Sudden "Reboot and Select proper Boot device"

benbilgri

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Local time
11:32 AM
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2
Hello all,

I custom built my machine in the summer of 2013, and it's worked flawlessly for 5 years (see specs below). Upgraded the video card once a couple of years ago, but all other components are original.

The problem first showed up this afternoon. The system had been powered up for about 5 days and I had been working for most of this morning with no apparent issues. Then I tried to launch a game in Steam and it notified me that the game's files could not be located. Restarted, resulting in multiple failed boots with the above message.

I have two main drives: The OS is on the SSD, and the majority of my files (including the data for all Steam games) are on the HDD.

This one is confusing me. The boot failures made me think that my SSD had died (it is almost 5 years old, after all). But the fact that everything was working fine until I tried to launch a game also makes it look like the HDD could be involved. The kicker is that when I enter the BIOS on startup both drives are still being detected and are showing the approximately correct quantity of data present. HOWEVER, the detection of the HDD by the BIOS appears to be intermittent, with the drive sometimes showing up and sometimes not. But again, if this is the issue, why would I have a boot failure, since the OS is on the SSD, which always shows up?

Apologies for the long-windedness, but I wanted to provide as much helpful information as possible. Any help and/or suggestions would be much appreciated.

Motherboard: Asus P8H77-I
Processor: Intel Core i5 3570K 3.4 Ghz
Video Card: Sapphire Radeon RX 480 8 GB
Memory: Crucial Ballistix Sport 16 GB (2 x 8 GB) DDR3 1600 Mhz
Hard Drive: Seagate Barracuda 2 TB
Solid State Drive: Samsung 840 120 GB
Optical Drive: Samsung SH-224BB
Operating System: Windows 7 Home Premium 64-bit
 

My Computer

Computer type
PC/Desktop
Computer Manufacturer/Model Number
Custom Build
OS
Windows 7 Home Premium 64-bit
CPU
Intel Core i5 3570K 3.4 Ghz
Motherboard
Asus P8H77-I
Memory
Crucial Ballistix Sport 16 GB (2 x 8 GB) DDR3 1600 Mhz
Graphics Card(s)
Sapphire Radeon RX 480 8GB
Hard Drives
SSD: Samsung 840 120 GB
HDD: Seagate Barracuda 2 TB
Welcome to the forum. Check all connections to the drives are ok. Then run disk check on both drives it can be 2nd drive failing and this can confuse the boot up as the BIOS can be retrying to detect drive locking up the BIOS
 

My Computer

Computer type
PC/Desktop
OS
win 8 32 bit
Also, include a screen shot of your Disk Manager. Sometimes during the installation, Windows will put the boot files on the first disk it sees and that may have been the standard hard drive.
 

My Computer

Computer type
PC/Desktop
Computer Manufacturer/Model Number
Custom Built
OS
Windows 10 Pro x64, Windows 8.1 Pro x64, Windows 7 Ultimate x64 SP1,
CPU
INTEL i9-7920X LGA 2066
Motherboard
Gigabyte X299-WU8 F3
Memory
64 GB (4 X 16 GB) G-Skill V Series DDR4 3200 Quad Channel
Graphics Card(s)
EVGA GTX 1060 SC 3 GB
Sound Card
Realtek Onboard ALC1220
Monitor(s) Displays
2 x Samsung S27E310
Screen Resolution
1920x1080
Hard Drives
Samsung 2 x 970 EVO Plus 500 GB NVMe
1 x 6TB WD 6003FZBX SATA
1 x 6TB WD 60EFRX SATA
12 x 3TB WD 30EFRX SATA
PSU
Seasonic X-1050
Case
Thermaltake Armor+
Cooling
Corsair H80i V2 Liquid AOI Cooler
Keyboard
Logitech G510s
Mouse
Logitech MX Master 2S
Internet Speed
200 Mb/s
Antivirus
ESET NOD32 13.1
Browser
EDGE (Dev, Canary, Beta), Chrome
Other Info
ASUS RT-AC68U router
Malwarebytes 4.0.4
Update: It looks like the HDD was bad, which caused decidedly strange symptoms. The operating system was on the SSD, so I can't figure out for the life of me why that would cause boot failures. Even when the HDD was fully disconnected from both power and data the system still couldn't boot successfully. Is there any way anybody can think of that an HDD failure could cause the corruption of the OS on a separate SSD?

Anyway, I disconnected the HDD and did a clean reinstall on the SSD, and it seems like everything's getting back to normal. Just have to get a new drive. Weird. Thanks for the suggestions, everybody.
 

My Computer

Computer type
PC/Desktop
Computer Manufacturer/Model Number
Custom Build
OS
Windows 7 Home Premium 64-bit
CPU
Intel Core i5 3570K 3.4 Ghz
Motherboard
Asus P8H77-I
Memory
Crucial Ballistix Sport 16 GB (2 x 8 GB) DDR3 1600 Mhz
Graphics Card(s)
Sapphire Radeon RX 480 8GB
Hard Drives
SSD: Samsung 840 120 GB
HDD: Seagate Barracuda 2 TB
As explained the BIOS trys to read the disk on start to get details if it's faulty it can keep trying and get locked up and may even get confused with the other drive
 

My Computer

Computer type
PC/Desktop
OS
win 8 32 bit
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