INACCESSIBLE_BOOT_DEVICE after BIOS unlock [SOLVED]

[brodo]

I own an Acer Nitro5 515-75 gaming laptop and lately I got obsessed with lowering its CPU voltage due to insane overheating.
came accross this BIOS mod on youtube which would unlock an advanced version of the standard factory BIOS.

Long story short it works, problem is, I might have set something wrong cause now the C: drive cannot be found.
System gives BSOD, if I enter cmd I can only see X: drive. can't repair, reinstall, nothing.

I'm sure it has something to do with the SATA connection or AHCI settings, a topic I'm not good at.
After many trials and errors in the bios settings I managed to set something right cause pc booted normally. problem was it couldn't recognize the ext GPU, so I made a bios reset: worst error I could make. now it's misconfigured again and I have no idea what I touched.

can I get help on this issue? thanks

i7 11800H
RTX 3060
16BG DDR4
1TB WD NVMe

 

[brodo]

hi, I tried already to restore it but bios is not recognizing any external usb drives atm

thanks for your reply

 

[kilo]

It's nothing to do with ahci or ide sata settings, that will cause issues like, attempting to boot, showing you the loading-orbs and w10/w11 icon, then bsod after a few seconds.

What is likely the issue is csm/legacy boot vs uefi boot.

You can use the recovery environment to locate your partitions. If the recovery environment let's you use diskpart: diskpart> select disk 0
Diskpart> list partition

I'd that doesn't show you 3/4 partitions, you're using legacy boot and you'll want to enable that in bios. Or enable efi boot otherwise (you probably have efi if you used the os and never touched setting before)

Common other commands you might want to run are:
Bootrec /scanos

This will scan your drive for a bootloader.

While in X: recovery environment, try locating your C: which might be assigned a non "C" letter. Use command "C:" and other letters followed by a colon. Once you get a hit, use "dir" and see if the disk is your "C:" drive.

Once you confirm bios settings and C: drive accessibility, you can rebuild your efi partition easily, if that's dead (it probably isn't though).

 

[eidairaman1]

Bitlocker can be an issue.

 

[brodo]

It's nothing to do with ahci or ide sata settings, that will cause issues like, attempting to boot, showing you the loading-orbs and w10/w11 icon, then bsod after a few seconds.

What is likely the issue is csm/legacy boot vs uefi boot.

You can use the recovery environment to locate your partitions. If the recovery environment let's you use diskpart: diskpart> select disk 0
Diskpart> list partition

I'd that doesn't show you 3/4 partitions, you're using legacy boot and you'll want to enable that in bios. Or enable efi boot otherwise (you probably have efi if you used the os and never touched setting before)

Common other commands you might want to run are:
Bootrec /scanos

This will scan your drive for a bootloader.

While in X: recovery environment, try locating your C: which might be assigned a non "C" letter. Use command "C:" and other letters followed by a colon. Once you get a hit, use "dir" and see if the disk is your "C:" drive.

Once you confirm bios settings and C: drive accessibility, you can rebuild your efi partition easily, if that's dead (it probably isn't though).

I'm trying to mess around with the settings but lots of them have similar names for this partition thing. I will keep trying.

thanks for ur reply

Bitlocker can be an issue.

I don't see any settings for BitLocker in the bios unless they're called differently.



P.S. I did clear CMOS cause I noticed lots of settings didnt save in BIOS after pressing "Load Default settings". still isnt helping

 

[P4-630]

I don't see any settings for BitLocker in the bios unless they're called differently.

TPM

Don't delete a TPM key if you were using bitlocker on your drive, otherwise there is no way to access your files again(if the drive still works).

 

[brodo]

TPM

Don't delete a TPM key if you were using bitlocker on your drive, otherwise there is no way to access your files again(if the drive still works).

thanks!

Bitlocker can be an issue.

oh man, you came in clutch. problem was that damn TPM setting. can't believe it's on by default. yesterday I was able to boot again but I had no idea how I did it.
now after disabling TPM the system boted up normally (even tho it locked me out cause PIN wasnt accessible, but I could make it with password).
now I did backup current bios settings, im planning to restore the factory one but I really wanted to tweak it in order to ThrottleStop to be able to work properly, undervolting CPU.
do you advice a clean windows install?

thanks again for ur tip

@kilo thank you again for your help as well. much appreciated!

 

[eidairaman1]

TPM

Don't delete a TPM key if you were using bitlocker on your drive, otherwise there is no way to access your files again(if the drive still works).

I was onto something because of bitlocker but on the hw level bitlocker uses tpm.

oh man, you came in clutch. problem was that damn TPM setting. can't believe it's on by default. yesterday I was able to boot again but I had no idea how I did it.
now after disabling TPM the system boted up normally (even tho it locked me out cause PIN wasnt accessible, but I could make it with password).
now I did backup current bios settings, im planning to restore the factory one but I really wanted to tweak it in order to ThrottleStop to be able to work properly, undervolting CPU.
do you advice a clean windows install?

thanks again for ur tip

@kilo thank you again for your help as well. much appreciated!

Always presume tpm is enabled because of w11 bs, anyways it causes performance issues on some systems in games.

Bitlocker and tpm will give you a headache so never use them

 

[brodo]

I was onto something because of bitlocker but on the hw level bitlocker uses tpm.


Always presume tpm is enabled because of w11 bs, anyways it causes performance issues on some systems in games.

Bitlocker and tpm will give you a headache so never use them

yeah I remeber reading about BitLocker issues from time to time. will keep your tip in mind. thank you again