Urgent: Windows cant find fixed disc?

SomeGuy133

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Apr 12, 2015
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Okay so i was stress testing my overclock and PC crashed over the night.

I go to reboot

Veracrypt encryption is fine and it decrypts

Windows fails to boot.

I go into recover and no OS is found

I open diskpart to activate my OS drive

When I type list disks, it says no fixed disks are found??? how is that possible if MB sees it and I even decrypt the drive to get this far?


I am using a 950 PRO on Z170 FYI

Also no other drives are connected. Only the 950 PRO

EDIT: image showing diskpart can't find 950PRO even though i had to decrypt it! I doubt it is a hardware failure or bad sectors in the 950 PRO because Veracrypt process would fail.

Dropbox - 2016-08-27 00.07.02.jpg
 
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What is the SATA mode set to in BIOS? If it is in RAID mode, it could make it not see the drive if the drivers got hosed.
 
Sometimes, in my experience anyways, that flaky overclocks can wreck the BIOS and you really need to unplug the PC and pull the CMOS battery and let it sit for 5 minutes. Then pop in the battery, reset the BIOS via the jumper and then plug it in and start all over.

And there will be all my disks, external SATA, etc. all nice and normal.
 
Sometimes, in my experience anyways, that flaky overclocks can wreck the BIOS and you really need to unplug the PC and pull the CMOS battery and let it sit for 5 minutes. Then pop in the battery, reset the BIOS via the jumper and then plug it in and start all over.

And there will be all my disks, external SATA, etc. all nice and normal.
Thats some weird shit you guys deal with on the new high tech stuff!:wtf:
 
Look at first post. I posted image of issue. Again MB sees drive and Veracrypt successfully decrypts so the drive is fine. Is this an issue with Windows 7 not supporting NVMe M.2 in system restore? Am I the first one to have to do this and found out system restore doesn't support M.2 NVMe?


Sometimes, in my experience anyways, that flaky overclocks can wreck the BIOS and you really need to unplug the PC and pull the CMOS battery and let it sit for 5 minutes. Then pop in the battery, reset the BIOS via the jumper and then plug it in and start all over.

And there will be all my disks, external SATA, etc. all nice and normal.
As i said no hard drives are in besides my 950 pro m.2.

bios sees it. Motherboard sees it. I can decrypt it. But once windows starts to load it goes into system restore and windows doesn't see the drive in system restore even though motherboard does and it just started to try to load windows off it.

this seems more a windows issue and not hardware

What is the SATA mode set to in BIOS? If it is in RAID mode, it could make it not see the drive if the drivers got hosed.

how is that relevent. I am using a 950 PRO

Put in Windows DVD and try a repair.
Won't help. Windows doesn't see the actual hardrive. See image above
 
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Honestly, this is not meant as a insult but just an observation but, why would you try overclocking a system with encrypted hard drives, if that is what you are doing? Otherwise, I think you may have to simply delete everything off the drive and start over. (I know it is not what you want to here but, I think the drive is corrupted despite what is occurring.)
 
I admit I might have misunderstood the issue... whip me, beat me, call me Edna...

Anyways..maybe you can get Windows Restore to see it if it is in a PCIe card.

I would think even if encrypted that Windows Restore would still see the drive. Is it possible to move the data to a different drive to restore from?

I haven't had much time to play with the new M.2 stuff. Or at all.
 
Honestly, this is not meant as a insult but just an observation but, why would you try overclocking a system with encrypted hard drives, if that is what you are doing? Otherwise, I think you may have to simply delete everything off the drive and start over. (I know it is not what you want to here but, I think the drive is corrupted despite what is occurring.)

This all the way. An unstable PC is not a good combination with and encrypted hard drive.
 
Normally, I would agree but in this case, I doubt the dvd would see the drive since, if I understand him correctly, his drive is encrypted.

again the drive is decrypted already since i just entered the password to get this far. The drive's veracrypt boot loader and header are intact since it decrypted.

Unless....for some off reason going into windows restore somehow drops the password and drops veracrypt? Not sure if you understand what i am saying. Hard to explain lol.

Here is a photo showing the drive is in BIOS/MB, it successfully decrypts, but won't show in diskpart. So everyone is telling me you have no idea why the drive won't show in diskpart even though the drive is obviously functioning and the encryption is completely intact.

