Weird Computer Problem - Fixed, Sorta
May 21, 2019 14:13:47 #
My computer crashed on Tuesday the 7th when I tried to boot it up - dieing 'C' drive. Took it to the shop and it started working but when the tests were run one time the drive came up as OK and the next as defective. He kept it three days and went over everything with frequent reboots. I brought it home (tech said since he had already done the diagnosis and testing there would be no labor charge to put in a new drive if it really died.) lasted a few days with frequent reboots for updates on Windows 10 and various software. and the drive died completely when I tried to boot Friday morning the 17th.
I drove to Fry's and got a new one and took everything to the shop on Saturday afternoon. Told him to finish the other computers he was working on. No rush since I had a laptop, no PP software but I could check e-mails etc.
He put the drive in Monday morning and it powered up and tried to boot. With the recovery disk and the external drive with the backup on it plugged in it would not boot. But if he booted it with the recovery disk but not the external drive plugged in it booted. So he plugged in the external drive after the machine had booted and restored the 'C' drive from my Acronis Backup. Have the external plugged in, no boot, unplug it and it boots. Even though it does not show in the BIOS it seems to be trying to boot from the external drive which only has encrypted backup files and will not move on down the boot sequence. So now I will have to plug the external in about 9AM, Acronis does it's daily backup at 10AM and when it is done I unplug it until 9AM the next day. I did this last night and it works. We checked the BIOS and it does not show it trying to boot from the external but that is what it is doing. It also kept changing the drive order for booting but as long as the external drive was not plugged in it would go through the drives (even the card reader) until it hit the C drive and boots. It also will rarely flash a screen that says "Dual Boot" and then start the boot sequence all over again before opening. I don't have a dual boot setup. About six months ago the BIOS were updated to a new version. I have sent an e-mail to the motherboard and BIOS people asking if the new BIOS version has been having problems and how to revert to the older BIOS. Waiting for answers.
In the meantime I am back in business with 14 days of shots to import and go through. So for a while I will be posting more pictures than usual to catch up. Plus I have a ton of new flowers opening up in the yard and the macro lens + Helicon FB Tube are going on the 5DIV for some stacks of the blooms and parts of them. Also repotting a bunch of bulbs, I have four large pots that had 2 bulbs each that seem to have 8-10 plants coming up so they need to be split up to several pots to allow for better growth and more blooms.
I drove to Fry's and got a new one and took everything to the shop on Saturday afternoon. Told him to finish the other computers he was working on. No rush since I had a laptop, no PP software but I could check e-mails etc.
He put the drive in Monday morning and it powered up and tried to boot. With the recovery disk and the external drive with the backup on it plugged in it would not boot. But if he booted it with the recovery disk but not the external drive plugged in it booted. So he plugged in the external drive after the machine had booted and restored the 'C' drive from my Acronis Backup. Have the external plugged in, no boot, unplug it and it boots. Even though it does not show in the BIOS it seems to be trying to boot from the external drive which only has encrypted backup files and will not move on down the boot sequence. So now I will have to plug the external in about 9AM, Acronis does it's daily backup at 10AM and when it is done I unplug it until 9AM the next day. I did this last night and it works. We checked the BIOS and it does not show it trying to boot from the external but that is what it is doing. It also kept changing the drive order for booting but as long as the external drive was not plugged in it would go through the drives (even the card reader) until it hit the C drive and boots. It also will rarely flash a screen that says "Dual Boot" and then start the boot sequence all over again before opening. I don't have a dual boot setup. About six months ago the BIOS were updated to a new version. I have sent an e-mail to the motherboard and BIOS people asking if the new BIOS version has been having problems and how to revert to the older BIOS. Waiting for answers.
In the meantime I am back in business with 14 days of shots to import and go through. So for a while I will be posting more pictures than usual to catch up. Plus I have a ton of new flowers opening up in the yard and the macro lens + Helicon FB Tube are going on the 5DIV for some stacks of the blooms and parts of them. Also repotting a bunch of bulbs, I have four large pots that had 2 bulbs each that seem to have 8-10 plants coming up so they need to be split up to several pots to allow for better growth and more blooms.
May 21, 2019 14:47:39 #
robertjerl wrote:
My computer crashed on Tuesday the 7th when I trie... (show quote)
Robert,
You may want to check with Microsoft support for windows 10. Microsoft has recently decided to fess up about the disaster they call auto update.
This was one of the reasons I switched to an IMac. Good luck amigo, you may just have many hours of on hold to listen to.
P
May 21, 2019 15:11:05 #
pmorin wrote:
Robert,
You may want to check with Microsoft support for windows 10. Microsoft has recently decided to fess up about the disaster they call auto update.
This was one of the reasons I switched to an IMac. Good luck amigo, you may just have many hours of on hold to listen to.
P
You may want to check with Microsoft support for windows 10. Microsoft has recently decided to fess up about the disaster they call auto update.
This was one of the reasons I switched to an IMac. Good luck amigo, you may just have many hours of on hold to listen to.
P
Thanks, I have read about the problems with update (and the bugs in some of those updates) and have changed the settings so it has to ask me for permission to install. I got instructions of how to do that from an online article which I have since lost the print out and I didn't bookmark the site. I wait a few days to see if any bugs get reported on major OS updates, I only authorize immediate update for the routine stuff like the Anti-Virus list of new viruses etc - and updates of programs and apps.
This problem seems to be in the BIOS boot order, it tries to boot from the external drive and won't move on when it doesn't find the boot info. Unplug the external drive and it boots.
