Windows has stopped booting. Advice needed please!

[martinlest]

My PC has two SATA drives, for storage, and two 128GB SSDs. One of the SSDs has Microsoft Flight Simulator (FS9) installed on it. The second is divided into two partitions: the first has the O/S, the second Microsoft Flight Simulator X (FSX).

The first sign of trouble was when aircraft fuselage textures stopped loading in FS9. Eventually, when this didn't clear, I decided to reboot. After I did so, the FS9 SSD was completely missing from My Computer. Tried rebooting a couple more times. No joy, and the Asus BIOS splash screen was taking ages to move onto the Windows is starting up phase, so I assumed that the drive had failed. I unplugged the faulty SSD, and all was OK. For two or three reboots...

Then, rebooting once again a little later, all I got was, after the BIOS splash screen, a black screen with one line of strange characters. A few letters and numbers there, but mostly stuff like you might find in Wingdings font, musical notes, patterns and shapes. I took a photo of this. I can post it if really needed, but don't expect the exact string will help much. It's the same string of characters every time..

I booted using a BartPE DVD and went into the explorer utility. The O/S drive itself is clearly OK (it would be a bit much for both to fail in 30 minutes!) as both partitions on it, the one with the O/S and the one with FSX, are accessible in BartPE and I can browse through the various folders.

Also, the small System Reserved partition with a folder called 'Boot' and the bootmgr & Bootsect.bak files are there too.

I tried the boot repair option from the original Windows 7 x64 installation disc, but after running for some time and then telling me I should try to reboot, I got the same string of characters as before.

If the C drive and the System Reserved drive are there OK, any ideas why am I getting that string of characters and the PC won't boot any further? Another hardware problem somewhere???

I looked in the BIOS itself, but apart from the FS9 SSD not being listed, I saw no difference; but I am not too sure what I am looking for there to be honest.

Thanks for any help with troubleshooting this.

Martin

 

[gregrocker]

Work through the steps for Troubleshooting Windows 7 Failure to Start since infection cannot be ruled out and the normal repair routine might not work if it's infected.

Test the SSD's with the manufacturer's firmware. Check for firmware upgrade.

 

[martinlest]

OK, I'll work through that (will take some time I guess) and post back. Thanks.

 

[martinlest]

OK, very first step: I unplugged my two SATA drives (the faulty SSD was already unplugged) and rebooted. The PC went straight into Windows as normal!! I am going to take advantage of this and make an up-to-date System image onto an external HDD whilst I am in Windows. I'll run an anti-virus scan and then with Malwarebytes too. Then I'll reconnect each of the SATA drives and take things from there. If that causes the boot failure again I'll post straight back.

I wonder what this implies, as the two SATA drives themselves had no problems in themselves (I checked them with Hard Disk Sentinel as soon as the problems started today. 100% clean)..

 

[rvcjew]

sounds like your sata controller on your motherboard may be going bad or a drive is causing it to hang at times. what motherboard is it? is it the Asus P6X58D-E ? are your ssd's in the gray (marvel) ports?

 

[martinlest]

.. are your ssd's in the gray (marvel) ports?

No, should they be??

I found that the PC booted OK if only the SSD with the O/S on it was installed. Plugging in either of the two SATA drives stopped the from PC booting. I went into the BIOS, with one SATA plugged in to see if it was recognised (it was) and to check settings, but I made no alterations there. For some odd reason, the PC then booted fine & the SATA drive was recognised in Explorer.

Then plugged the second drive (also 1TB) in and the system said it needed to run checkdisk, which has been running for over two hours now, "Fixing incorrect information in file record segment ...". Seems to be doing this for every single segment - it's past 500000 now - it could run all night! I'll let chkdsk run to completion of course and post back what happens.

So, should I plug my O/S SSD into the grey Marvel connector?? Can you direct me towards the info about this? Googling it for the past 15 minutes hasn't helped... The PC was constructed with the connections as they are now...

One problem I have - I have posted about this here before, but was unable to fix it - is that my O/S disk is only Disk0 in Disk Management when no other drive is plugged into the M/B. When I add a drive, the O/S drive becomes Disk1 or 2 or lower and the data/backup SATA drive bcomes disk0. Not sure if that's a factor, and even if it is, what I can do about it, short of wiping everyting and starting again (a very, very, very last resort with my setup for various reasons).

 

[rvcjew]

the gray ones are your sata 3 ports so i would since your ssd's should be sata 3 and would get better performance

 

[martinlest]

Well, one of the SSDs is, I think, defunct.

I'll try plugging the O/S drive in there, once I get the SATA drives sorted out.

You say my SSDs should be SATA3. How to tell?

