Computer reboots but doesn't find boot drive

O

ococ

Limp Gawd
Joined
Oct 20, 2006
Messages
326
I've been running an overclocked system for over 6 months fairly stable. One day I get home and the message on the screen says "Reboot and Select proper Boot device or Insert Boot Media in selected Boot device and press a key". I reboot and get the same message. When I go into my BIOS, I see that my first boot drive doesn't show up as my SSD (which is my boot drive). I set it to SSD and it boots into Win7 fine. After some period of time, I get strangeness, hanging, windows not closing, bsod, auto reboots, and the issue repeats.

I've turned off overclocking and set it all to Optimized Defaults
taken out all but 1 stick of ram

I'm thinking it could be:
1) mobo gone bad
2) ssd gone bad
3) virus
4) PSU gone bad

Thoughts on troubleshooting?

Thanks

**FIXED via FIRMWARE 0309 FOR CRUCIAL M4**
 
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ococ said:
I've been running an overclocked system for over 6 months fairly stable. One day I get home and the message on the screen says "Reboot and Select proper Boot device or Insert Boot Media in selected Boot device and press a key". I reboot and get the same message. When I go into my BIOS, I see that my first boot drive doesn't show up as my SSD (which is my boot drive). I set it to SSD and it boots into Win7 fine. After some period of time, I get strangeness, hanging, windows not closing, bsod, auto reboots, and the issue repeats.

I've turned off overclocking and set it all to Optimized Defaults
taken out all but 1 stick of ram

I'm thinking it could be:
1) mobo gone bad
2) ssd gone bad
3) virus
4) PSU gone bad

Thoughts on troubleshooting?

Thanks
Click to expand...

1.) Possibly, but unlikely.
2.) More likely, but doubtful.
3.) No.
4.) Again, unlikely.

To elaborate:

1.) Motherboards don't usually "go bad" manifesting a problem like the one you describe. A CMOS battery not providing power to the BIOS / UEFI could cause this problem but you'd know it as your system clock, overclock settings and all other settings wouldn't be retained after power cycling the machine. It doesn't sound like that's the case based on your post. The flash ROM having bad blocks and thus not storing information (such as the boot sequence properly) could lead to such things, in which case a BIOS update could resolve the issue provided there is nothing wrong with the hardware, and it's an error with the software flashed to the ROM and not a physical hardware problem. If the board has a dual BIOS, then switching to the other (assuming it's bootable) would prove or disprove this theory as a cause. I'd check and make sure that you don't have any USB drives, flash or otherwise connected. Many motherboards, in fact most of them will put whatever was connected most recently at the top of the boot ordering. Your "fix" for the issue when it occurs sounds like the exact fix for this precise problem. Remove any storage device you don't need, especially flash drives, bootable CD's etc. If that's the problem it will stop. You can further secure yourself from such hassles by setting the BIOS boot order to only include your SSD and nothing else. If there is a setting similar to "boot other devices" then it needs to be disabled to prevent this from happening in the future.

2.) The fact that the device seems to read and write OK and run the OS based on what you've said makes this seem unlikely. It could have a detection problem, in which case a firmware update or BIOS update to the board could resolve this. The only way to know if this is the issue or not is to replace it with another drive, (conventional or SSD) and then install the OS and see if you still have the problem. It could even be as simple as a flaky SATA cable. I've had this exact issue before.

3.) Viruses are generally incapable of modifying BIOS settings. This is highly unlikely.

4.) People tend to blame the PSU quickly around these forums for all kinds of crap. And while it's possible a short in the power going to the SSD could be responsible for such a problem, any other type of PSU issue would typically manifest as a different problem. The symptoms do not fit a PSU problem. To check for a short simply check your cabling and ensure it's seated right. You can go so far as to try a different power cable from another rail to see if this is the culprit. I'd seriously doubt it. Of course you can go even further and check your rails with a volt-meter or multimeter and ensure they are within 10% of their rated output. (Which is specification.) It's a 5v connection to the SSD or any typical SATA device, so ensure your 5v rail isn't acting weird. If it were, a detection issue could manifest as a symptom of the problem. Again unlikely but possible. In such cases the problems with the PSU are generally more wide spread and you'd have all sorts of problems in addition to this.

It is most likely a bad SATA cable, or a flaky SSD. It's possible you've got some kind of firmware / BIOS issue, but unless you've changed something very recently, I'd say such a problem is highly unlikely as well. Your overclock isn't likely the cause either unless you are messing with the PCIe bus speeds in which case my advice is to simply stop doing that. It won't help you gain any real world performance and it will only cause you problems. I say this despite some concern with you calling your overclock of 6 months "fairly stable." You shouldn't run any overclock that isn't 100% 24/7/365 stable for long periods of time. Such settings obviously don't work right for your hardware and you could damage it using them.
 
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First, thanks for taking the time to put together a thoughtful response.

1) I don't believe it's a "flash or external drive being connected" problem because there's something that's causing the system to BSOD and behave badly. This then causes a reboot, which then causes the boot order problem. A flash drive being connected shouldn't cause the BSOD. But that's a simple enough fix for me to eliminate that as any possibility.

2) I'll swap out the cable tomorrow and see if that's the problem. I can certainly see that as a possibility.

