also failed. I corresponded with the maker of EasyRe and they told me if their program would not work then it was a bad hard disk. However:
I left it running for a few days, sitting a the C: prompt from a repair disk. When I came back to it, it had booted into windows 10 Pro ! So I created a disk image and also make a new repair disk. However after shutting down it still would not boot. Then I installed a 500 GB SSD and installed windows on that, the original 1 TB hard drive is still there as secondary. I can see all her files and was able to make changes to the boot partition files as well as create the image, so I do not believe there is anything wrong with the drive. In desperation, I tried copying the EFI folder from the new disk back to the original. Not only does that not work bur now it says that the disk is not a boot disk.
I noted that for a drive to be able to boot via UEFI it is supposed to be a GPT drive. This one isn't - yet it worked with UEFI originally.
So I am lost. My granddaughter has about 800 GB of programs and games on that disk and it would be a massive job to figure out and reinstall everything. It seems that there must be some way to fix the boot sectors on that disk. Help please
Thanks, Russ

 

[karenjoly]

The remedy is perhaps very simple. Remove the old drive from the system and reinstall windows 10 on the new disk using the steps set out below. Once the system boots correctly several times, so you know it works well, then attach the old drive. The files there should be accessible . Then you can delete or save them as you like.

Create an up to date USB install media by following the steps outlined here:
https://www.microsoft.com/en-ca/software-download/windows10

Then disconnect or disable all hdd /ssd drives but the one where you will install windows.

Insert the USB media tool, with the windows install files, into the board. Next startup and go to the board setup and ensure the board is configured to use UEFI boot settings, CSM is enabled and SATA mode set to AHCI.

On the motherboard boot device menu, select the command that identifies both the firmware mode and the device. For example, select UEFI: USB Drive or Windows Boot Manager : USB and list that device in the first boot slot on the board.
Reboot. Install begins.

When choosing an installation type, select Custom. On new disks, the drive will show a single area of unallocated space. If there are partitions, select each one and then "delete".

Select the unallocated space and click Next. Windows detects that the PC was booted into UEFI mode, partitions the drive using the GPT and begins the installation.

NOTE: Any data on the drive will be lost

 

[txbdrz]

The remedy is perhaps very simple. Remove the old drive from the system and reinstall windows 10 on the new disk using the steps set out below. Once the system boots correctly several times, so you know it works well, then attach the old drive. The files there should be accessible . Then you can delete or save them as you like.

Create an up to date USB install media by following the steps outlined here:
https://www.microsoft.com/en-ca/software-download/windows10

Then disconnect or disable all hdd /ssd drives but the one where you will install windows.

Insert the USB media tool, with the windows install files, into the board. Next startup and go to the board setup and ensure the board is configured to use UEFI boot settings, CSM is enabled and SATA mode set to AHCI.

On the motherboard boot device menu, select the command that identifies both the firmware mode and the device. For example, select UEFI: USB Drive or Windows Boot Manager : USB and list that device in the first boot slot on the board.
Reboot. Install begins.

When choosing an installation type, select Custom. On new disks, the drive will show a single area of unallocated space. If there are partitions, select each one and then "delete".

Select the unallocated space and click Next. Windows detects that the PC was booted into UEFI mode, partitions the drive using the GPT and begins the installation.

NOTE: Any data on the drive will be lost

Thanks for your reply.
Well I know I can do that but it does not really solve the problem of all the installed programs. Every program has registry entries, sometimes hundreds of them. I can't just save these programs and then copy them back to the newly installed windows drive. Also those program have data saved in various places. Even if I could re-install the programs, I would then have to figure out where the data are saved and attempt to copy the old data there. And even if I can do that, it may not work, as there could be indexes or other info about the data that are stored in the registry, It can become very complicated.
If the disk were definitely defective then I would have no option except to attempt those things. But since the disk is intact, except for the boot partitions, I feel there ought to be a way to fix the boot without re-installing windows.

Russ

 

[steve6375]

You said ' Then he tried rebuilding the MBR and associated tests.'
but you also said that the disk was originally UEFI and therefore had GPT partitions?

Its sounds like the repair shop has converted the disk to MBR partitions?


Since you have a working 500GB drive and the (bad) 1TB disk has MBR partitions, I would use an MBR (Legacy) install on the 500GB good disk.

Then try using BootIce or EasyBCD to modify the BCD on the 500GB drive to add in a boot option to boot from the (bad) 1TB drive (MBR-boot not UEFI boot).

Once you have a working BCD, you can copy the \boot folder and \bootmgr to the (bad) drive and see if it will boot (if you want to).

i.e. forget UEFI, just use Legacy BIOS.