[SOLVED] Cpu upgrade - post and display but no boot (win 10)

[Crumpet]

This is for a friend who's slightly panicking on facebook right now.

He upgraded from an i3 2120 to an i7 2600k. Motherboard is: Asus P8h61-mlx 2

(the board isn't for overclocking, but the price was right and no non-k 2600's were available at a reasonable price)

He gets a post beep, and can access the bios etc, but windows fails to start each time;

He was also upgrading GPU, but we've tried the original GPU and the problem is the same.
We've tested each individual memory stick, same problem.

Any ideas?

He doesn't really want to reinstall windows as he has important data on there, and start up repair isn't working.

I've given him a link to the latest bios but he can't sort that tonight.

 

[CentroX]

latest bios will probably solve it. It usually does.

 

[Crumpet]

UPDATE - he says he's getting the message;

inaccessible boot device

slightly less panicked about the cpu now

 

[Spjut]

If he had to reset the BIOS settings or update the BIOS while changing CPU, it might perhaps be that the harddrive setting is on IDE mode instead of AHCI?

 

[Crumpet]

I had gotten him to reset the bios, so that's another potential fix, i'll try that. Thank you.

 

[Crumpet]

If he had to reset the BIOS settings or update the BIOS while changing CPU, it might perhaps be that the harddrive setting is on IDE mode instead of AHCI?

And we're in!!! 10 points to Gryffindor!

 

[VirtualLarry]

Yep, that can get you sometimes, if the IDE/AHCI of the native chipset SATA controllers get switched.

I had a worse experience once with an ECS A55 / FM1 board. It supports UEFI / Secure Boot and all that Jazz (Windows 8 compliant). I installed Linux Mint using UEFI, and that registers a bootloader with the BIOS/UEFI, rather than just selecting a drive to boot off of. Well, I had to clear CMOS (overclocking issue), and then when I got back into the BIOS, the bootloader entry was gone. I still have no idea how to get it back. I wasn't able to boot the Linux install any more, and had to re-format to get it back. (Linux doesn't care about IDE/AHCI like Windows does, so it wasn't that issue.)

 

[Crumpet]

Ouch, that sounds like it was a right pain.

Sometimes just getting to the root of what can be a stupidly simple problem can cause migraines for days... God bless the internet.

 

[lopri]

Are you familiar with how to create a bootable USB drive? If you are, try the following freeware:

http://www.lazesoft.com/lazesoft-windows-recovery.html

It saved me time in a couple of occasions in the past. Basically it is a pre-boot environment tool that lets you trouble-shoot Windows boot problem. It gives you various solutions to the troubles like the one your friend's system is having. The software offers you multiple solutions with which you can apply the fix that you are most comfortable with. If you decide to give it a try I suggest you back up the troubled system (the software will give you an option to do so) and read through all the options before applying a fix. In the worst case scenario your friend should at least be able to retrieve all the data he needs before reinstalling the OS.

As many have suggested the most likely cause is a corrupted bootloader or incompatible/missing registry entries which can happen with hardware environment changes. If it's hardware, the most likely cause is the system's memory. The kind of BSOD is a familiar one to those who have fiddled with memory timings during overclocking.

 

[lopri]

Here is another excellent guide with fix suggestions. Slightly more technical than using the above linked software, but both basically attempt to do the same thing. This guide gives you a bit more detailed explanations as to why you apply certain fixes.

Windows won’t start – Guide for Windows XP, Vista, 7, 8, 10

 

[Crumpet]

Thanks for the responses lopri, however this issue has been solved, Spjut correctly identified that my CMOS reset swapped the disk drive from AHCI to IDE.

 

[lopri]

Glad you resolved the issue!