Select proper boot device on every cold boot fixed by a restart

[mariarautakorpi]

MY PC is back at it, causing me some serious frustration. Every time I try to boot it up after a full shutdown it greets me with "select proper boot device" error. This, so far, has always fixed it self by simply powering the PC down and trying again. Or like today when I finally checked the BIOS but CBAed to do any actual changes I just exited without saving and the computer actually started properly. What could this be? I've already had Acer support fix this once (BIOS update when there was no getting past this same damn error last summer), really don't feel like being left with no PC for some time again so I'd love to try to fix this at home but need some ideas of what could be wrong. It's a pre-built PC that had the OS already installed and I haven't changed anything at all so the issue is not a fresh OS install etc.

 

[Colif]

normally if it works after a restart but not a normal boot it leads to a driver not liking the power plans of windows 10

Does it happen if you turn fast startup off? https://www.tenforums.com/tutorials/4189-turn-off-fast-startup-windows-10-a.html

Fast startup is the new way win 10 starts/shutsdown PC. Instead of tunring PC off when you shut it off at night, it puts it to sleep. It saves a copy of all open driver + the windows kernel into ram so when you start PC again, its half loaded and should bounce into action. Clearly something in your PC doesn't like that idea.

Which Acer is it? Did you check you have the latest drivers as well to match bios?

 

[mariarautakorpi]

It's an Acer GX-781. Other drivers should be up-to-date. I now disabled fast startup, will let you know what happens the next time I boot this PC.

 

[Colif]

looking at driver list, you probably do have latest since they all have the same date on them.

There have been 2 new BIOS this year, latest is R02-B0. Updating might fix it again.

Try running HDTune free edition on your HDD and look at the health tab.

It is unusual to get same error return if it was fixed already.

before you follow the quote below, can you right click start
choose drive management
take a screenshot, share it on an image sharing site like imgur and share link here. Don't follow quote until I have seen screenshot

It has to do with the boot order set in the bios, you need to make sure the HD with windows installed on it is the first bootable drive the computer sees.
you can set this by going into the bios and selecting the boot order menu.
set it to No 1.

http://www.tomshardware.com/forum/289147-28-reboot-select-proper-boot-insert-boot-media-selected-boot-device

 

[mariarautakorpi]

Today, after disabling the fast startup last night, the PC booted just fine. Here's the screenshot you requested. https://imgur.com/a/8zGud
(Lemme know if there's something you don't understand, the OS is in Finnish)
Also, this isn't 100% like the problem last summer since back then it was impossible to get past the error/BIOS screen and get the OS to boot up regardless of how many restarts or changes I made in the BIOS. The update was the only thing that helped. This time so far every single time a simple restart has fixed the issue.

Also, the health tab says the status is ok for the HDD.

 

[Colif]

It must be one of the drivers but knowing which would be difficult. Since all the drivers on PC are updated by windows update, I would run that. In the next few days there will be a new version of win 10 (comes via windows update) and it might replace the driver that is causing the start up problem.

Screen shot shows your drive uses MBR format. I thought that perhaps on start up, your bios was trying to load a drive using GPT format, and it wouldn't see the MBR drive at all, hence error. But that shouldn't happen with fast startup turned on, as PC is already on, so its clearly a driver...

 

[BFG-9000]

I don't think this is a driver issue but a mechanical one.

Most people don't realize that the firmware of a HDD is stored on the platters in a service track, and copied to the drive's RAM cache on bootup (why spend extra for ROM chips when it's a storage device). If a drive is slow to spin-up, then it will not be able to respond to a query from the BIOS in time, before it times out on a cold boot. On a warm reset, the drive is already spinning and initialized, so can respond appropriately. It may spin up quicker in warm weather too, or if recently used as the lubricant in the FDB isn't as thick then.

One of the SMART values is spin-up time but the number values depend on the manufacturer so may not necessarily make sense.

On an aftermarket motherboard there is usually a BIOS setting to increase the boot delay time or timeouts, or at least to disable quick boot/short POST, but an OEM BIOS may not.

If you don't have such a setting then replacing your Drive0 would be a permanent solution. You could use this as an opportunity to upgrade to a SSD which has 100x less latency than any HDD. Or install an OS on your current Drive1--after all the 1TB HDD is probably a lot faster than a 250GB one.

 

[mariarautakorpi]

Well, getting a new drive would be nice but not really what I'd like to invest on at the moment. Ever since I disabled the fast startup the issue has been gone and quite honestly there's hardly any noticeable delay in the startup without it so I'm not going to even miss it. Thanks to the both of you. This is now a solved case, for now at least