May 21, 2019 15:19:33 #
Windows is touchy - An exFAT formatted USB drive can result in the computer not booting. Try reformatting the drive to NTFS. BIOS settings should not need to be changed.
May 21, 2019 15:32:06 #
robertjerl wrote:
My computer crashed on Tuesday the 7th when I trie... (show quote)
Yes, something is amiss with your system. I've found that MS Technical Support is better now and I'm not kept on hold for hours like in the Nineties. Also my old now trashed/recycled LapTop used to do that too. My old crappy Windows Vista machine would go crazy if I rebooted with an External Drive attached. I also checked the BIOS setting, no help. So if I accidentally left an USB External Drive the lame HP PC would attempt to boot from a disk with only image and audio files on it and no Windows O/S of course. This would tend to corrupt some INI File or something and I would have to run a Windows repair app that might take up to two hours to run. Though other times it would only take about 20 minutes. I have never able to "fix" the issue even after a few calls with suggestions that did not help. Since I only plug my External Drives in when I am doing a manual archive or back-up and not automatically it is not a big problem for me. I'm not even sure how my newer Windows 10 Tower would react to that. Again, as the drives are only occasionally used. Good luck.
May 21, 2019 15:36:56 #
Shellback wrote:
Windows is touchy - An exFAT formatted USB drive can result in the computer not booting. Try reformatting the drive to NTFS. BIOS settings should not need to be changed.
Thanks, I will check and see which format the external uses, it is only a month old, an 8TB which replaced a 3TB I had been using for several years. I just plugged it in and did a full backup (had just done one on the old drive an hour before-that is on the shelf for a real emergency) with out checking on the file system.
May 22, 2019 07:44:10 #
Yes, computers are diabolical and totally illogical. They have minds of their own, and they use them against us. I can imagine home computers getting together on their own private network and laughing about all the trouble they cause us.
May 22, 2019 11:04:09 #
Robert I think your boot is set to UEFI and not Legacy. f12 to change. Legacy boot uses the Eprom from the Mfg and UEFI is dynamic from boot record on hard drive. There may be a very old saying in play here "Back up a problem & Restore a problem does not solve the problem."
May 22, 2019 11:11:05 #
pmorin wrote:
Anybody out there who didn't know this was coming? This was one of the reasons I switched to an IMac.
I'm surprised it came so soon. First response to the OP in only about 35 minutes.
But thanks for all the references to problems with Windows and Microsoft.
May 22, 2019 12:43:35 #
I have a 4tb wd external that from day one would stop the boot process and had to be disconnected for the computer to boot. Another one (same make/model) works perfectly and is connected to my main computer full time. I relegated the faulty drive to periodic backups. Your problem may not be with the computer, rather with external drive firmware. Just a thought.
May 22, 2019 13:57:40 #
EdJ0307 wrote:
Anybody out there who didn't know this was coming?
I'm surprised it came so soon. First response to the OP in only about 35 minutes.
But thanks for all the references to problems with Windows and Microsoft.
I'm surprised it came so soon. First response to the OP in only about 35 minutes.
But thanks for all the references to problems with Windows and Microsoft.
Edit : deleted
May 23, 2019 04:26:55 #
I fully endorse your comments Jerry and am pretty much convinced that they are already laughing at us. I would add printers to the list of culprits too. From getting a matrix printer to work in the 1980's to our latest Canon printer/scanner/copier it has been a continual battle to get them to co-operate. Neither of our last 2 printers will allow both my Win laptop and my wife's Macbook to use them at the same time. They only appear to want to deal with my laptop on a more reliable basis. We are reduced to her copying stuff to a memory stick for me to print off for her. Guess who needs to print out by far the biggest volume of stuff? Obviously it is my wife. My son who is an AppleMac fan and buys nothing else, he works as a Salesman and inhome installer for them in a national UK electronics store has repeatedly failed to achieve any improvement despite having access to professional analytical tools and support resources. Without there being any obvious technical reasons for this situation I left with the strong belief that it is purely down to the dogged determination of the printers to resist our intentions.
May 23, 2019 15:50:50 #
My computer died about a month ago. Took it in for repairs. YUP!!! An automatic update didn't fully.
May 24, 2019 13:30:22 #
Reformated to NTFS, didn't change a thing other than I had to tell the Acronis Program where to backup all over again. And I upgraded to Windows 10 build 1903.
Bootup now seems to go smoothly but not with the external drive plugged in. However where before I had to unplug it and then reboot now I just unplug it and it continues with the bootup that paused.
Oh, and the computer changes the external drive letter when I plug and unplug it - usually to L instead of the G it used to be so I have to go in an tell Acronis the new drive letter.
Bootup now seems to go smoothly but not with the external drive plugged in. However where before I had to unplug it and then reboot now I just unplug it and it continues with the bootup that paused.
Oh, and the computer changes the external drive letter when I plug and unplug it - usually to L instead of the G it used to be so I have to go in an tell Acronis the new drive letter.
May 24, 2019 17:48:14 #
Further progress. I went and deleted all the WD software that came on the drive, kept the Manual which has links to all that firmware/software anyway. Also deleted the old backups from before the Windows build 1903 upgrade yesterday, so just yesterday and today's backups left.
Was distracted and after an upgrade to an app I hit restart with the external drive plugged in. It went right through the whole process without even any warning messages.
Now I hope it wasn't Murphy just teasing me so he can get a giggle the next time it freezes during a restart or a bootup.
Was distracted and after an upgrade to an app I hit restart with the external drive plugged in. It went right through the whole process without even any warning messages.
Now I hope it wasn't Murphy just teasing me so he can get a giggle the next time it freezes during a restart or a bootup.
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