Question Several Issues after deep cleaning PC ?

[Bastaklis]

Several issues after cleaning.

MBD: MSI Mag Z490 Tomahawk
CPU: i5-10400
RAM: 32GB (4 x 8GB) Corsair Vengeance DDR4
GPU: ASUS TUF 3060 Ti
500 2.5 SSD (Main Boot)
1TB NVME (Old, problematic drive)
500 NVME (New-Old drive)
Random irrelevant HDDs

I decided to do a deep clean after way too long. I got a PC working for my nephew and just decided it was time and boy was it time...

I installed another old NVMe SSD, I removed every component, cleaned everything up, and reinstalled it all.

First boot attempts - no output from GPU. Fans would spin for a moment, and stop. The card would stay lit up and start heating up if I left the system on for a bit, but the fans wouldn't spin and there was no output.
Tried reseating several times to no avail.

Removed GPU to see if I could boot without it. Boots up, but I realize it's trying to boot into the new-old nvme. Fine, I'll go change it in bios. All drives, ram, cpu are listed fine in bios. However, under the advanced option for changing boot drives - only the 2 NVMEs are listed, one of them (problem drive) doesn't even have a boot partition anymore. The 2.5 SSD isn't listed.

Okay... So, I'll do a fresh install of windows on the new NVME so I can test the main boot drive in Windows. I go through the install, and now I'm forced into BIOS without any errors. I check the bootable drives again and now the only bootable drive is the problem nvme without a boot partition. The new-old nvme that just got a fresh windows install is no longer listed as a bootable drive.

That was all yesterday. Today I've attempted to clear cmos. Boot with only the 2.5 SSD plugged in. Changed bios to CSM instead of UEFI, even though I'm positive the drives weren't legacy. Not that it mattered, because CSM doesn't support on board graphics apparently and the GPU not displaying was problem number one. Attempted to flash bios, but the MSI.ROM isn't seen on the flash drive through the flash from drive feature in bios. Next I'll be trying a different GPU and trying CSM again, but presuming as I said before - the drives aren't legacy so it probably won't make a difference, but at least I'll know if a different GPU gets output.

Outside of that, I'm unsure what to try. I can rebuild it again from scratch, but it doesn't seem to be directly related to any issues with particular components that I'm aware of, especially considering the drive disappearing as bootable after getting a fresh windows install, and the drive without a boot partition being seen in the menu, but not drives that should be functionally bootable. This leads me to believe it's almost definitely motherboard/bios related.

 

[Ralston18]

Add more information about the deep cleaning: what was done and how was it done?

= = = =

This motherboard?

https://download.msi.com/archive/mnu_exe/mb/E7C80v1.1.pdf

(Verify that I found the applicable manual.)

First reread and review the entire manual to double check all connections, configurations, etc..

And be sure to pay attention to all fine print, warnings, and so forth - details matter.

More specifically check physically numbered Page 27 regarding the DIMM slots.

The motherboard requires that the first physically installed RAM be placed in DIMMA2.

Often overlooked....

 

[Bastaklis]

Magical fix #1.

Add more information about the deep cleaning: what was done and how was it done?

= = = =

This motherboard?

https://download.msi.com/archive/mnu_exe/mb/E7C80v1.1.pdf

(Verify that I found the applicable manual.)

First reread and review the entire manual to double check all connections, configurations, etc..

And be sure to pay attention to all fine print, warnings, and so forth - details matter.

More specifically check physically numbered Page 27 regarding the DIMM slots.

The motherboard requires that the first physically installed RAM be placed in DIMMA2.

Often overlooked....

All components removed.
Motherboard on top of box.
All non sensitive components - case, blu ray drive, drive bay, fans, etc cleaned with 75 ipa.
All sensitive components that were actually cleaned ram, GPU fans, mobo, etc were air dusted.
99% ipa and qtips to clean old thermal paste from CPU.
Reassembled.


All 4 slots are populated, but I can try booting with just slot 2, I guess? I was previously getting into BIOS just fine on integrated GPU unless trying to use CSM/legacy.
Since my post, I tried a different GPU and got a display on it, and then tried my original GPU that magically worked this time even though it had been reseated multiple times previously. Possible that switching on and off of legacy had some unintended solution, I suppose.

I'll go over the manual again and see if there is anything of note - currently the only issue that remains is that of the drives not being bootable.

 

[Ralston18]

You can try just slot 2 as a matter of troubleshooting etc..

However you should be able to install other supported RAM (from kits for dual channel use) as long as the first physically installed module (per the manual) is placed in DIMMA2.

