Question Windows won't boot anymore, but Ubuntu will

[HobsonzPlm]

Basically, Windows 10 won't boot in any way, I have tried changing the BIOS settings, but can't get it to boot from SSD, or a USB, or the original installation DVD.

Before it crashed, my computer had worked fine for over 2 years and never had any problems. I had left it calculating and rendering a very large and detailed 3D animation scene, much more complicated than anything I had worked on ever before . When I returned it had frozen and now will not boot past the ASUS UEFI BIOS and just returns there in a loop.

The computer has 3 partitions, but I only ever really saved onto the main OS SSD, which was nearly full to capacity (238GB used 18GB spare) The other drives had never really been used at all. They all show up in the BIOS

I Googled solutions, and tried booting from a USB with Ubuntu, which worked.
I was able to use Ubuntu and safely backup all the files I need but could not delete anything or make any changes because of "permissions"
I have backed up everything I need and would be fine to wipe/reset or just replace the SSD, if that's the part that's broken? But I'm worried that because it was heavy graphics that caused the crash that maybe it's something else?
What should be my next step?

TUF GAMING B550-PLUS (2.5 years old, bought complete)
BIOS Ver.2407
AMD Ryzen 9 5900X 12-Core Processor
32GB RAM
RTX 3060 12 GB Graphics
256GB OS SSD
240GB Project SSD
1TB Storage HDD
Speed: 3700 MHz
Memory: 32768 MB (DDR4 2666MHz)

Thanks so much.

 

[PicelBoi]

First, try to check if the EFI System Partition (should be a FAT32 partition) is mountable. (Note: the following should work on a Ubuntu install disk) Do fdisk -l on the terminal to list all disks and partitions. Do “sudo mkdir /mnt/ESP” (this makes a folder, and will be our mount point.) Then do “sudo mount /dev/xxx (if the ssd is nvme should appear as nvme, if sata it should be SDA. Check what fdisk -l shows and find the partition, get the partition name and replace /dev/xxx with what specifies as your partition. Now check if everything is intact. Is the ESP empty? If not, then go to your UEFI settings and check the boot options.

 

[dwd999]

Basically, Windows 10 won't boot in any way, I have tried changing the BIOS settings, but can't get it to boot from SSD, or a USB, or the original installation DVD.

Before it crashed, my computer had worked fine for over 2 years and never had any problems. I had left it calculating and rendering a very large and detailed 3D animation scene, much more complicated than anything I had worked on ever before . When I returned it had frozen and now will not boot past the ASUS UEFI BIOS and just returns there in a loop.

The computer has 3 partitions, but I only ever really saved onto the main OS SSD, which was nearly full to capacity (238GB used 18GB spare) The other drives had never really been used at all. They all show up in the BIOS

I Googled solutions, and tried booting from a USB with Ubuntu, which worked.
I was able to use Ubuntu and safely backup all the files I need but could not delete anything or make any changes because of "permissions"
I have backed up everything I need and would be fine to wipe/reset or just replace the SSD, if that's the part that's broken? But I'm worried that because it was heavy graphics that caused the crash that maybe it's something else?
What should be my next step?

TUF GAMING B550-PLUS (2.5 years old, bought complete)
BIOS Ver.2407
AMD Ryzen 9 5900X 12-Core Processor
32GB RAM
RTX 3060 12 GB Graphics
256GB OS SSD
240GB Project SSD
1TB Storage HDD
Speed: 3700 MHz
Memory: 32768 MB (DDR4 2666MHz)

Thanks so much.

If you have ubuntu you should have the gparted app within it. Use gparted to delete all of the partitions on the OS ssd and make sure it has a GPT identifier. Disconnect the other drives since the windows installer prefers that only 1 drive be connected at installation time; you can reconnect the others later. You should then be able to reinstall windows. If successful and your system functions properly, then think about getting some larger drives and not filling them up so much.

 

[Bob.B]

Basically, Windows 10 won't boot in any way, I have tried changing the BIOS settings, but can't get it to boot from SSD, or a USB, or the original installation DVD.

Before it crashed, my computer had worked fine for over 2 years and never had any problems. I had left it calculating and rendering a very large and detailed 3D animation scene, much more complicated than anything I had worked on ever before . When I returned it had frozen and now will not boot past the ASUS UEFI BIOS and just returns there in a loop.

The computer has 3 partitions, but I only ever really saved onto the main OS SSD, which was nearly full to capacity (238GB used 18GB spare) The other drives had never really been used at all. They all show up in the BIOS

I Googled solutions, and tried booting from a USB with Ubuntu, which worked.
I was able to use Ubuntu and safely backup all the files I need but could not delete anything or make any changes because of "permissions"
I have backed up everything I need and would be fine to wipe/reset or just replace the SSD, if that's the part that's broken? But I'm worried that because it was heavy graphics that caused the crash that maybe it's something else?
What should be my next step?

TUF GAMING B550-PLUS (2.5 years old, bought complete)
BIOS Ver.2407
AMD Ryzen 9 5900X 12-Core Processor
32GB RAM
RTX 3060 12 GB Graphics
256GB OS SSD
240GB Project SSD
1TB Storage HDD
Speed: 3700 MHz
Memory: 32768 MB (DDR4 2666MHz)

Thanks so much.

Unplug all disk.
Does the windows flash stick now boot?

 

[Vic 40]

Basically, Windows 10 won't boot in any way, I have tried changing the BIOS settings, but can't get it to boot from SSD, or a USB, or the original installation DVD.

