Windows 10 - upgraded from 7 and three days later can't boot

[Jsp196]

I am running a Dell XPS420 which has been upgraded to 6 gigs of ram and a relatively new video card. It was running Windows 7 just fine for years. Three days ago I upgraded to Windows 10. Worked fine for three days - several reboots, no issues with software. This morning I woke up to the blue screen and "inaccessible boot disk" error. I tried rebooting into safe mode several times and even that gives me the same error message. . I tried unplugging every drive but my main C drive. The boot drive is an SSD and the data drive is a standard platter drive. I tried disabling all the other drives in bios. I get the same Inaccessible Boot Drive error every time. I'm now trying to roll back to a previous build but I think the only previous build on the computer is Windows 7 so I'm not sure if that will work. Though I don't know why it's sitting there thinking for 30 minutes if there aren't any previous builds.

Any suggestions? I would rather not do a clean install but I will if I have to.

 

[Darkbreeze]

You probably have to, like it or not. Are you able to access the bios without issue, and the problem only occurs after the POST process when the system attempts to boot into Windows, or does the system fail to POST at all?

 

[Jsp196]

You probably have to, like it or not. Are you able to access the bios without issue, and the problem only occurs after the POST process when the system attempts to boot into Windows, or does the system fail to POST at all?

It occurs after the system attempts to boot into Windows. Temporarily, I was able to try "Restore to Previous Build" and when it looked like it stalled in the "Rebooting" screen, after about half an hour I forced it to restart and it booted back into Windows 7 and I haven't had any issues at all. So I'm not sure why only Windows 10 is having the problem. I wanted to try to solve this before I updated again. Or if my only solution is to do a totally clean install, I can prep for it.

 

[Darkbreeze]

Did you set this up as a dual boot system, and if not, how is it you are able to boot into a Windows 7 that shouldn't still exist after installing Windows 10? Bottom line, upgrading is problematic and has been since the release in August. I recommend doing a clean install EXACTLY as follows, making sure to delete all existing partitions on the drive after choosing the CUSTOM option during the installation, and with no other drives attached to the system during the install.:


http://www.tenforums.com/tutorials/1950-windows-10-clean-install.html



As you can see here, this has been a large enough issue that I created a tutorial specifically to address the issue.

http://www.tomshardware.com/faq/id-2784691/ditch-problematic-win10-upgrade-replace-clean-install.html


Since it DID work for three days, I further suspect that Windows probably updated one or more drivers to a version that the system didn't like, which caused the system to puke. I'd recommend doing this immediately following the installation, and going to the product page for your motherboard and graphics card models and manually installing the manufacturer recommended drivers rather than allowing or trusting the microsoft supplied versions:

http://www.tomshardware.com/faq/id-2763685/stop-windows-automatically-updating-device-drivers.html

 

[Jsp196]

Not a dual-boot. I just rolled back to Windows 7 which apparently is working without any issues. I'll try out doing a clean install and then upgrading drivers manually. It's a relatively old system but was actually working quite nicely on 10. I'll give the clean install a shot when I get a chance.

 

[Darkbreeze]

Ok. That works in most cases. Some systems are especially stubborn due to lingering driver issues, but for the most part the majority of those have been worked out by now. Kind of depends on how old the system is and whether or not the manufacturer shows windows 10 drivers or not. On systems that don't show graphics or motherboard drivers for windows 10, use of the native microsoft drivers is hit and miss. Since it was running fine for three days, I suspect it's fine, and a bad driver fubared the whole shebang.