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Hello there,
I have 1 SSD and 2 HDDs, the SSD has Windows on it, so it has a tiny system-reserved partition and one for the rest of the drive. Yesterday I accidentally marked one of my HHD partitions as active (meaning that it will try to boot from there) in the Windows disk management screen. Realizing my mistake, I went into elevated cmd prompt and marked it as inactive again (because disk management only allows you to mark things as active but not reset them to inactive again for some reason hrrrr). Afterwards I reset my SSD to be active again, picking the large partition because it said "Boot".
Today my PC won't boot up because of that. Gives me an error that the Boot manager was unable to load. Apparently it's the tiny system-reserved partition that needs to be active instead?
Right now, I can access BIOS just fine, but when I try and boot from my SSD it gives me an error (it picks the wrong partition I guess, the large one I marked active). I used a UEFI USB stick to install Windows and my PC doesn't have an optical drive. Plugging that USB stick in allows me to select it in BIOS to boot from. It adds two devices to my list of SDD and HDD/HDD: UEFI USB and USB drive. The first option results in the same error message and the second shows me a flashing cursor in a prompt-like screen for what seems forever (I can't input anything).
Any ideas? My Windows copy is legit (from University) but I don't have a recovery DVD, and I'd rather not have to buy an optical drive for this one problem either.
I assume system specs don't actually matter for this issue, it's a new PC, Z97 motherboard, 4690K CPU, GTX 760, 8GB DDR3 RAM, 128GB SSD.
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If I could get into cmd prompt I would be fine, I can mark partitions as active/inactive from there. But how do I get into that when all I get is BIOS and Windows doesn't even start booting.
Same issue with safemode, can't get in.
Thanks for the ideas so far!
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You don't need to buy an optical drive. It will not help in any way, will behave exactly like the USB drive (will also show two entries when booting with the DVD and then not work).
In the BIOS, while working on this, you might want to first disable all SATA ports for the drives that are not needed. Keep only the SATA port with the SSD enabled. This is pretty much the same as pulling the data cables from the HDDs, except you don't have to open the case.
I wonder if you really installed your Windows on UEFI style boot. I looked on a Windows here, and the menu option for "mark as active" is grayed out. I think this "active" partition stuff is something only used by the old MBR style of booting. If you had that menu option not grayed out, this might mean Windows was installed as MBR?
If it's like that, perhaps you fucked something up in the BIOS boot order while trying to fix things? Make it so that "legacy" boots first, instead of UEFI. If you enable booting from both UEFI and legacy, you should see two entries for the SSD, similar to what you see for your USB drive. Make it so the legacy one boots first.
There should also be BIOS settings to only have UEFI boot enabled, or only legacy boot enabled. It might be somewhere where you also see talk about a "CSM" = "Compatibility Support Module".
After you've set things up to boot legacy from the SSD and it still doesn't want to work, boot from the USB stick using the "USB drive" entry in the BIOS. You said it's a black screen with blinking cursor, but this might have been fixed after doing stuff to the CSM in the BIOS. If the Windows installation program manages to start up, there's a repair diagnostics option somewhere, and it might fix the boot stuff. If it can't do it, there's a way to get to a command prompt window. There's this command line tool to fix things: http://support.microsoft.com/kb/927392
You'd type:
bootrec /fixmbr
bootrec /fixboot
That's how it was usually fixed the way I remember. This is only for MBR/legacy style of booting. It won't fix things for UEFI. It might also break stuff in that case? I don't quite know how to best find out if your Windows is installed as UEFI or as legacy/MBR. For UEFI, the Windows installation creates several small partitions that are hidden, while on MBR there's just one and maybe a separate hidden recovery partition.
+ Show Spoiler [UEFI is the future] +The next time you reinstall Windows, you might want to use the new UEFI stuff. If you are currently really not using it, the mistake you made was that you chose the wrong entry for the USB drive when running the Windows installation. The Windows installation will not install in UEFI style unless you boot the USB drive as UEFI, and there's no way to force it.
You can remove the legacy boot options completely if you disable "CSM" = "compatibility support module" in the BIOS. That way, only UEFI boot will work. There will be only the UEFI USB drive option visible for example. Disabling CSM is also interesting because it will enable the Fast Boot option where the PC will directly start up to the Windows 8 boot screen.
You'll have to make sure the SSD is partitioned using "GPT" instead of MBR. If the drive is currently MBR, you'll have to delete all partitions to be able to switch it over (or use a third party partition management tool instead of Microsoft's Disk Management).
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I don't know if it's UEFI or MBR. I did follow the guidelines in the PC building thread with the tool that formats a USB stick with an ISO to become a boot CD/DVD for Windows installation. With that plugged in, Win 8.1 pretty much installed itself.