 

[gregrocker]

Remember to assure the correct HD you want to boot is set first HD to boot in BIOS setup.

Are you booting your choice of OS HD's via the BIOS or using a Windows Boot Menu?

With all drives plugged in please post back a screenshot of Disk Management - Post a Screen Capture Image.

To get the System to boot with all HD's plugged, assure that the OS drive marked System Active is set as the first HDD to boot in BIOS setup.

 

[martinlest]

In the BIOS the SSD with the O/S is set as the first disk to boot. I have now plugged it into a grey Marvell SATA3 port and in the BIOS I have gone into Onboard device Configuration and set the Marvell 9128 Controller to AHCI Mode. I think that is correct, no?

Checkdisk ran all night, "Fixing incorrect information in file record segment ..." then changing security IDs. The result is that the drive has been wiped clean! Great!!! All that is left is a file, bootsqm.dat. Any ideas why this is the case? Again, I have all the data that was on the drive backed up (I think!) but why has checkdisk removed every folder and file that was partition? I wasn't expecting that.

Are you booting your choice of OS HD's via the BIOS or using a Windows Boot Menu? I don't see what you mean by that - I am not in a multi-boot setup and have only one OS HD. I attach a screenshot of my Disk Management. As soon as I connect a SATA HDD, the SSD drive (with the 'System reserved' Partition and The C drive) is kicked off the Disk0 spot.

The PC boots OK now - I get a new Marvell info screen during the boot process, but I suppose that is normal.

Assuming the SSD on which I had FS9 is indeed dead (still a few tests to do) I was thinking about replacing it with a hybrid drive, like this one:

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Seagate-ST1...519109&sr=1-2&keywords=Seagate+1Tb+SSHD+drive

Plugs into SATA3 port too I think?

A good choice, in people's opinion?

Thanks,

Martin

 

[gregrocker]

Martin, I've never heard of Disk Check wiping a HD. It must have been struggling to piece the data back together on a failing HD. Test your HD now with maker's HD Diagnostic extended CD scan. Kudos on having your data backed up. This is why.

I wasn 't referred to which drive is in DISK0. You need to assure instead that the OS HD is set first to boot in BIOS Boot Priority order. So in BIOS setup now Disk2 must be set the first HD/SSD to boot.

The risk with the other HD's in preceding positions is that a Startup Repair or reinstall can derail the System boot files to a preceding Primary partition. THis can be avoided by unplugging the HD's before a reinstall or repair, or converting all preceding data partitions to Logical using How to set partition as Primary or Logical.

If there is any boot problem with the OS drive after unplugging the problem drive(s) then boot into Win7 DVD or System Repair Disk to run Startup Repair a few times to check for and resolve issues.

 

[martinlest]

Thanks, as ever, for the input!

This isn't the first time you've said to me that it's the first time you've heard of some mishap that I have encountered! Why me, I wonder? I also had, as a remnant of my E partition, a 'found.000' folder, but nothing useful was in it, given I do have a duplicate of the said partition as backup.

I tried plugging in the faulty SSD one more time, just to see if it really is finished, but quite apart from Windows not seeing it when I boot (can't even get BartPE to start from CD-ROM now with the SSD connected!), the experiment caused checkdisk to come up again wanting to check the same partition as before on one of my SATA drives. Very odd. I aborted the check, but since it came up with the same thing every time I rebooted (of course), I deleted the partition, reformatted it and am now copying my folders from backup once more. (Luckily copy speeds are pretty good, around 45MBs/sec, it doesn't take too long to copy the 120GBs or so).

I have ordered a Seagate ST1000DX001 SSHD drive to replace the SSD. As it's not for the O/S (but does have programme executables, like MS Flight Simulator on it), I think that will be a reasonable choice.

No, I know you weren't referring to which drive is in DISK0 in DM - that was my extra info. I check now that the SSD with the O/S is first to boot in the BIOS in the hard drive list. The drive no longer shows up in the SATA list, since I switched it to the Marvell connection on the M/B. It now shows on the separate Marvell splashscreen at boot.. Normal, I guess.

Fingers crossed, no problem with booting at the moment. If I ever need to do a repair, I'll try to remember to unplug all the other drives first. Yes, all my partitions were set up as primary partitions: if I were ever starting from scratch, I'd make sure that that wasn't the case. The link you gave How to set partition as Primary or Logical just leads to a 404 error BTW.. must have been moved. If I can convert primary to logical partitions without erasing data, I might give it a try.

We spent quite some time some months back trying to reset things so that my O/S drive shows as Disk0 in DM, but nothing helped. As soon as I plug in a second drive, it moves position and that new drive becomes Disk0. Will have to live with it (and bear in mind the precautions you mention)..

Thanks again.

