SSD No Longer Boots Windows

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MrMcFeely

Commendable
Oct 11, 2016
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1,510
First time poster on here with a problem I can't find an exact duplicate of in the forums...

I just had an issue with a home built pc where I had to replace my CPU fan. Once done I tried booting up and got a black screen with a blinking cursor. I opened up the BIOS and it detects all three drives without issues. I have a Samsung 840 EVO with Windows 10 on it, and 2 HDDs. All three were detected. I went through some forums on here, tried booting without the HDDs, tried different SATA cables to the different drives, tried disabling Secure Boot...

Nothing seems to get me anything other than the black screen and white cursor of death.

If the drive itself is bad, it seems strange that it would show up in the BIOS correctly labeled and everything. I'm currently in the process of creating a Windows boot disk to see if just Windows is bad, but I'm open to suggestions here.

Thanks in advance for any and all advice.
 
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Ok, startup repair does nothing. Doesn't give a reason why, just says it didn't work.

System Restore won't work either as it tells me to restart and select an operating system, which won't boot.

Options from this point forward?
 
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See if a upgrade will work from within the installation cd
I'll get back with you tomorrow
 
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Not sure how to do that. When I first load the usb boot disc, it says an upgrade is already in progress (there shouldn't be one) and asks if I want to continue. Clicking Yes restarts the computer and brings me right back to that step. Saying No takes me to a menu with some options.
 
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An upgrade from the boot disk that would save my files doesn't work. I get the following error message:

"The computer started using the Windows installation media. Remove the installation media and restart your computer so that Windows starts normally. Then, insert the installation media and restart the upgrade. (Do not select |Custom [advanced]| to perform an upgrade. |Custom [advanced]| installs a new copy of Windows and deletes your programs and settings.)"

Obviously what it is telling me to do is impossible because Windows won't start normally... I'd like to not lose all my files if at all possible.
 
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Dang. The next step would be to use the system file check from the boot disk, but I've never had good luck with this.
Change boot order, run the installation media, go to repair and get to the command prompt. We need to run it on another drive because this "portable Windows" isnt your drive

Type in sfc /scannow /offbootdir=d:\ /offwindir=d:\windows
now the drive letter D may be wrong, so go through and try letters until it works.
Post here the results of the check
 
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Okay, so through a combination of bootrec commands including scanos, I identified the drive that contains windows is the G: drive. All the files are there and interestingly enough, so is a both a Windows installation and a Windows.old installation. I thought this may be related to the upgrade from Windows 8.1 to 10 that I did months back, but my roommate had a different theory.

In the move to a new apartment, my CPU fan was damaged when the rubber gasket broke and prevented the fan from spinning up and burning out the motor. In the course of diagnosing this, the PC was started and immediately shut down (when the mobo detected the lack of CPU fan) in rapid succession. This could have forced the PC to start a windows repair and immediately lose it. Once the fan was repaired and the PC was able to start, it refused to boot.

Attempting the command line you gave me with the G: drive gave me the following message:

"Windows Resource Protection did not find any integrity violations."

I hope all this might narrow the problem down somewhat. Right now, it is definitely looking like a problem with the Windows installation as opposed to the hard drive. This thread may need to be moved to a different part of the forums.
 
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May want to repost in Windows because they can probably help more than I can. I say as a last resort get a live usb of some Linux distro or file manager and move all personal data off, reinstall Windows, and redownload programs.

EDIT: Try these first
bootrec /fixmbr
bootrec /fixboot
bootrec /scanos
bootrec /rebuildbcd
 
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Tried all of those when identifying the drive. The commands execute successfully but nothing changes.

Thanks for the help anyway. I'll try reposting in the Windows section.
 
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The only thing that was unplugged during the whole ordeal was the CPU fan from the motherboard header. Nothing about that should be causing boot issues post-BIOS. I'm not getting any "unbootable" error messages either.
 
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And just changing the CPU fan should not have corrupted the OS, or affected the data on that drive, in any way.
 
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No it shouldn't, which is why I believe the rapid startup/shutdown when the CPU fan was damaged may have caused the problem. I've tested all the connections and everything is working EXCEPT for the boot.
 
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Yes, it's Windows 10. I'm just trying to eliminate any possibility of an easy way to recover the data. Right now a full reinstall would wipe it. It refuses to upgrades "in-place" and keep my files.
 
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Do you have another PC available?
 
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Which system is the broken drive? A laptop or a desktop?
If it is a desktop and 3.5" drive, a simple SATA-USB cable won't work. Not enough power to run a 3.5" drive.
 
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