Solved Machine Will Not Boot

Windows 11, should be up to date as restore point was created May 22/26 for Windows update.

This is a Dell 7060 Micro, The user regularly unplugs machine after he shuts it down, ( I threw this in, maybe machine was not fully off when power was cut)

When I got device CMOS battery needed replacing as it was not keeping time. The owner did not mention this but must have seen after having it unplugged for four days.

BSOD Inaccessible_boot_device (0x7B),

Automatic repair did not fix, startup repair did not fix, using the restore point of May 22/26 finished successfully but still no boot. Windows diagnostics says it can't repair.

Ran Dell's diagnostics, everything passed including their test of the drive.

If I boot into Windows Recovery, invoke command prompt and run Bootrec /rebuildbcd it says no installations of windows found. If I change from X: drive to C: drive a proper looking directory (folder) is there. If I change directory to c:\windows and dir again files and folders are reported.

I booted Macrium and tried their fix Windows boot issues. Again it could not find any instances of windows.

I'm now running chkdsk on c:

Looking to be able to restore this installation without the nuclear clean install.


Thanks

By any chance, does that machine have BitLocker on the C: drive? If so, you may need to unlock the drive within Win PE or Win RE in order to see the Windows installation.

But as it stands right now, if you boot into Win RE and run diskpart, does it even see the drive and partition to which Windows is installed? If not, maybe you need to load a driver. IRST, or Intel Rapid Storage Technology is one example. Along those same lines, you may need to check the BIOS since we know the CMOS battery went dead to see if the drive is set in the right mode, either AHCI or RAID. Yes, this still holds true even for a single disk.

EDIT: I know that you said that you see what looks like a proper set of files. So, it's possible that some of this may get ruled out, but I still want to be sure that that's not a different disk. I haven't looked at the configuration possibilities for that particular machine, but some laptops these days allow for more than one disk.

Thanks for responding.

From yesterday, chkdsk ran and no errors found.


Diskpart run. Only disk 0 installed. four partitons found, 100 MB System, 16 MB Reserved, 475GB Primary and 850MB Recovery.

BIOS checked. SATA operation is set at RAID and NOT AHCI. If I change it warns it might not boot. Should I just ignore. I did load defaults after battery change. I assume when machine was delivered it was just using defaults.

This is a Dell 7060 Micro desktop, with a single M.2 SN770 from Western digital.

I assume changing to AHCI does nothing to disk, correct?

Brilliant. Change setting and it booted fine.

I wonder why the default is set to Raid and not AHCI? This may have been a corporate machine but even in a corporate world would a desktop warrant Raid

Thanks

Caledon Ken said:

Brilliant. Change setting and it booted fine.

I wonder why the default is set to Raid and not AHCI? This may have been a corporate machine but even in a corporate world would a desktop warrant Raid

Thanks

Click to expand...

Sweet! Glad that worked. Yeah, I've seen that a few times which is an odd choice for a system with only a single drive. I can only assume that there must be some reason that I am simply unaware of.

Most PC's with IRST controllers default to RAID mode. Including all Dell's.

Good to know.