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Dell XPS crashed, now Windows can't find hard drive, but Linux can
3 days ago, I went to boot up my Dell XPS 8500 running Windows 7 Professional 64 bit (after having booted it up and used it earlier in the day with no problem, not having recently installed any software or made any configuration changes.) The result was a black screen with a blinking cursor in the upper left-hand corner. If I reset the computer, I got the Dell splash screen, but the F2 option to enter setup and the F12 option to choose boot devices did nothing--still got the black screen. I opened the case, removed and replaced the CMOS battery. This allowed me to get into BIOS. I then found that if I change the hard drive from RAID mode (what it's supposed to be, as I have a drive with an SSD cache) to AHCI, I could start to boot Windows, but after a few seconds of the "Starting Windows" screen, I would get a quick flash of a BSOD. I was able to see that the error was STOP, 7B. I was also able to get into the onboard Dell ePSA diagnostics, in which every test passed fine. I was able to boot from a Windows installation USB drive, and use the bootrec tool as many online guides describe. I used all the options and they all reported successful completion, but I still got the BSOD. I also downloaded a bootable standalone ISO of Windows Defender and ran it, and it cleaned up a few malicious files, but this had no effect on booting. Startup Repair and System Restore accomplished nothing, though it did show my Windows installation in the list. Chkdsk /f /r ran totally fine. At this point I decided to go back to square one, reset the hard drive mode to RAID, and contact Dell tech support through online chat.
When the Dell tech support agent tried to walk me through using F2 or F12, and I reported they had no effect, just the black screen with blinking cursor, her response was to say she's sending out a technician to try replacing the motherboard. (She also told me booting in AHCI mode would lead to the BSOD.) Because the ePSA diagnostics all passed, and I was able to boot from USB (and at that point the installation copy of Windows could access the hard drive,) I was skeptical that the motherboard was the problem, so I kept trying. My next step was to use another bootable USB drive to update the BIOS from A06 to A10. At first, things appeared to start to boot normally. Before loading, Windows ran CHKDSK automatically, and reported no errors, when it rebooted, however, it went straight into repair mode, and that is where I am stuck. It now shows no Windows installations. Startup Repair said it could not find a hard drive. If I go into Command Prompt and try to change to the hard drive, it says "device not ready." If I boot from my Windows installation media, I get the same result. If I go back into BIOS and change boot mode from Legacy to UEFI, then before Windows boots I get a message that there was no bootable media found (even though it shows my hard drive listed right below the message.) I downloaded and ran a bootable ISO of Seatools from Seagate, and it says my hard drive checks out fine. I then downloaded Ubuntu Linux and made a bootable USB stick out of it. When I boot it, it can see my hard drive with all the files on it. I am currently using the USB-booted Linux to copy the entire contents of my hard drive over to an external hard drive just so I have my data.
Is there something else I could be missing? Since I'm able to boot Windows Installation and Linux USB sticks and run them just fine, I'm skeptical it's the motherboard. Since all these diagnostic tools are saying my hard drive checks out, and Linux is able to access it, I'm skeptical it's the hard drive. But I can't even attempt to repair my Windows installation anymore, because even when I boot from the Windows installation media, it says there is no hard drive. What is going on here?