Solved How to idendify "missing" device at boot

[trinaz]

Having trouble booting from Win 7 Pro 64bit install disk (copy of). Keep getting error 0xc000000a ( not sure of all digits)

Info: The boot selection failed because a required device is inaccessible message when attempting boot from recovery cd

Have Acronis 2013 recovery cd, Partition Magic boot cd, and my original and copy of Win 7 Pro installation cd.

Any ideas of what's happening with the boot failure...and is there a log somewhere (if I can get restarted) that would have more details on this error. Any way to trace what is not being found ?

Thanks...TiminAz

 

[TVeblen]

A couple of guesses:

Boot order problem: go into BIOS settings and change the boot order. It doesn't matter what you boot first (assuming CD-ROM Drive), just change it and reboot, then go back into BIOS Settings and change it back to the way you want it. Test and see if that works.

If all CD/DVDs fail to boot it could be a failed optical drive. You could try to boot from a USB stick to test this idea.

Disconnect all other drives except the CD/DVD DRive and test.

Is there an OS on the HDD? Will that boot?
If yes, then no, try disconnecting the CD/DVD Drive.

Lets see if any of that shakes something loose.

 

[trinaz]

It was a HDD (not a boot or systems drive) in the box. What I don't understand is that drive didn't have much..if anything on it....but...when I disconnected the power cable...all's back to normal.

Why would a boot issue be caused by a a secondary HHD in the box ???

Thanks...TiminAz

 

[TVeblen]

Because if the hard drive is throwing up major errors then it may not get enumerated (recognized) at the BIOS level. The BIOS could hang because it does not know what to do with it.

Even if the BIOS does get past it then the same thing can happen with Windows startup. Computers can be kind of dumb. Instead of saying "this thing is a problem, I'll just ignore it", they will try to get it to go over and over and....

I just recently had this happen building a new system. One of the hard drives was bad right out of the box and even though it was only a data drive (no OS) it was making the entire system hang. I got an RMA replacement, plugged it in, good to go.