 

[Bastaklis]

Update:
So, the SATA drives do show as selectable boot drives in CSM, but after setting boot priority it results in "reboot and select proper boot device" on next restart.
I guess it's kind of odd, I can almost 100% recall my BIOS being set to UEFI previously with no issues. But I guess it could make some sense as to why the new-old nvme disappeared from bootable drives in UEFI if for some reason my win11 flash drive is defaulting for formatting the drives that way - ?

I still am unable to boot into any drives currently, and am almost entirely adamant that I was set to UEFI in bios previously on an install from the same flash drive.
Still entirely at a loss and just googling around all day. Have made some progress with the GPU magically working again and finding the drives as bootable in legacy, but still not able to boot from them even then.

 

[Bastaklis]

Update:
After some more fiddling and ultimately making a new Win11 flash drive and ensuring the settings are correct - I'm able to boot into the drive.
However, I'm only able to boot into the drive when the flash drive is plugged in, it throws an error about repairing PC, but all of the repair options fail. It gives an option to select a different windows installation and shows Vol2 and Vol 15 as having installations.
Vol 2 boots into the main drive as normal, Vol 15 loops back to the error. If I unplug the flash drive and try to boot, all of the options basically just refresh the repair page. It flashes and the option does nothing - returning to the selection.

Oddly enough, when using diskpart - Vol 2 is one of my regular HDDs and I only have Volumes up to 12, there is no Vol 15. Currently running commands from ' https://support.microsoft.com/en-us...em-files-79aa86cb-ca52-166a-92a3-966e85d4094e ' and will continue googling for the time being.

Any and all advice would be appreciated in the meantime.

Edit:
Even more oddly, the drives that would previously only show as bootable when bios was set to CSM magically show just fine as UEFI drives now.

Edit2:
Able to boot without flash drive, still getting blue screen for repairing system, but pressing f9 and selecting volume 2 works without the flash drive - no flicker refresh of menu. Really unsure of where to go from here though.

EDIT TO EDIT:
I LIED. Or they stopped showing as UEFI, unsure which. - see image 2 posts down.

 

[Bastaklis]

Starting PC -

F9

Listed drives/partitions.

My guess is it is trying to boot into whatever it is listing/seeing as Vol 15 by default. Where/how/why Vol 15 exists, I don't know.
Vol 2 boots into windows upon selecting it. Same install that has been there for however long it has been. But VOL 2 is seen as 2TB HDD in diskpart.
I'm guessing the solution will be to find the who/what/when/where/why/how of whatever is being recognized as Vol 15 and remove it.
Going to try to set all other boot device options to disabled in BIOS next.

 

[Bastaklis]

Almost impossible to see - but "EDIT TO EDIT" - Either I didn't look carefully enough and thought this was the 2.5 SSD by the same company (SPCC), or we're back to square one somehow with what shows as a bootable disk. Just the old-bad NVME.

Now, this is territory I don't understand at all - but google says "if file path is .efi then drive is UEFI, if .exe then CSM", and C:\ is definitely listed as .efi. But it's saying bootmgr is located on new-old NVME and there is a windows install on G:\ (new-old NVME, Small NVME in above post).

Old-bad NVME isn't listed as having a boot partition at all, but is the only bootable device listed in BIOS.
And it definitely seems that Vol 15 - the broken/looping/defaulting to/makes me go into repair screen installation - in the previous post's screenshot is on Small NVME (New-old), as that's the only other drive listed with an active installation (Even though, i just formatted it, and it doesn't even show as having partitions) and for some reason the boot manager is on Vol 10 ... which is ALSO Small NVME - with no partitions ???.
And booting with ONLY 2.5 SSD in the system brings me straight to BIOS, and I don't even get the repair screen where I'm able to press F9 and load the Vol 2 working installation.

I presume this means that 2.5 SSD would somehow need to be seen as the drive for/by boot manager - will continue googling.
And that something is really up with Small NVME. I'll try formatting it again at the very least.
But... THEN WHY BIOS ONLY SHOW BAD-NVME AS BOOTABLE WITH NO FRIDGKEN BOOT PART?!

 

[JohnBonhamsGhost]

when installing your OS make sure to disconnect all connected disks but your main OS drive.
Windows especially will often make use of multiple installed drives for different system partitions that usually leads to issues like your facing.

if booting with only your OS drive connected does not allow proper boot then you may be stuck formatting and reinstalling.

there are ways to manually edit Windows boot priorities through command line, but only if you are comfortable with this type of operation and can successfully find the required commands.
if not able, and having other drives connected still does not allow proper boot after a fresh OS install you may need to access theses secondary drives via a 3rd party USB drive control application and delete all system partitions from these non-OS drives.

