Windows 10 Upgrade failed - Boot no longer possible

Hi Everyone,

I hope someone can help as I have run out of ideas.

My father in laws pc ( An Acer Aspire AX1301 ) prompted him to update to Windows 10. During the upgrade the PC turned off and since then it has been unable to boot. Given that I am the only one in the extended family with any IT experience I have been tasked to resolve this Smiley Happy

When booting now we see:

Nvidia Boot Agent 249.0542

PXE-E61: Media Test failure, check cable

PXE-M0F: Exiting NVIDIA Boot Agent.

DISK BOOT FAILURE, INSERT SYSTEM DISK AND PRESS ENTER

I have since downloaded and tried to start fresh USB installs of Windows 10,8 & 7 but in each case the install gets to the point where I choose the location of the install. At this point there is no Hard Disk listed and only an option to Load Driver.

The issue here is that the HD is a WD Blue 320GB and they do not appear to supply any drivers for this HD.

After all this, I did think that the drive was maybe busted, so I took out and put into an external enclosure. Strangely though the HD is still completely accessible with a Windows & Windows.old directory structure. If its worth anything the old Windows version appears to be 7.6 7601.19161.

I have checked all internal cables and these are fine, I don't think that the install could have done anything to the BIOS that could result in this.

Any feedback or suggestions will be appreciated.

David

Accepted answers

All comments

IronFly

if the HDD is good and cable too, the only thing you can try is to do a CMOS reset.

so unplug the power cable and take off the CMOS battery (silver button battery on the top left of mainboard), press power button twice and let it discharge for about 5 minutes.

put everything back and boot to BIOS pressing F2 and check if the HDD is listed, if not you can try to invert the DVD cable with the HDD and reboot.

if the HDD is still no listed, something went wrong on the HDD even if it's accessible from Windows.

billsey

If you are booting in BIOS mode the drive needs to be an MBR, if in UEFI mode a GMT. If you've got the wrong match it won't see the drive. Check to see the BIOS matches your drive setup.

dgodson

OK, have since tried a few things based on recommendations here.

I switched the IDE cables with the DVD drive, still nothing

Reset CMOS and still no drive detected.

Took the HD back out and put into another enclosure. Drive was again picked up fine. Might be interesting but there are 3 partitions on the drive itself:

SYSTEM RESERVED
Local Disk
Acer

So, i ran chkdsk on each of these and there are no errors reported. I am completely out of ideas now, so I tried to format the drive. This also ran fine but I am still left with the 3 partitions above. Still the drive is not being picked up during install of windows.

IronFly

Did you format using another PC with the external enclosure?
And you still have the partitions?

Not good at all, i suggest you to try another HDD on your AX1301.

dgodson

Hi IronFly,

Thanks again for getting back to me on this. Yes, I formatted with an external inclosure. After format the 3 partitions still existed so I deleted them to have 1 NTFS partition.

Put the HD back into the PC and tried to start another Windows installation. Still the drive was not being picked up, so I tried to find the HD with DISKPART. Its listing a C and D drive both with status NO MEDIA and then a third drive which is the USB being used to perform the installation. I can do nothing with C & D.

I have already tried with another HD with the same results. So at the moment the issue appears to be away from the HD. I also tried switching from ATA to IDE for the HD in the BIOS but its still not being picked up. I will try to switch it back to ATA this evening and check the results.

IronFly

Ok, please enter BIOS settings and under security, check (with the HDD connected) if HDD password is set to frozen.

sharky25k

Hi,

I suspect something, which happened to me with a windows 10 insider build when windows 10 was not even released.

So when you start your PC, does the hdd spin up? If not, and it works in external enclosures I think somehow the Power-Up in Standby (PUIS) was activated in the HDD firmware. So what does this mean. This means that if the motherboard don't send the command to the hdd to spin up the hdd will not spin up even if power is applied. It's a power saver feature.

But as I told you it's a theory, I cannot be sure this is the case, but the description is strikingly similar to what I experienced with windows 10 technical preview build 9879, on my old acer notebook.

If your HDD will not spin up during startup of the PC inside the PC, then you can give a try to see if this is the issue.

Solution:

Make a ubuntu live USB, search the internet how to make it Smiley Tongue

Boot the USB and run linux on your machine.

After you boot your LiveUSB/CD:
1. Open Terminal
2. Execute:

sudo hdparm -iI /dev/sd?

sudo hdparm -s0 /dev/sd?

hdparm is a Linux tool for configuring HDDs.

First command displays some info (look for Power-up in Standby on the list - Shift+PgUp to scroll the output).
Second commands sends disable command to that feature.
'?' in commands should work as a wildcard but if it doesn't use 'ls /dev/sd*' to find the letter of the HDD (it usually is either /dev/sda or /dev/sdb - but sometimes can even happen to be /dev/hda)

I hope this can help you somehow.

I am sorry if it's not your case, and I wasted your time.

dgodson

There is no security option under BIOS, the BIOS version is P01-A0.

dgodson

Hi Sharky, Thanks for info. Seems similar to my problem, after running the commands in the Ubuntu Live CD does an installtion of another OS work fine ? As in does disabling it in ubuntu disable it globally ? Worth a shot. Cheers

sharky25k

Hi,

The command is global, it will set the parameter in the HDD firmware. Also ubuntu is a live USB, which means that you can start the system and not install it. When you shut down the sytem after the commands and you remove the CD/USB the system will not leave any trace behind (except of course that you changed the setting of the HDD).

dgodson

sharky25k wrote:
Hi,

The command is global, it will set the parameter in the HDD firmware. Also ubuntu is a live USB, which means that you can start the system and not install it. When you shut down the sytem after the commands and you remove the CD/USB the system will not leave any trace behind (except of course that you changed the setting of the HDD).

Tried with the Ubuntu live usb. Its picking up an sda, sda1, and sdb but none seem to be the internal hd. Tried all the commands but no luck

dgodson

IronFly wrote:
Ok, please enter BIOS settings and under security, check (with the HDD connected) if HDD password is set to frozen.

Hi IronFly, Any idea which submenu this is under ? Is it only in certain BIOS versions ? Thanks

IronFly

nope, i double checked and these option is missing on your BIOS; so my suggestion is useless.

sharky25k

Hi,

If you have another PC and you can connect the HDD via an external enclosure, you can try to connect it and run the commands from that computer. In the first command you should look if the parameter is set to 1 or 0, this in turn will tell you if that could be the issue.

padgett

Just an observation but modern Windows installs I've seen have at least three partitions: a 100 MB boot partition, a 450 mb recovery partition, and the rest is the C: drive. Windows looks for at least the first on boot and will fail if missing or corrupt.

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