UEFI boot options disappeared from BIOS; now getting reboot and select proper boot device

[newconroer]

In short, I need to get the system/BIOS to allow UEFI booting of the SSD.

Computer started up today with default BIOS settings.

• Only SSD 1(Windows boot) and SSD 2 were listed in BIOS; HDD 1 and HDD 2 were not visible
• System would not boot. Gave the 'reboot and select proper boot device' message
• Boot menu has no UEFI/EFI (or Windows Boot Manager) entries anymore

I went into Partition Magic/Gparted and confirmed :

• All drives are still showing
• All drives' data is in tact [EFI volume/partition is still listed (and can be browsed/files accessible)]

Gparted print out (note dev/sda2 apparently that is normal behavior) :

/dev/sda1 (locked) EFI System Partition--Fat32--/media/sda1--100.00mb--46.81MiB--53.19MiB--boot,esp
/dev/sda2 (exclamation mark) Microsoft reserved partition--unknown file system--no mount point--128.00MiB--unused spaced--msftres
/dev/sda3 basic data partition--ntfs--/media/sda3--118.58GiB--70.78GiB--47.80GiB--msftdata
/dev/sda4--ntfs--/media/sda4--450.00MiB--327.71MiB--122.29MiB--hidden,diag



As I am able to boot Windows installation from USB, I tried the standard startup repair. It said it was not able to fix any problems.

Next I tried to repair the EFI with Diskpart in the shell:

1. sel vol 1 (note that Diskpart states EFI partition is 'hidden')
2. assign letter=z:
3. cd /d z:\EFI\Microsoft\Boot\
4. bootrec /fixboot
5. bcdboot c:\Windows /l en-us /s vz /f ALL

It completed all tasks successfully. Unfortunately that did not work.

Other things I have tried :

• Removing CMOS battery and replacing with a new one - my HDD started showing up again after doing this.
• Using the old MBR commands(in hopes it would force the Windows startup repair to recognize and fix a problem)

bootrec /fixmbr
bootrec /fixboot
bootrec /scanos
bootrec /rebuildbcd​

• Loaded BIOS 'optimized'/defaults (the system did this already once before, hence why I am in this situation, though doing it manually seemed like an option worth trying. Note that after doing this and restarting the system, HDD's stopped showing again)
• Removed new CMOS battery and left it out of the system for thirty minutes
• Formatted EFI and msftres partitions, then rebuilt the EFI boot records

In summary, am looking to force the BIOS to see the EFI partition on the SSD boot drive, as it is not an option any longer.

 

[R-T-B]

Is the mobo's bios booting from legacy boot? As in CSM mode? If so, turn that off.

EDIT: Wait, you formatted the EFI partition? Not good, the boot manager is there... not sure if that's your issue or if the above commands would've replaced it.

 

[trog100]

you need to reinstall windows using the custom method.. i have had the same thing happen more than once..

i think the EFI partition on the boot drive f-cks up.. i just had it happen when tried to run a disk image back up.. the only thing that worked was a custom reinstall which reformats the drive as it should be..

trog

 

[newconroer]

Is the mobo's bios booting from legacy boot? As in CSM mode? If so, turn that off.

EDIT: Wait, you formatted the EFI partition? Not good, the boot manager is there... not sure if that's your issue or if the above commands would've replaced it.

If it was EFI partition related, the system wasn't confirming either way. And I did rebuild the two partitions, which succeeded yet did not resolve the issue. I also had backed up the original EFI data, and subsequently replaced it as a final test.



Turned the system on this morning, and for the first time noticed that the Boot Device led on the motherboard was lit(red). Nothing I did would get rid of it. It was probably happening all the while I have been having this issue.

After reading around yet some more, I started to come to the realization that it most likely a motherboard issue, specifically a dying SATA controller. Others had reported this on these Asus boards and the weird behavior of one of my SSDs and HDDs (disappearing at random or when stressed under load as well as causing Windows login to freeze) seemed to be related.

Never the less, hoping it was a software issue, I decide to try a new Windows install on a spare HDD. Took out the other drives and stuck the HDD into the first Intel 6gb sata slot.

System showed no hard disk connected. Put the original boot SSD back in place of the new HDD, and it showed in the BIOS - though still no boot/windows boot manager.

Let the system try and boot any ways and this time got the message 'No operating system found' immediately followed by 'Select proper boot device' error.

Curious and excited, I decided to run through some more command line stuff with Diskpart to once again repair the EFI partition.
This time however I got another copy of Windows 10 on a new USB drive, started the Windows setup, clicked through the available partitions to install, yet did not take any action. Exited Windows setup, restarted the system

I didn't manage to stop the boot attempt and I got a black screen with a blinking cursor in the top left -- again curious and excited I restarted and went into the BIOS. Lo and behold one of the boot options was Windows Boot Manager. I chose manually boot using the WBM and Windows started booting - took me right into my old desktop.

I turned off the computer, put all my drives, ram sticks, second GPU, additional fans and any thing else I had removed when troubleshooting.
It has been working since. Unfortunately the HDD that previously had issues, has dropped out again in an expected way.


Hoping it holds out until I decide to upgrade the system or can find a cheap temporary replacement.
The worrying thing is whatever fixed it, I cannot 100% reproduce.

 

[R-T-B]

The worrying thing is whatever fixed it, I cannot 100% reproduce.

Nothing worse than that feeling.

 

[newconroer]

Nothing worse than that feeling.

Indeed. It's gotten more weird now. The second HDD continues to disappear and then I have to restart the system - which takes a while longer than it normally should.
When the system comes back up, instead of Windows, I get a light blue screen telling me that after several attempts the computer could not boot the operating system.
It lets me attempt another try or boot into the old F8 menu.

A combination of turning off the computer, draining the motherboard and starting again sometimes produces a full boot.

Well, the motherboard is over five years old now - guess it was a good run.

 

[R-T-B]

Are we sure the HDD is good though?

 

[newconroer]

Are we sure the HDD is good though?

Yes, I had the same problem with another two previously - so it's been replaced twice and not long after starts to exhibit the same issues.