Attempting Boot From Hard Drive stalls Windows 10 64Bit

Johnw August 28, 2019 at 02:51:10

"If I unplug the USB connection to the first external hard drive it will then proceed and boot up" That sounds like the drive was connected when Windows was installed. Upload to a site of your choosing, a screenshot of Disk Management. Give us the link please.

Thankyou JohnW for advice. Scott was able to unplug USB. In my case unplugging the USB drives does not work. My workstation version only supports CD or Hard disk boot - not USB boot. AOMEI https://1drv.ms/u/s!AjlyTCmC-zO8gmb... Speccy https://1drv.ms/u/s!AjlyTCmC-zO8gme... There is only one SSD in the system. Drive I is a conventional hard disk in a USB enclosure.

Johnw August 28, 2019 at 06:33:22

"My workstation version only supports CD or Hard disk boot - not USB boot" What key are pressing to change the boot order? Start > Run, copy & paste > msinfo32 & click Ok. What Bios Mode is shown? Have you run Samsung Magician? https://www.softpedia.com/get/Syste... http://www.samsung.com/semiconducto... message edited by Johnw

F9 Boot options, F10 Setup, Cntrl I Configuration Utility, Cntrl S Configure Device Screenshot of booting with message about only supporting Hard Disk and CDROM. https://1drv.ms/u/s!AjlyTCmC-zO8gmi... Interesting Port-02 shows a second hard disk which presumably is the 1GIG second internal drive. Is it sometimes trying to boot to this one? I could remove its power physically or is it possible to turn it off with software? msinfo32 reports Boot Mode Legacy. Samsung Magician finds no problems. Since your post, JohnW, I have rebooted with chkdsk c:/f on reloading and rebooted a second time to get photo of screen and it did not hang. message edited by Teddy326

Fingers August 28, 2019 at 16:46:52

Sometimes boot issues occur because the operating system was installed when more than one drive was plugged in. In cases like this Windows Installer put the boot sector on a different drive than it did the operating system. In other words even if you are careful in choosing the right drive, the installer only listens to you about the operating system and often finds somewhere else to install the boot sector or other system partition that is necessary. Usually the only repair in these cases is to either unplug the other drives and reinstall or unplug the other drives and do a Start Up Repair to the system. A good look at Disk Manager (screen shot) should show us this. You have to be a little bit crazy to keep you from going insane.

Johnw August 28, 2019 at 17:12:14

"msinfo32 reports Boot Mode Legacy" Lets deal with one thing at a time, I would think, you should be using UEFI mode. Consult your manual ( it's included in the motherboard CD that came with the comp )

Johnw August 28, 2019 at 17:55:36

http://bit.ly/2Phrxjk This covers the problem very well. How to Upgrade a HP Z400 from a HDD to SSD and Solve winload.exe BSOD Error https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=14W... message edited by Johnw

Thanks John for the link to Matt I originally changed the 7200RPM to a Kingston SSD in April 2018 and had no problems until recently. Trying to fix the intermmittent boot I cloned the Kingston to a Samsung but still have the intermittent boot. https://mattbilsky.com/mediawiki/in... He talks about removing the RAID card which I will try. Elsewhere I found the comment that RAID had caused 7 years of problems with Windows 7 and was better off gone. I may be able to disable RAID in the Bios. At the moment I am backing up my internal 1G hard drive in case I have to disconnect it. I have to find the motherboard info to check out the UEFI suggestion. However the Kingston worked fine for over a year. Meanwhile here is a screenshot of Disk Manager https://1drv.ms/u/s!AjlyTCmC-zO8gmm...

Thanks Fingers for your suggestion. Screenshot of Disk Manager here: https://1drv.ms/u/s!AjlyTCmC-zO8gmm...

In Setup Bios I have hidden SATA2 Device. Disk Manager now does not show the 1GB internal storage drive which was F:\. I will try this configuration for bootup failure over the next week or 2. Currently z400 boots up fine. Previous pic of Disk Manager https://1drv.ms/u/s!AjlyTCmC-zO8gmm... Maybe the final solution is to remove the RAID card as Matt did.

Johnw August 28, 2019 at 20:14:49

"Meanwhile here is a screenshot of Disk Manager" Thanks for responding to my post #1 "I have to find the motherboard info to check out the UEFI suggestion" I downloaded the manual & there is no mention of UEFI or Secure boot. Googling confirms that it is only available from the Z420 series onward.

Johnw August 28, 2019 at 20:16:00

"Maybe the final solution is to remove the RAID card as Matt did" I agree.

Thanks to JohnW for checking out the motherboard spec. No RAID card. Only PCI card is NVIDIA graphics card. Have enabled the internal 1G hard disk and that does not seem to stop boot. The two USB external Hard Disks do stop booting. Workaround I have made a separate power switch for them. With the drives off the computer will boot from the SSD. With the drives on it hangs. Switching the drives off and Cntrl Alt Delete restarts the BIOS and it boots. USB booting has been turned off in the BIOS. BIOS message is that this version only supports DVD and Hard Disk. Something wierd here but can live with it. One switch to power down everything and second switch to hold off the external hard drives. message edited by Teddy326