 

[rvcjew]

Martin, I've never heard of Disk Check wiping a HD. It must have been struggling to piece the data back together on a failing HD. Test your HD now with maker's HD Diagnostic extended CD scan. Kudos on having your data backed up. This is why.

I wasn 't referred to which drive is in DISK0. You need to assure instead that the OS HD is set first to boot in BIOS Boot Priority order. So in BIOS setup now Disk2 must be set the first HD/SSD to boot.

The risk with the other HD's in preceding positions is that a Startup Repair or reinstall can derail the System boot files to a preceding Primary partition. THis can be avoided by unplugging the HD's before a reinstall or repair, or converting all preceding data partitions to Logical using How to set partition as Primary or Logical.

If there is any boot problem with the OS drive after unplugging the problem drive(s) then boot into Win7 DVD or System Repair Disk to run Startup Repair a few times to check for and resolve issues.

yeah agree this happens a lot with ssd's since your bcd almost always gets put on your spinner and not he ssd. A hybrid drive will be slower to load levels ect. its not as fast as a true ssd those are more for putting your os on the little partition then your other stuff on the normal part (unless its one of the ones that just use it as cache basically). how old is your dead ssd you can probably get it replaced under warenty. as for the hdd being wiped it defiantly sounds like its dyeing. so do the advice above and also see what its start data says under hdtune for your smart data (if your manufacture program doesn't have that feature).

 

[martinlest]

No, I have checked the disc with two or three utilities (like Hard Disk Sentinel), as I think I noted somewhere, and it shows no problems..

The SSD is about 3 1/2 years old. I'll check, but I doubt the warranty was longer than 3 years.

M

 

[martinlest]

BTW, Hard Disk Sentinel says that my SSD supports TRIM but that it is disabled.

I ran

fsutil behavior query disabledeletenotify

from an elevated command prompt I got

disabledeletenotify = 0

.. so trim IS enabled, no???

 

[rvcjew]

BTW, Hard Disk Sentinel says that my SSD supports TRIM but that it is disabled.

I ran

fsutil behavior query disabledeletenotify

from an elevated command prompt I got

disabledeletenotify = 0

.. so trim IS enabled, no???

should be, sentinel for me looks like this.

 

[gregrocker]

Hard Disk Sentinel only reads SMART data. It is not the maker's HD Diagnostic extended CD scan repeatedly recommended which along with Disk Check will tell you the HD condition with certainty.

If an SSD fails and the diagnostics are not readily available on its Support page, then contact Tech Support if within a year of purchase to arrange for testing and possible RMA through them. We see many SSD failures here.

SSD Alignment - Windows 7 Forums
SSD Tweaks and Optimizations in Windows 7
How to Set Partition as Primary or Logical

 

[martinlest]

Going back to the SSD question. I have now removed it from the PC and hooked it up to my laptop - which doesn't recognise it at all: nothing in Disk Management. I guess I can just ditch it. It failed four months outside of its three-year warranty

I think that the best solution for my SATA (data) drives is, as I have all the data backed up, wipe them and create new logical/extended partitions and copy the data back. I could use Partition Wizard I suppose, but since the partitions contain data and not programmes, wiping them and recopying seems the most risk-free option. If I do that, I should get my boot drive back as Disk0 ?

Although I keep drive images of my other SSD, with the O/S on it, I am wondering whether to create an exact replica of my SSD Win7 installation on a dedicated primary partition on one of the SATA drives (the SSHD probably), using the image backup I have. That way, I can still boot as normal if disaster strikes my O/S SSD. Would that be easy to achieve? My image backup contains the Reserved Partition too of course. I don't want to mess up my current boot partition: can I restore the image I have to a different partition from the original, given the original is still extent (and my primary boot source)?

It's years since I created a dual boot system (in XP), but I guess it's pretty straight forward. Or better to 'hide' the duplicate O/S partitions from Windows so I don't need a dual boot? If the install is on the same PC, I wouldn't need to activate Win7 again??

BTW, I assume I should plug the new SSHD (Seagate ST1000DX001) into the remaining grey, Marvell port, not a standard SATA?

Questions, questions... Not sure of the best way to go about this. What do you think? There is probably a tutorial here somewhere I can use.. I'll have a look.

M.

 

[gregrocker]

Formatting logical partitions for data is only to assure that the boot files (System flag) cannot be derailed to a preceding partition when the OS is not in Disk0 position. It should not affect how your mobo numbers the disks.

Read your mobo Manual on it's Support Downloads webpage to see which port is best to plug the SSD, and the hybrid HD into.

 

[martinlest]

No mention of SSD or SSHD or even the word 'solid' in the Asus M/B pdf manual. I'll just have to try it out when I get the drive.