Tried a clear cmos?

The computer has 3 partitions, but I only ever really saved onto the main OS SSD, which was nearly full to capacity (238GB used 18GB spare) The other drives had never really been used at all.

Make use of what you have, that "OS SSD " is way to full. Store on the hdd and make use of the "Project ssd" for your rendering. If you need/want faster storage add a 1tb ssd for direct storage and use the hdd for back ups.

TUF GAMING B550-PLUS (2.5 years old, bought complete)
BIOS Ver.2407

There are newer bios, would imo be good to update, going with the recommendation of a mod here to to that one by one instead of jumping to the latest, are only three versions. Going to the latest immidiately should work fine, but some have had different results which bricked boards, at least on one occasion in his case. You do have the " Asus Bios Flashback " function to use if anything does go wrong though.

 

[HobsonzPlm]

First, try to check if the EFI System Partition (should be a FAT32 partition) is mountable. (Note: the following should work on a Ubuntu install disk) Do fdisk -l on the terminal to list all disks and partitions. Do “sudo mkdir /mnt/ESP” (this makes a folder, and will be our mount point.) Then do “sudo mount /dev/xxx (if the ssd is nvme should appear as nvme, if sata it should be SDA. Check what fdisk -l shows and find the partition, get the partition name and replace /dev/xxx with what specifies as your partition. Now check if everything is intact. Is the ESP empty? If not, then go to your UEFI settings and check the boot options.

Hi, Thanks so much for your help!

I am running Ubuntu from a USB flashdrive and have chosen "Try Ubuntu" rather than "install Ubuntu"

Doing fdisk-l, it listed everything. I think this is the SSD:


Disk /dev/nvme0n1: 238.47 GiB, 256060514304 bytes, 500118192 sectors
Disk model: ADATA SX6000PNP
Units: sectors of 1 * 512 = 512 bytes
Sector size (logical/physical): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
I/O size (minimum/optimal): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
Disklabel type: gpt
Disk identifier: 472DEC3D-6233-4D7B-AE66-82F11331064B

Device Start End Sectors Size Type
/dev/nvme0n1p1 2048 206847 204800 100M EFI System
/dev/nvme0n1p2 206848 239615 32768 16M Microsoft reserved
/dev/nvme0n1p3 239616 499057781 498818166 237.9G Microsoft basic data
/dev/nvme0n1p4 499058688 500115455 1056768 516M Windows recovery environment


I tried entering the commands and got this:


ubuntu@ubuntu:~$ sudo mkdir /mnt/ESP
ubuntu@ubuntu:~$ sudo mount/dev/nvme0n1
sudo: mount/dev/nvme0n1: command not found
ubuntu@ubuntu:~$ sudo mount/dev/nvme0n1
sudo: mount/dev/nvme0n1: command not found
ubuntu@ubuntu:~$ sudo mount/dev/nvme0n1p1
sudo: mount/dev/nvme0n1p3: command not found
ubuntu@ubuntu:~$ sudo mount/dev/nvme0n1p3
sudo: mount/dev/nvme0n1p3: command not found

am I entering the command/getting the partition name wrong?

Thanks

 

[HobsonzPlm]

If you have ubuntu you should have the gparted app within it. Use gparted to delete all of the partitions on the OS ssd and make sure it has a GPT identifier. Disconnect the other drives since the windows installer prefers that only 1 drive be connected at installation time; you can reconnect the others later. You should then be able to reinstall windows. If successful and your system functions properly, then think about getting some larger drives and not filling them up so much.

Hi, Thanks so much for your response. I am working through the advice people gave me in order :


When I ran gparted as you suggested, this is what I saw:


/dev/nvme0n1p1 (!) - EFI system partition - fat 32 - 100 MiB - - - boot, esp

/dev/nvme0n1p2 (!) - Microsoft reserved partition - unknown - 16 MiB - - msftres

/dev/nvme0n1p3 - Basic data partition - ntfs - 237.86 GiB - 220.39 GiB - 17.47 GiB msftdata

dev/nvme0n1p4 - - - unallocated - 1.34MiB - - -



I tried deleting all the partitions, both one by one and all together, but it failed and gparted gave an error:

Input/output error during write on dev/nvme0n1
Invalid argument during seek for read on dev/nvme0n1
Error fsyncing/closing . dev/nvme0n1: input/output errror

What would your advice be for my next step?

Thanks again

 

[dwd999]

Hi, Thanks so much for your response. I am working through the advice people gave me in order :


When I ran gparted as you suggested, this is what I saw:


/dev/nvme0n1p1 (!) - EFI system partition - fat 32 - 100 MiB - - - boot, esp

/dev/nvme0n1p2 (!) - Microsoft reserved partition - unknown - 16 MiB - - msftres

/dev/nvme0n1p3 - Basic data partition - ntfs - 237.86 GiB - 220.39 GiB - 17.47 GiB msftdata

dev/nvme0n1p4 - - - unallocated - 1.34MiB - - -



I tried deleting all the partitions, both one by one and all together, but it failed and gparted gave an error:

Input/output error during write on dev/nvme0n1
Invalid argument during seek for read on dev/nvme0n1
Error fsyncing/closing . dev/nvme0n1: input/output errror

What would your advice be for my next step?

Thanks again

It may be that the m.2 is just burned out from intensive use without cooling. If its covered by a warranty then you could pursue that. If not, you may have to just throw it in the garbage.