I am still curious if Win 7 diskpart even works with m.2 drives. It wouldn't surprise me it is missing a driver or was never updated to work with the rest of Win 7

Dropbox - diskpart no drive
 
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If you boot off a Linux Live USB/CD can you see the drive using gparted?
 
again the drive is decrypted already since i just entered the password to get this far. The drive's veracrypt boot loader and header are intact since it decrypted.

Unless....for some off reason going into windows restore somehow drops the password and drops veracrypt? Not sure if you understand what i am saying. Hard to explain lol.

Here is a photo showing the drive is in BIOS/MB, it successfully decrypts, but won't show in diskpart. So everyone is telling me you have no idea why the drive won't show in diskpart even though the drive is obviously functioning and the encryption is completely intact.

I am still curious if Win 7 diskpart even works with m.2 drives. It wouldn't surprise me it is missing a driver or was never updated to work with the rest of Win 7

Dropbox - diskpart no drive

However, if it is not so much decryption but access after the drive boots, then booting off a DVD would not work since it is not loading the veracrypt bootloader. Oh, and Windows itself is not booting, just the recovery partition.
 
However, if it is not so much decryption but access after the drive boots, then booting off a DVD would not work since it is not loading the veracrypt bootloader. Oh, and Windows itself is not booting, just the recovery partition.
Thats what i am wondering even thoughthe boot loaded loads does it get dumped once i go into system restore? Which makes drive vanish?
 
Thats what i am wondering even thoughthe boot loaded loads does it get dumped once i go into system restore? Which makes drive vanish?

But, that screen is not a system restore screen, it is the repair my computer screen. The drive and boots files are most likely corrupted.
 
how is that relevent. I am using a 950 PRO

Because if it's in a mode that requires drivers that were not available at the time Windows (7?) shipped, the drive may not be visible to the preboot OS environment.

Given that you were trying an unsuccessful overclock, make sure that you've reset your BIOS then re-configured it as needed.
 
Because if it's in a mode that requires drivers that were not available at the time Windows (7?) shipped, the drive may not be visible to the preboot OS environment.

Given that you were trying an unsuccessful overclock, make sure that you've reset your BIOS then re-configured it as needed.
even though they were installed in the past? So should I try to load the NVMe drivers?
 
SomeGuy133, what happens if you install the boot SSD into another PC? Does it become visible?

Can you see the SSD in the BIOS?
 
SomeGuy133, what happens if you install the boot SSD into another PC? Does it become visible?

Can you see the SSD in the BIOS?
as i said several times.

SSD is in BIOS
SSD veracrypt boot loader is intact and decrypts

If SSD was not visible I would not be able to get to veracrypt boot loader and not decrypt and get into recover or whatever it is called.

Also how would ubuntu work...does it support m.2 nvme?
 
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You shouldn't need to load any additional drivers for m.2 nvme, Ubuntu and derivatives have supporting drivers by default.

Does your mobo require CSM to be enabled in bios to access the drive?

Honestly, it was probably a bad idea to overclock, stress test for extended periods and encrypt your drive - The only way out of this mess may be a partition delete, reformat and reinstall.
 
You shouldn't need to load any additional drivers for m.2 nvme, Ubuntu and derivatives have supporting drivers by default.

Does your mobo require CSM to be enabled in bios to access the drive?

Honestly, it was probably a bad idea to overclock, stress test for extended periods and encrypt your drive - The only way out of this mess may be a partition delete, reformat and reinstall.
FYI encrpytion has nothing to do with corruption it would have happened anyways. my OS install is badly broken and has issues all the time. encryption isnt at fault. i have been needing a reinstall for ages
 
FYI encrpytion has nothing to do with corruption it would have happened anyways. my OS install is badly broken and has issues all the time. encryption isnt at fault. i have been needing a reinstall for ages

I know, however if the drive wasn't encrypted you'd have a lot more options available to you when it comes to recovering the data.
 
I know, however if the drive wasn't encrypted you'd have a lot more options available to you when it comes to recovering the data.
I can still decrypt and access it. just need to put it in another pc. Just a pain and thats the point of encryption...getting to data should be hard. Not a big deal
 
I think the partition is intact, but I don't think there's any data on the drive that isn't corrupted to rescue anyway?
 
I can still decrypt and access it. just need to put it in another pc. Just a pain and thats the point of encryption...getting to data should be hard. Not a big deal

I hope you have backed up your stuff. Most likely your easiest bet is to just do a restore and drop the overclocks. And like others pointed, there's no sense in using encrypted drive and overclocks at the same time. If you're doing something business critical on the computer that needs protection, you need stability not OC.