My overclock has been stable. I haven't changed any overclock settings in several months and have not touched any of the internal cabling in that time either. I've also run Prime95 for over 24hrs and ran video encoding (which has caused BSOD with non-stable settings). I said "fairly" only because I've come back to the system and it had auto-rebooted a few times, over 6 months. I'm thinking this could've happened from a Win7 auto-update.

Hoping it's as simple as a cable.

Thanks again.
 
ococ said:
First, thanks for taking the time to put together a thoughtful response.

1) I don't believe it's a "flash or external drive being connected" problem because there's something that's causing the system to BSOD and behave badly. This then causes a reboot, which then causes the boot order problem. A flash drive being connected shouldn't cause the BSOD. But that's a simple enough fix for me to eliminate that as any possibility.

2) I'll swap out the cable tomorrow and see if that's the problem. I can certainly see that as a possibility.

My overclock has been stable. I haven't changed any overclock settings in several months and have not touched any of the internal cabling in that time either. I've also run Prime95 for over 24hrs and ran video encoding (which has caused BSOD with non-stable settings). I said "fairly" only because I've come back to the system and it had auto-rebooted a few times, over 6 months. I'm thinking this could've happened from a Win7 auto-update.

Hoping it's as simple as a cable.

Thanks again.
Click to expand...

If you are getting BSODs then it's most likely a bad / flaky SATA cable or the SSD itself is going bad. I kind of missed that last part at the end of your original post. Those problems definitely sound like a probable bad SSD or cable. However they do not seem like PSU issues. Potentially motherboard related, but unlikely. Drive failures, including SSD's are the most common in computer equipment. PSU's are second to that, but their failures tend to manifest as an inability to power the system at all. You do not have to touch a cable for them to go bad. I had this exact problem on my HTPC a while back. I swapped a couple different drives in there and I'd keep having the same issue. I swapped the SATA cable and it's run strong for months after that.
 
Swapped out the SATA cable, same problem. Rebooted and the SSD doesn't show up in the bios. I'm trying to swap the power cable on the SSD now to see if that is causing intermittent power outages preventing the mobo from seeing it. It rebooted into Win7 after swapping out the cable, but it's done that before even with the old cable. Let's see if this did the trick. I'm trying to do a bunch of troubleshooting before I open a support case with Crucial so I can remove as many factors. But does anyone know if Crucial support would have better tooling to check their drives for problems? Is there something I can download to test it myself?

*edit* - and I made sure there's no flash or external storage drive still attached
 
Changing the power cable didn't do it. At this point, I'm thinking I have a bad SSD. I don't have another drive to install an OS on...any other ways to test for a bad SSD?
 
ococ said:
Changing the power cable didn't do it. At this point, I'm thinking I have a bad SSD. I don't have another drive to install an OS on...any other ways to test for a bad SSD?
Click to expand...

Boot of a USB drive if you're able to and see how that works.
 
I'd have to install an OS right? I'll do that...just looking to see if there's an easier way.
 
What is the BSOD error message you're getting?

You could also try re-flashing the firmware on your M4.

Have you tested the RAM?
 
enginurd said:
What is the BSOD error message you're getting?

You could also try re-flashing the firmware on your M4.

Have you tested the RAM?
Click to expand...


It BSOD once and I didn't capture the error. Most of the time it's either hanging or auto-reboots by itself. Can I find the error somewhere? I looked in the Windows Event log and it said Kernel Power, but when I read the details it seems like a generic message for anytime the OS doesn't shutdown properly.

I was considering flashing the M4, but I didn't want to chance that it died mid-flashing and render the drive useless.

Coincidentally I'm running a RAM test right now using Memtest86 v4.2, which is what came with the Ubuntu install. I doubt it's the RAM as I've gone from 4 sticks down to 1 and i've swapped in different sticks.

I did try to install WinXP and Win7, but neither seem to be easy to install on a USB flash or USB HDD. So I went to the Ubuntu site and they have an easy utility that installs the OS onto a USB flash. It goes into the Ubuntu boot screen but after it runs through the boot process, the monitor goes crazy with all kinds of colorful horizontal lines. Nothings going right!!!!! UGH.
 
I inially thought SSD or RAM issue, but im pretty sure you can probably count RAM out now. With ubuntu you can try getting to a terminal by hitting Ctrl-Alt-Backspace, but you dont really have to. The fact that you are getting to a boot loading screen indicates that there is /probably/ nothing wrong with the hardware, or that the thing that is stopping you booting to windows isnt stopping you booting into Ubuntu (The lines are probably caused by a driver issue, which is unusual on modern hardware, but far from impossible - can I ask which GPU you are using?)

Since the only thing you took out of the equasion booting to ubuntu was the SSD, then it must be a SSD, cable or Motherboard issue thats preventing you booting to windows.

You have replaced the cables, ruling them out, it is so outlandishly unlikely that a motherboard would decide to fail in that exact way you can rule it out, so it must be the SSD.

In addition I think I have seen the error you are referring to when a system has a bad hard disk, or somebody has suddenly yanked it out of the system, so that fits as well.
 
I get a similar issue sometimes, machine will POST but not recognize my Corsair F115 SSD.

If I power off and unplug the SSD for several seconds it seems to fix it...till the next time it happens.

I have never understood why.
 
On the Crucial forum they pointed out that I might be hitting up against a specific bug whih js addressed by a firmware upgrade. I'll be upgrading it this afternoon.
 
The firmware indeed fixed the problem. What a stupidly annoying bug.
 
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