- May 19, 2011
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The computer's history (to my knowledge) is pretty simple: I got it from a customer, and the only reason they replaced it is because a competing computer shop convinced them to replace it for a problem that turned out to be a faulty monitor. This computer to my knowledge should be working fine.
It's an Ivy Bridge era SFF size desktop PC, i5-3470 CPU. I put in a spare SSD, installed Win10 1803 from USB (no problem), and ran memtest86 as part of a general check-up to see if everything was still OK with it, so far so good. I believe I then noticed that UEFI / secure boot weren't enabled so I enabled it and attempted to do a fresh install. The first stage of setup went fine, then on reboot it went straight to USB rather than booting from SSD. I rebooted it again, disconnected the USB drive, attempted to boot from SSD and it claimed that it couldn't find any bootable devices.
It gets stranger though because through some unknown process, at a later boot attempt (without restarting setup from USB) it then boots into the next stage of Windows setup from SSD absolutely fine. On one occasion I attempted to do startup repair and srttrail.txt basically says it failed to boot during the setup process. Insightful stuff.
It's done this a few times now. I'm using the Windows setup routine repeatedly because that's my only symptom to go on at present. I believe I've already run a full chkdsk on the main filesystem on the SSD without issue, but I'm going to run it now just in case my memory isn't correct. One thing I've done in response to the problem is a BIOS update but that doesn't seem to have helped. I also checked BIOS settings but they appear to have been unaltered by the update which surprised me.
I had one crazy theory that the main symptom was due to the orientation of the PC (vertical or horizontal); it seemed to favour horizontal, but I think I've seen enough occasions to discount that. I also replaced the SATA cable to the SSD but that doesn't seem to have helped. No CRC errors or anything else worthy of note in the SSD's SMART stats.
I had another trawl through the BIOS this morning in case there was some kind of weird 'boot sector protection' feature but the only thing I found was that I remembering enabling SMART support at the same time as making the alterations to allow UEFI secure boot, so I disabled SMART support and then the machine booted. I'd be very surprised if an issue like that survived through into the last BIOS update for this machine though.
One of my previous install attempts also included disabling UEFI / secure boot but that hasn't helped either. In the latest attempt I re-enabled those options. I think my first attempt at installing Windows resulted in a UEFI install of Windows without secure boot, because I think the memory stick I normally use for Win10 installs only supports UEFI booting (so CSM was enabled but wasn't utilised in that instance).
The machine was originally licenced with Win7 Pro, so I'd be surprised if the original (OEM) installation was UEFI / GPT.
- edit - chkdsk result came through fine, no issues found, no bad sectors, etc.
It's an Ivy Bridge era SFF size desktop PC, i5-3470 CPU. I put in a spare SSD, installed Win10 1803 from USB (no problem), and ran memtest86 as part of a general check-up to see if everything was still OK with it, so far so good. I believe I then noticed that UEFI / secure boot weren't enabled so I enabled it and attempted to do a fresh install. The first stage of setup went fine, then on reboot it went straight to USB rather than booting from SSD. I rebooted it again, disconnected the USB drive, attempted to boot from SSD and it claimed that it couldn't find any bootable devices.
It gets stranger though because through some unknown process, at a later boot attempt (without restarting setup from USB) it then boots into the next stage of Windows setup from SSD absolutely fine. On one occasion I attempted to do startup repair and srttrail.txt basically says it failed to boot during the setup process. Insightful stuff.
It's done this a few times now. I'm using the Windows setup routine repeatedly because that's my only symptom to go on at present. I believe I've already run a full chkdsk on the main filesystem on the SSD without issue, but I'm going to run it now just in case my memory isn't correct. One thing I've done in response to the problem is a BIOS update but that doesn't seem to have helped. I also checked BIOS settings but they appear to have been unaltered by the update which surprised me.
I had one crazy theory that the main symptom was due to the orientation of the PC (vertical or horizontal); it seemed to favour horizontal, but I think I've seen enough occasions to discount that. I also replaced the SATA cable to the SSD but that doesn't seem to have helped. No CRC errors or anything else worthy of note in the SSD's SMART stats.
I had another trawl through the BIOS this morning in case there was some kind of weird 'boot sector protection' feature but the only thing I found was that I remembering enabling SMART support at the same time as making the alterations to allow UEFI secure boot, so I disabled SMART support and then the machine booted. I'd be very surprised if an issue like that survived through into the last BIOS update for this machine though.
One of my previous install attempts also included disabling UEFI / secure boot but that hasn't helped either. In the latest attempt I re-enabled those options. I think my first attempt at installing Windows resulted in a UEFI install of Windows without secure boot, because I think the memory stick I normally use for Win10 installs only supports UEFI booting (so CSM was enabled but wasn't utilised in that instance).
The machine was originally licenced with Win7 Pro, so I'd be surprised if the original (OEM) installation was UEFI / GPT.
- edit - chkdsk result came through fine, no issues found, no bad sectors, etc.
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