Windows mysteriously refuse to boot/load at all (detective needed)

[Kristijonas]

Hello, I have enountered a strange problem. My PC is as in the signature.

I have an SSD with Windows 10 and HDD with Windows 8.

Normally, I only use my SSD with Windows 10. So I was on my SSD and ran defragmenter to defragment the HDD. I left home and came back a few hours later to find that it is in a state of power cycling:
1. Computer starts, stays on for ~15 seconds, display is blank.
2. Computer shuts down. Stays so for ~6 seconds.
3. Repeats.

Mindfucked, I thought perhaps it's a hardware failure since I did not even elect any restart to happen after defragmenting. I sighed and pulled out one of the two RAM sticks. This time computer started 'normally' to tell me memory changed. I used the opportunity to go to BIOS and turned off UEFI and any fast booting stuff so I could continue to access BIOS later if required.
I then saved settings and rebooted and was surprised that windows booted to Windows 8. It was my HDD. I restarted to make su I boot into the SSD but instead it still gave me Windows 8 on HDD. I tried pulling out HDD's SATA cable and try to force it to go to SSD but the PC told me there are no bootables... So I thought the problem is my SSD died. However, I went to Windows 8, ran intel SSD toolbox and did quick AND full diagnostics and optimisation of the Intel SSD and everything went well. I could also access the SSD files fully.

What could have caused my Windows 10 not to even attempt at booting/loading? Could it be some service I disabled a while ago, clearly foolishly? What could I do to restore it? I can't even access advanced startup options of Windows 10...

Mysterious twist:
Now, to add on top of the pile, thinking I could now re-install the second RAM piece, I put it back in, switched my PC on and surprise: computer power cycles again! So the power cycle is caused by... RAM... and now Windows 10 messing itself up?

So what happened? What made my Windows 10 not to boot/load at all (not even attempt to) AND PC not working while two RAM slots are filled? Are these issues related? How can I save my Windows 10 on the SSD?

 

[escrow4]

Hello, I have enountered a strange problem. My PC is as in the signature.

I have an SSD with Windows 10 and HDD with Windows 8.

Normally, I only use my SSD with Windows 10. So I was on my SSD and ran defragmenter to defragment the HDD. I left home and came back a few hours later to find that it is in a state of power cycling:
1. Computer starts, stays on for ~15 seconds, display is blank.
2. Computer shuts down. Stays so for ~6 seconds.
3. Repeats.

Mindfucked, I thought perhaps it's a hardware failure since I did not even elect any restart to happen after defragmenting. I sighed and pulled out one of the two RAM sticks. This time computer started 'normally' to tell me memory changed. I used the opportunity to go to BIOS and turned off UEFI and any fast booting stuff so I could continue to access BIOS later if required.
I then saved settings and rebooted and was surprised that windows booted to Windows 8. It was my HDD. I restarted to make su I boot into the SSD but instead it still gave me Windows 8 on HDD. I tried pulling out HDD's SATA cable and try to force it to go to SSD but the PC told me there are no bootables... So I thought the problem is my SSD died. However, I went to Windows 8, ran intel SSD toolbox and did quick AND full diagnostics and optimisation of the Intel SSD and everything went well. I could also access the SSD files fully.

What could have caused my Windows 10 not to even attempt at booting/loading? Could it be some service I disabled a while ago, clearly foolishly? What could I do to restore it? I can't even access advanced startup options of Windows 10...

Mysterious twist:
Now, to add on top of the pile, thinking I could now re-install the second RAM piece, I put it back in, switched my PC on and surprise: computer power cycles again! So the power cycle is caused by... RAM... and now Windows 10 messing itself up?

So what happened? What made my Windows 10 not to boot/load at all (not even attempt to) AND PC not working while two RAM slots are filled? Are these issues related? How can I save my Windows 10 on the SSD?

More than likely, they had some kinkiness and now 10 won't speak to 8, thus screwing everything long after the screwing is completed. Basically something software related broke. Clean install one or the other.

 

[Kristijonas]

But if that were the case, W10 should start normally when I pulled out the HDD/W8 sata cable? Instead, it didn't even boot/load. The computer told me there are no bootables...

 

[Elixer]

Pretty sure win 10 was doing a BSOD, thus rebooting over and over again.
Causes could be corrupted files or any number of things.

Hard to tell with all the swapping you are doing, but, normally, you should do memtest86+ overnight, if 0 errors, then test the CPU, and if that passes, stress test the SSD a bit more.

For what it is worth, I also had a SSD not boot once, then it worked, then after a few weeks, it stopped, and had to RMA it. SSD's stats throughout this time showed no issues at all.

 

[Kristijonas]

Problem solved. Although I'm not sure how! I am now on Windows 10 on my SSD ()🙂 Gosh HDDs are so slow, I forgot the difference was so huge.

As I said I don't know what fixed it, but I tried running "YUMI – Multiboot USB Creator" in which I installed several different recovery programs into my USB drive. I tried Trinity and something about boot recovery/fix. Not sure what they did, but perhaps they helped.

 

[mikeymikec]

I would check SMART stats on the SSD and run a full filesystem check on it if I were you:

chkdsk C: /f /v /r

Might also be worth running:

dism /online /cleanup-image /restorehealth

on the Win10 install.

Something caused this to happen. I would check the event log as well for the last few days leading up to this situation.