External Drive

[glorybound]

Crap! I got my new PC, got everything installed (MAX, VRay...) and this morning things took an ugly turn. I plugged my external drive, booted, and I got a partition error. I quickly Googled and it said it was due to an external device being plugged in at boot. Okay, sounds right, but I can't boot into Windows. Each attempt brings up a diagnoses screen, but none of the options work. What the hell! Any tips?

Bobby Parker www.bobby-parker.com

[Syclone1]

theres no option on there to boot normally?

[glorybound]

Well, that sucks! Dell said that my external drive probably has a virus, which deleted the O/S. They are shipping me a Windows 10 restore DVD, next day. It has worked for over a year, whiteout issues, however, I never booted to it.

Bobby Parker www.bobby-parker.com

[glorybound]

I'm going to fire my IT guy! Dam idiot!

Bobby Parker www.bobby-parker.com

[Morbid Angel]

The virus part is a load of bs. You probably need to insert windows cd and boot from it and run windows repair.

[glorybound]

The DVD that came with it is Win 8.1 and they said that I'll need Win 10 DVD. The C: drive is totally gone! I asked if somehow booting to the external drive somehow changed drive letters and they said no. I see and X and D drive, both with the Windows tree. Bobby Parker www.bobby-parker.com

[glorybound]

Apparently there is no way to change the drive letters without going into Windows, so I can't try to rename D to C. I thought the boot was looking for the O/S on C and it wasn't finding it, which seems to be the case but I can't point things to D or rename D to C. Bobby Parker www.bobby-parker.com

[benb32]

Hi Bobby, sorry to hear that you're having issues so early on with your new machine. I agree with the earlier comment that the likelihood of it being a virus is very slim. New computers boot using a uefi interface, which is like a clever type of BIOS. This is why the startup of windows 8 and 10 look different and may not always show you any loading messages other than the windows logo and circle. Additionally a process called secure boot is used to load windows, which should prevent any other unauthorised operating systems from loading. A likely point to look at is the hard drive has failed. It would be useful to know what the hard drive setup is with your machine. Is it a sata SSD or pcie SSD? Being a dell system, turning the computer completely off, then as soon as you switch on tap the F2 key lots (check the manual, as it could also be the del key) this will get you into the uefi bios screen. If it starts to load any type of recovery, you've missed the screen, so start over again. The uefi screen should tell you if the hard drive is detected correctly and also if there is a boot partition setup. A option to try is downloading a universal boot CD/Flash image (google for it there are a few) this will let you boot into windows from the cd/flash drive and at least you can examine your disks to see where your Windows partition is. As a side note you'll probably have to turn off secure boot to use the cd, then you can press f12 as soon as you turn on the computer to choose what disk to boot from. Don't forget to turn secure boot back on again in the uefi bios once you have finished. Finally, you can try accessing safe mode my starting the computer with the shift key held down (you may need it to startup, goto recovery, then restart from the menu with the shift key held down. The windows 10 and 8 CDs are not the most helpful for recovering a windows installation. Hope this helps Benjamin

[dlparisi]

Sucks. I'm not sure if it's the same thing as a normal commercial DVD, but you can download a ISO image from microsoft at https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/soft...oad/windows10/ . Using this ISO allows for a new installation but I'm not sure if it contains the recovery tools. Also, what does your BIOS say is the boot drive? Does it show the correct boot drive?

[benb32]

Yep, the download is the same thing as the DVD. The media creation tool is useful as it allows you to choose which images to download and include - i.e. you can safely ignore the x86 32-bit images.
Once you boot from the created image DVD/usb flash you can choose the options to repair Windows. However, these will be the same as the options and tools you were presented with when it first failed. Benjamin

[glorybound]

A failed hard drive day one would suck. When I booted with the external drive plugged in, I got a partition error. It is a SATA SSD. I did a complete DELL diagnostic and everything checked good, so that would have probably detected a bad hard drive, no?

[benb32]

Know it's little consolation but better that it fail straight away than after two weeks in the middle of a project. Whether the Dell diagnostics sees a failed drive depends on a few points. If you have multiple drives and the diagnostics is located on a different drive to the problematic drive, there is a chance it may not even be detected and so not tested. Also the diagnostics may be part of the uefi firmware, and so give the same result if the drive doesn't even show up. Your best path to discover what is going on is to get into the uefi bios as see what hard drives are reported. If the drive is shown, you can get a 8GB flash stick and create the windows 10 install (using the win 10 media creation tool) disk on another computer which will make a bootable flash drive you can install from straight away. Should only take about 20mins, Benjamin

[benb32]

At the moment you're just diagnosing the problem. Fingers crossed the ssd drive is fine. I've had issues recently where after installing a batch of windows updates the computer would not boot afterwards. On a difference occasion, Windows replaced the nvidia drivers with it's own Microsoft ones, giving a black screen on booting afterwards. Create well named restore points when you reach milestones with the software you're installing. That way should you need to go to the recovery screen you can restore to just a few moments before any problems that arise. Benjamin

[benb32]

Finally, when you're booting the computer, unplug anything you don't need like usb drives, printers, external hard drives, and to begin with network also. Just keep the power, keyboard, mouse and screen.

[glorybound]

It is showing the SSD drive, so I am guessing that it implies that it is good. I turned legacy on/off... It all does the same thing, which is boots to the Automatic Restore utility. Everything is unplugged, except the network, which I'll try next. Also, I did plug things into the UPS this morning, but other than that and the external drive, nothing changed from yesterday. Tell you what, this is a great way to get introduced to your new computer.