If you're encrypting just for the fun of it - you can just slap yourself in the head. Mr Murphy is most likely to steal your porn.
 
So, did you encrypt your entire drive? What do you mean "You type in your password and the drive is decrypted"? It's not like the drive is decrypted every time you boot or type in the password, it decrypts the data as it's requested... the rest, however, remains encrypted.

You need to just wipe your drive and start over.
 
FYI encrpytion has nothing to do with corruption it would have happened anyways. my OS install is badly broken and has issues all the time. encryption isnt at fault. i have been needing a reinstall for ages

Yeah, I don't think encryption is the problem here, surely the drive would still show up, it would just appear as 'unformatted'?

You could boot to a linux cd/usb unlock (a quick google for 'veracrypt unbuntu' suggests it can) and image the drive, then format and instantly restore it without the encryption and go through the repair process - re-encrypting afterwards if you wanted, but given your description of the existing install, I'd agree that just starting over would be a better bet anyway. It's surprising how much crap you accumulate that you think you need, but when you start fresh you don't find yourself missing it.

I don't get all the hate for encryption though. I run an overclock (admittedly a mild one that pretty much all Skylake chips can handle - a bleeding edge o/c would mean too much fan noise for me), and I run FDE with it (Bitlocker in my case). It has no noticeable performance hit, the OC means I get the best out of the expensive hardware I bought, and the FDE means that in the unlikely but unpleasant event of my home being burgled, I've less need to worry about Identity theft adding insult on top of injury.

And if it does all go wrong, that's what nightly (encrypted) backups are for.

ETA: When I was setting up this system I had a few Issues (unrelated to this so I won't go into it) and one of my troubleshooting steps was to try and partition the 950 with the windows 7 retail disk I had. That couldn't see the drive at all despite it appearing in the UEFI setup, so i'd say it's 'normal' that it's not showing without extra drivers. Not sure why you are getting that other error though (is it chipset/slot related? does the motherboard manufacturer have a driver I wonder?). I am curious how you managed to install windows on it in the first place without having to go through all this?
 
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I run with only what i need because of the 500gig limit. I cycle programs l like mad an thats where issues arise. Just windows gets errors over time and it just needs a reset
 
I run with only what i need because of the 500gig limit. I cycle programs l like mad an thats where issues arise. Just windows gets errors over time and it just needs a reset
If you get errors due to normal operation something is wrong with your i/o. Either the ssd is going bad or your mobo controllers.
 
If you get errors due to normal operation something is wrong with your i/o. Either the ssd is going bad or your mobo controllers.

no windows is just know to get currupt after awhile. Win 7 is not very resilien . When you have a few crashed and do 300-500 gb reads a day and 100+gb writes a day windows just slowly get wonky. I also use a myraid of programs. Win 7 just is not as stable as it should be
 
no windows is just know to get currupt after awhile. Win 7 is not very resilien . When you have a few crashed and do 300-500 gb reads a day and 100+gb writes a day windows just slowly get wonky. I also use a myraid of programs. Win 7 just is not as stable as it should be

Perhaps in your particular usage case, but the install my old Nehalem system lasted from the windows 7 release in 2009 through 8, 8.1 and 10 in place upgrades until I eventually replaced it with a whole new rig (i always meant to do a wipe and reinstall, just never got round to it). This is with heavy use as a gaming machine.
 
Perhaps in your particular usage case, but the install my old Nehalem system lasted from the windows 7 release in 2009 through 8, 8.1 and 10 in place upgrades until I eventually replaced it with a whole new rig (i always meant to do a wipe and reinstall, just never got round to it). This is with heavy use as a gaming machine.
I know many who have same issues with needing to reinstall windows all the time and it aint hardware
 
I know many who have same issues with needing to reinstall windows all the time and it ain't hardware
Oh, I wasn't suggesting it was necessarily hardware. More that it's the software environment on the machine as a whole. My personal experience is that windows in and of itself doesn't need reinstalls all that often since 7, it depends on what you're using with it. Seven years of web browsing and steam gaming didn't do my install any harm, but you mentioned you do hundreds of gigs of reads and writes a day so our use cases aren't quite the same.
 
I know many who have same issues with needing to reinstall windows all the time and it aint hardware

You and rezerkted should hang out and jack up systems together. I really don't think you know what you are doing.
 
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