Sudden boot option / file missing? machine starts in BIOS

Backstory:

- have two identical machines (Razer RZ09-0482) that I use for work
- both machines have been running flawlessly for years
- both are on win10 iot enterprise LTSC 19044.7058

- have a 3rd Razer laptop, has two SSDs, and has been collecting dust. So I wanted to prep/clean it for sale...
- one of the two SSD was not booting, so I bought a usb nvme enclosure to see if I could retrieve any needed files
- connected nvme enclosure to a RZ09-0482
- could not see the C drive, or any files
- unplugged/disconnected enclosure from RZ09-0482
- got back to work and thought nothing of it
- within a minute or two, RZ09-0482 randomly rebooted direct to BIOS, and no longer can boot into windows
- from what I can tell, there is no longer a Boot option for RZ09-0482

No idea what happened, but my guess is plugging in that usb ssd enclosure did something funky. The timing is hard to ignore

- have tried reseating the SSD
- have tried resetting BIOS to default settings
- have tried Advanced -> startup repair from usb Windows thumb drive
- have read about command prompt options, but have not gone down that route as that is where my knowledge lacks.

I have important documents that are not backed up (I am an idiot) that I truly need from this SSD. That is why I am here on these forums hoping to get some help. Ideally I would like to be able to fix this and reboot normally, but if my only options in the end are to recover files, so be it.

RZ09-0482 #1 (no longer booting)



RZ09-0482 #2 (booting normally)



Seems that RZ09-0482 #1 (left machine, no longer booting) still sees the drive. This led me to believe that the boot file is gone or corrupted?



Any help would be truly apprecaited.

desperate said:

Seems that RZ09-0482 #1 (left machine, no longer booting) still sees the drive. This led me to believe that the boot file is gone or corrupted?

Click to expand...

The Razer RZ09-0482 laptop uses UEFI firmware only (no legacy BIOS/CSM support).

Try booting from a Windows installation USB and run the following commands:

diskpart
list volume (find the Windows partition letter)
exit

bcdboot x:\windows (replace "x" with the Windows partition letter)

The bcdboot command will automatically locate the FAT32 EFI system partition, copy the required UEFI boot files from the Windows partition, and recreate the Boot Configuration Data (BCD) store.

If the EFI partition is missing or corrupted, you may need to recreate it manually.

Whatever I say, I'm not saying that anyone is doing "x" on purpose, I just think this is misconstrued, but I have to fight an "ill protocol" firmly established: the "magical" lose of files as a normal event or result.

No experience at all here about the magical loss of a file (I've lost files but not in magical ways, last time it was during a VISIBLE -not magical- failed partition resizing; the likely RAM failure that caused it, was "magical" though, the computer is usable but it has glitches, that happen seldom enough; I lost some few files from a data partition and the ability to boot Windows 7, with error 0xc0000225 that I could recover with a Macrium Rescue Media -> Fix boot problems feature, similar to what Celery has proposed).

No idea why it's frequent to treat a file loss as an issue different from a disk failure. If Windows is constantly or periodicly watching the boot files to reboot or not I'm unaware, but I had frequent reboots during an age with bad RAM in the said Win7 computer and I know it happened b/c the motherboard could randomly drop the disk, Windows rebooted, and the MR Rescue media threw an error and the disk disappeared instead, "the disk" is a RAID 0 what increases its dependence on RAM. Replacing the RAM fixed these constant reboots (the said 0xc0000225 failure was with good RAM installed, but the system's old and has seldom failures of several kinds).

Notice that I lost the files because they were being moved by the partitioning tool, and something similar to a random reboot in Windows happened (there was a random reboot, but not in Windows). The boot files should be rarely used (and read if at all) while working in Windows normally unless they were being updated. Excluding a failed update, I think the highest probability is the loss of the disk or part of it, unfortunately. I think you should do a data recovery procedure before anything else.

Unless there was a virus in the old laptop's SSD, its use isn't related imo.

Thank you for the reply Celery, i just got home from a 12 hour drive. Sorry for the late reply.

This was the result: "failure when attempting to copy boot files"

In your screenshot, the list volume command only shows the USB flash drive.

The list volume command should also show the partitions on the SSD: the Windows partition, the EFI system partition, and the Recovery partition.

So something is wrong.

The screenshot with both CPUS, the computer being on the left, is the problematic SSD at the moment. It passed both tests (RZ09-0482 #1). Not the other way around

With that said, I am absolutely open to going into recovery mode at this point. Being able to reboot does not seem important any longer

If the problem is a controller chip in the physical disk, maybe it can be replaced for a price. I once sold an HDD to a user that wanted it for the electronic board, "a classic" in HDDs. I have never done it but maybe it was affordable for any moderately skilled person with a soldering iron. With this stuff Idk if it's merely possible. I've heard that chips with many small pins in little space can sometimes be resoldered (what I'd judge impossible for myself or the tools I know of), but this is not the field where I can say "this one thing is possible but this other thing is impossible".

In the said age I could be described as "a moderately skilled person with a soldering iron". I once rewired the inners of a gameport to mobo pins adapter, in the age when the gameport was being abandoned in favour of USB but some mobos still had inner pins for an adapter from the same brand, I only managed to get an adapter from a different brand so I had to unsolder the cables and resolder them in different order, what I did successfully. I don't know if replacing an HDD board is simpler or more difficult than this but I definitely know it's possible. What I don't know is if replacing a controller chip is affordable at all for a "champion in soldering with champion tools".

There's an advantage if it's a controller chip, provided it can be replaced: the data might be there (at least it's more likely, I know this is only a guess). The controller malfunction would not only prevent the user from accessing the data, but also the wear-leveling and what not bouncing the data like mad from all sectors to all sectors, what can make a recovery impossible (reading a file needs a list of the sectors it occupies in order).

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Another possible method is connecting the disk to other computer, working well but preferably not important, betting the failure was in the affected computer and not in the disk. It could be any computer with a compatible M2 slot or using an enclosure. If you try the same enclosure that seemed to fail with the old SSD, I would first test it with an unimportant SSD that you know it works, not b/c I think the enclosure has to do with the issue, but b/c it has failed with an old disk and Idk if the failing thing was the old disk or the enclosure. I guess another enclosure from the same or other model would have to pass the same proof.

JLArranz said:

If the problem is a controller chip in the physical disk, maybe it can be replaced for a price. I once sold an HDD to a user that wanted it for the electronic board, "a classic" in HDDs. I have never done it but maybe it was affordable for any moderately skilled person with a soldering iron. With this stuff Idk if it's merely possible. I've heard that chips with many small pins in little space can sometimes be resoldered (what I'd judge impossible for myself or the tools I know of), but this is not the field where I can say "this one thing is possible but this other thing is impossible".

Click to expand...

Newer HDD's have controller chips with embedded digital keys; so if you swap out with a different chip, the drive still works but all your previous data is rendered unreadable. Progress...