How To - Windows 11 clean install tutorial

Windows 11 Clean install tutorial This tutorial is intended to help you, step by step, to perform a clean install of Windows 11, version 23H2 or newer but can be equally applied to earlier versions which may have some basic differences in the screens you see but will largely remain similar in...

forums.tomshardware.com

 

[Bastaklis]

For anyone that stumbles across this in the future somehow with the same or similar issue (HOW??) - Not sure how much of this is even necessary.
Unsure how any of this happened still, but... whatever. The GPU was likely fixed from CMOS reset or switching to/from legacy/CSM in BIOS.

The boot issue was more complicated, but had I known what to look for, it would've probably been much easier.
In the first set of images you can see that the C:\ drive is one partition, whereas the others are split into EFI and backup, and main partitions. This was caused by formatting the drives (some time go) in the windows installation tool, where it creates the additional required partitions for installation, recovery, etc. Likely what the poster above saw and assumed was some side effect of having multiple drives plugged in during installation - but was directly caused by formatting them that way through the installation media. Where the EFI partition went for the C:\ drive, or whether or not it was ever there to begin with, I'm unsure, especially considering it was formatted in the same way as all of the other drives through the installation media - which ... creates the partitions (that I didn't need on storage drives, but did on my boot drive).

My solution, though I'm sure there are others, was to move files around the drives, delete the partitions entirely and format them through Disk Manager > simple partition > blahblah. I did this SECOND however, in case I ran into issues with the CMD commands and was left with no boot partitions at all.

To get the EFI partition on the C:\ drive, I partially followed this comment from another thread on this forum - https://forums.tomshardware.com/threads/changing-windows-boot-manager-drive.3571420/post-21561626 .
In order to add the partition and set it, I had to do the following.

Prepare to shrink the partition -
- Disable Fast Boot - Control panel > System and Security > Power Options > Choose what the power buttons do (left pane) > Change settings that are currently unavailable > Uncheck Fast Boot
- Disable Hibernation - Same as above, but that didn't seem to work for me, so I ran ' powercfg.exe /hibernate off ' in elevated command prompt (cmd.exe run as admin) instead. In fact, mine was never on, but I did have hiberfil.sys, so ... it was on? I don't know. I just ran the command. I ran the same command again later to get fast boot as an option again as well, or you can change it back in BIOS, some people say to leave it off too? But nah, fastbootgobrr.
- Disable Page File - Control Panel > System and Security > System > Advanced System Settings > (Performance) Settings... > Advanced Tab > (Virtual Memory) Change... > Uncheck 'Automatically Manage Paging File Size for All Drives' > Check 'No Paging File' > Ok
- Disable System Restore - Control Panel > System and Security > System > System Protection > Configure... > Check 'Disable System Protection' > Apply > Ok

Shrink the partition -
From elevated command prompt, run the first section of the above post's recommended commands:
diskpart
list disk
select disk 1
list partition
select partition x
shrink desired=500 (pretty sure this only needs to be 100, but I don't think anyone is stressing over 400MB, and I'm not beyond 1,000,000% sure, so. Though, all of the other EFI partitions in the above screenshots are only 100MB.)

Now, if that works great, but it's probably going to fail, especially if you're doing this on the main windows install drive and had any of the above stuff on. If it fails - open up Event Viewer > Windows Logs > Application and there should be an error and a warning (red circle, yellow triangle) with the Source as 'Defrag'. Go to the warning, go to the general tab below (should be open by default), there should be a line under "Diagnostic details" that says "The last unmovable object appears to be: ..." - Find and delete the file. Run shrink=desired again, and repeat until it doesn't fail.

Run the rest of above post's commands, with the exception of the last one after exit:
create partition efi
format fs=fat32 quick
assign letter=H
exit
After exit command, run this instead (at least in my case, I decided on this after googling).
bcdboot C:\Windows /s H: /f UEFI
At this point it was working, but it was still showing bootmanager as the random weird volume 10.
bcdedit /enum
Get the identifier.
bcdedit /set {xxxxxxxx-xxxx-xxxx-xxxx-xxxxxxxxxxxx} device partition=\Device\HarddiskVolume(X)
replace xxxxxxxx-xxxx-xxxx-xxxx-xxxxxxxxxxxx with identifier.
replace X with new volume number.
Work backwards through "- Prepare to shrink the partition -" to turn on anything you shut off.
powercfg.exe /hibernate on in elevated CMD to get fast boot and hibernate option back without having to go into BIOS.




I still have no idea WHY OR HOW any of this happened, probably something to do with installing the new-old NVME with a broken windows install on it DURING the cleaning process instead of before or after, but I'm still never cleaning my fkn computer again.