Strange Windows 10 Boot Behaviour

J

JoK

Weaksauce
Joined
Feb 24, 2017
Messages
97
Hi all,

I've got a strange situation here. I reinstalled Win 10 with all the updates and a couple of days ago I got a blue screen saying that an efi file can not be found and reinstallation is required.

When I shut the machine down and switch on again I get the same blue screens and Win can't boot.

After playing with the recovery options, I figured out this:

When the machine boots, I go to the Boot Sequence menu in BIOS. There I can see two options: Windows Boot Manager and the internal hard drive.

When I select the Boot Manager (which is the default during boot), I get the blue screen and all the rest. When I manually choose the hard drive, windows works and boots perfectly.

Anyone knows what may be wrong? I guess a clean installation will solve the problem but I really want to avoid it if possible.

Thanks
 
Looks like Windows was installed with particular EFI settings in the bios and they have now been changed.
A CMOS reset might fix it. A re-install should as well, but make sure that the EFI settings are what you want to continue with.
Alternatively just keep running with the boot setting that works.
I use exactly that method for my main OS. Another drive I use for testing backups boots with the boot manager method.

I can get Windows installed with one EFI setting to run on the other by changing the EFI setting in the bios, installing Windows from the CD on a new drive (only takes 10 mins) then restoring a backup of my old OS to the new drive.
I only restore the main OS partition, not the boot partitions/sectors.
This then boots fine with the new EFI setup.
It only needs doing once per drive and you can reverse it with the same process.

Keep going as you are.
If you need/want to fix it later you can.
 
  • Like
Reactions: JoK
like this
Nenu said:
Looks like Windows was installed with particular EFI settings in the bios and they have now been changed.
A CMOS reset might fix it. A re-install should as well, but make sure that the EFI settings are what you want to continue with.
Alternatively just keep running with the boot setting that works.
I use exactly that method for my main OS. Another drive I use for testing backups boots with the boot manager method.

I can get Windows installed with one EFI setting to run on the other by changing the EFI setting in the bios, installing Windows from the CD on a new drive (only takes 10 mins) then restoring a backup of my old OS to the new drive.
I only restore the main OS partition, not the boot partitions/sectors.
This then boots fine with the new EFI setup.
It only needs doing once per drive and you can reverse it with the same process.

Keep going as you are.
If you need/want to fix it later you can.
Click to expand...

Thanks Nenu.

When you say to change the EFI settings, do you mean the boot sequence? i should choose the drive to boot from, right?

BTW, which app do you use to get bootable backups of your drive? I've been looking some apps and very few make a bootable backup. Most of the apps, compress the files in their own format.
 
I use Acronis True Image because it still works for me. Newer versions have a lot of bloat and are not well thought of.
I have used the free version of Macrium Reflect and that worked great but didnt allow me to restore individual files, I had to do a full restore to a spare drive to get access.

Each motherboards UEFI configuration could say different things and have different ways of changing settings.
Have a look in your bios setup (although its not technically a bios any more ;))
There should be a setting somewhere like "Legacy bios" / "bios compatibility" mode for booting.
It might be called CSM on some boards.
If this is enabled then installing an OS will be in bios compatibility mode which doesnt use or install the boot manager.
(the reason it is called bios compatibility is because the system is not a bios any more, the CMOS is now UEFI. A completely different system but old habits die hard so its still called bios setup by most people)

There is another reason why you may not be able to use the UEFI boot manager any more.
UEFI boot can be disabled on a hard drive by deleting/corrupting the contents of the small boot partition it creates.
This will make it no longer UEFI compatible.
fyi
 
I get this with my Windows 10 machine if I have my optical drive plugged in via USB.

Unplug everything connected via USB (except, of course, your keyboard and mouse) and see how you go.
 
Thanks guys for the tips. I changed the settings in UEFI and the windows boots correctly now
 
Do you know whet settings you changed for anyone that has this same issue in the future?
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top