Windows 7 not starting at all

I am still working on this. I tried creating the FAT32 USB install stick from the ISO SIW2's tool created, both using Rufus and Using the Windows Download Tool. Both failed. Rufus errored out with "Unable to patch/setup files for boot." and the Windows tool said it was unable to use bootsect.

Your post mentioned that there doesn't have to be anything special about the USB stick as long as it's formatted FAT32 and has efi/boot/bootx64.efi. So, I reformatted the USB stick as FAT32 and then copied over the installation folder files and then made sure bootx64.efi was in efi/boot.

But, when I attempt to boot from that USB stick, I am not booting up to the install screen with "Repair my computer" option. I hit the F8 key to enter the PC BIOS's boot menu and choose to do a UEFI boot from the USB stick. But, this is the screen that shows up

When I hit Enter, the following screen shows up

If I choose either "Windows Setup [EMS enabled]" or F8, I am kicked back to the first screen.

I used USB7ice and the ISO that your utility created and... got to a usable startup repair screen. Running it now.

Thank you!

Well, that improved things, I think. I booted from the USB stick and ran Startup Repair.

That found a restore point and asked if I wanted to use it. I did. I rebooted at the end and Windows booted up.

However, there are (at least) two problems. First, it seems like every other time I boot, I get kicked to the BIOS. Just clicking "Save and Restart" (even though, as the BIOS warns me, I have made no changes) seems to get things working and Windows boots. But, something is still obvious not working properly if I have to do that every time or every other time I reboot. Possibly just a BIOS setting?

The other thing is that it seems like restarting after connecting an external (USB) hard drive (I have a WD MyBook I use for backups mostly) makes the PC unbootable and I have to go through the startup repair process all over again. At least now, though, startup repair will start from the SDD (no other drives attached to the PC).

But, startup repair doesn't recognize the C: drive and initially finds no Windows partitions until I attach a USB stick with the drivers SIW2 posted before and then, after loading the driver, it finds the C: drive. Then it starts searching for Windows installations and it gives me a "There is no disk in the drive" error that goes away if I click Try Again 6-8 times.

Eventually, startup repair runs (and uses a restore point, etc.) and things are back. This makes me wonder if maybe the drivers still aren't properly installed everywhere they should be on C:? (Or, from wherever Startup Repair runs from when nominally booting from the SSD?)

Here is what I see about the drivers. I see three drivers related to the Samsung 960.



But, I don't know if this is the place to be check if everything is where it's supposed to be.

The System Information -> Components -> Problem Devices page has the following entries:

Code:

Device                          PNP Device ID                      Error Code
------------------------------  ---------------------------------  ----------------
Cisco AnyConnect Secure         ROOT\NET\0000                      This device is 
Mobility Client Virtual                                            disabled.
Miniport Adapter for Windows 
x64          
Not Available                   ACPI\PNP0A0A\2&DABA3FF&2           The drivers for this 
                                                                   device are not 
                                                                   installed.

I disabled Cisco when I installed another VPN. I am not sure about the second entry. It corresponds to an "Other devices" Unknown device in the Device Manager.

After some searching, it looks like this is a driver to let some ASUS utility software talk to a (temperature?) sensor on the MB. I downloaded ASUS' "ASUS Probe II Sense Driver V1.0.1.0 for Windows 7/8/8.1/10 32bit & 64bit." driver and installed it. (What's in quotes is what appears on the ASUS downloads page. It's a Utilities category driver dated 2015/07/29, for anyone looking for it.)

The yellow is gone from the Device Manager and msinfo32 no longer shows this as a problem device. I am rebooting in a minute to see if it had any effect on fixing my Win 7 boot issues.