I have disabled the HDD SATA ports.
What I can't get is the two options for my SSD to boot from. I see two BIOS options: Boot Mode Selection (can be UEFI/Legacy, Legacy only or UEFI only) and Storage Boot Option Control (can be UEFI only, Legacy only, Legacy first, UEFI first or disabled). I'm pretty sure I tried all combinations and nothing seems to help the situation so far. Either I get the boot config missing or corrupted screen for UEFI/SSD or I get the blinking cursor on Legacy.
Thanks a lot for the help so far, any further ideas?
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only had this one thing happen to me; it was similar but different.
- had 2 hdd's
- partitioned one of them with partition magic
- what that did is, on windows install, prevent the windows from making that separate 100megs system partition
- proceeded to install win7 on the previously partitioned drive but with both HDD's connected to the SATA ports
- what windows did, on install, was to create that system partition on that other HDD.
needles to say the system wouldn't boot up when only the HDD with windows was connected. had to reformat everything.
the idea is that when you activated a different drive/partition, windows might've permanently moved/assigned something to somewhere else.
boot up from USB and try to fix/repair it. it's all i have,  gl
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Thanks for the experience report haha. If only I could boot up from USB, that's exactly what I'm trying to do.
Any more ideas?
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Did you try loading the default BIOS settings and then seeing how it behaves after that?
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Yup, no change I'm afraid. Still getting either the blinking cursor or no boot config error.
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Are there any more options? Sorry for bumping but this one simple click in the Windows disk manager has literally garbaged my PC right now and it's really not a good time for that to happen right now. Starting to feel a little helpless...
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What exactly is going on when you try to boot that "UEFI USB drive" entry?
That the legacy "USB drive" entry doesn't boot probably means that the boot sector is missing. I had this when creating a USB stick manually. Then when doing it again with a dedicated tool like Rufus, it worked.
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When I boot the UEFI: SMI USB DISK 1100 I see the motherboard splash screen for a second and then:
WINDOWS BOOT MANAGER
Windows failed to start. A recent hardware or software change might be the cause. To fix the problem:
1. Insert your Windows installation disk and restart your computer.
2. Choose your language settings, and then click "Next."
3. Click "Repair your computer."
If you do not have this disc, contact your system administrator or computer manfacturer for assistance.
File: \Boot\BCD
Status: 0xc000000f
Info: The Boot Configuration Data for your PC is missing or contains errors.
Thanks for the continued help! I did use RUFUS to make my USB stick.
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Somewhere in the BIOS there's something about "Secure Boot", probably on the same screen where you do boot order stuff and CSM etc. Try to see what happens if you disable Secure Boot.
Another thing... can you try to disable all SATA ports, including the one with the SSD, then try to boot from the USB drive (UEFI)?
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Good ideas, unfortunately not even that seems to help. I've disabled secure boot and that appears to make zero difference.
When I disable all SATA ports including the SSD and try to boot off of just the Legacy USB option I get the blinking cursor again. When I do the same with the UEFI I get the message: "Reboot and Select proper Boot device or Insert Boot Media in selected Boot device and press a key."
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Can you try that USB flash drive in another PC/laptop? You might have forgotten that you've erased and overwritten it or it's not the stick where you've put the Windows installation on.
Something else: try a different USB port if you can. Is there an USB 2.0 one somewhere on the board? There's also BIOS settings to force everything to USB 2.0, I think. USB 3.0 is that "XHCI" stuff, "EHCI" = USB 2.0. I think if you disable XHCI, it'll run as USB2.0.
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OOOOH. MYYYY. GOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOD
I'm so so sorry for wasting your and everybody else's time. I was trying to boot off of a couple of fucking holiday pictures this entire time. I was 100% sure I only had that one 16GB USB stick, apparently I have two identical ones, one with a bunch of photos and one which is my Windows 8.1 Boot Stick.
Now I'm in the repair tool and letting it do it's thing. I'll report back if this worked/didn't work. I feel sooooo stupid now.
EDIT: It did, thanks again everybody and you in particular, Ropid. If mods want to delete this thread that's fine with me. It wasn't a technical issue after all, just my own stupidity.
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United Kingdom20278 Posts
LOL
most technical issues are just stupid stuff, don't worry
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You mean your holiday pictures aren't bootable ?
For future reference, this is how Windows 8.1 set itself up on my rig:
http://i.imgur.com/GZpValO.png
The boot partition is the 350 MB one (System, Active, Primary), and it's on the WD HDD, not on the SSD. *shrug* The more you know...
Glad to hear the repair tool did its thing successfully !
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Ouch, I actually unplugged my HDD SATA connections before installing Windows 8.1 to make sure it can only write to my SSD.
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EPT
