Need some help with Windows 10 non-booting issue after image restore...

[BLinux]

Sorry, this isn't about Windows server, but I thought you guys would be pretty knowledgeable about Windows 10 too. Would appreciate any help on this issue...

I have a brand new ThinkPad P50 that came with Win10 Pro. Upon first boot, I created a system image, using the Windows backup and recovery tool (believe it is the Win7 tool that is available in Win10). I created a system image onto a Blu-ray disc successfully and then was prompted to create a system repair disc, which I also did on a DVD.

I wanted to test that this system image would restore correctly, but I'm finding out it isn't working as I had hoped. The ThinkPad P50 originally came with a Toshiba 256GB SATA M.2 SSD. I took that out, and installed a brand new Intel 600p, which is a NVMe M.2 SSD. I then booted the system repair disc using an external USB3 optical drive. Went into the option to restore from system image, and then popped in the system image blu-ray disc. I told the restore program to use the entire 600p SSD and reformat it. The restore process went all the way to completion and rebooted.

Upon reboot, it fails with INACCESSIBLE BOOT DEVICE error message.

So far, I've tried the following without success:

1) boot into system repair and selected the "automatic startup repair" option - rebooted, same error
2) boot into system repair, selected advanced, got a command line, and ran the following:

bootrec /rebuildbcd
bootrec /fixmbr
bootrec /fixboot

then rebooted, same error.

Any suggestions? Does it have anything to do with the original drive being a SATA SSD vs the replacement drive being a NVMe SSD? Even if so, is there way to repair this?

goal is to verify that I am able to restore this machine to factory install condition.

thanks for any insights...

 

[xnoodle]

Yes. Similar to the AHCI install thing for reddit: the front page of the internet

Sent from my SAMSUNG-SM-G935A using Tapatalk

 

[BLinux]

no idea what's going on... Windows OSes always seem to really irritate me... anyway, the fix in this case was to "reset my PC" and that seems to attempt a re-install of Windows that I restored from system image? not clear on what it really does, but then again, nothing about Windows has ever really been clear to me. anyway, the system boots up now on the new M.2 NVMe SSD, but I can't get into the UEFI/BIOS directly from boot screen anymore... only way seems to be to boot into Windows 10, then go into recovery and restart into UEFI firmware settings.

I don't get it... normally, during boot up, I press "enter" and it shows a menu and hit F2 to go into BIOS settings. Is this some weird thing with booting M.2 NVMe SSDs or is this some weird Windows thing? Although, Windows 10 on the old SATA SSD didn't do this... really annoying.

 

[Patrick]

Nowadays, if I ever have an issue like this I just re-install Windows. Keeping data on the NAS helps a lot.

 

[BLinux]

Nowadays, if I ever have an issue like this I just re-install Windows. Keeping data on the NAS helps a lot.

yeah... part of my problem is my own ignorance i suppose. i left the Windows user world about 8 years ago and switched completely to using Linux OSes for my desktop/laptop environments. every now and then I still have to use Windows when a client gives me a machine to use to access their network, but that's about it. when I have a problem in Linux, like the recent Fedora 25 upgrade, even if there are problems, I'm able to narrow things down to like which library was causing which program to crash, and so I'm waiting on an update from Nvidia to make a driver compatible with Xorg 1.19. Like, even if things aren't perfect, at least I feel like I understand the problem and know what needs to be fixed, if not by me, I know who I need to wait on. with Windows, it's just a big mystery to me... "reset my PC" or "reinstall Windows" just seems like solving a problem with a very very broad brush and if it fixes the problem, I don't really know what was wrong in the first place, and if it doesn't fix the problem, I've just wasted a lot of time with no better understanding. :-(

granted, i'm sure there are those who know Windows OSes at a deeper level and can diagnose problems like I described above for Fedora 25 Linux, but that's where my ignorance shows - i'm not one of those Windows gurus.

I'm doing this system image for this new ThinkPad P50 because it's a gift for my dad whose been wanting a nice laptop for some time. He's normally a Windows user, so I don't want to shock him into using something else, although with 3 SSDs in this laptop, i'm going to put Linux on one of the SSDs so he has the option to dabble in it and I can remotely troubleshoot problems for him. I want to have a factory system image so in case things go really bad/drive failure, I can restore it factory setup and trust that he has backups to restore his data.

 

[BLinux]

Just an update: in another forum someone point out to me that Windows 10 has changed their "shutdown" behavior, and by default does a "fast startup/hybrid" shutdown. learn something new every day. the suggestion was that since Windows 10 doesn't really fully shutdown, it prevents me from getting into BIOS settings. I tried a 'restart' (as I understand it by-passes the fast startup feature), I tried a full shutdown with "shift+shutdown", and I also tried disabling fast-startup feature in control panel and shutdown. None of these attempts allowed me to enter the BIOS settings from power-up. I'm still having to boot into Windows and performing the convoluted 9-step program to get it to restart into BIOS in order to get into the BIOS.

tomorrow, I'm going to pop the SATA SSD back in and see if that returns the BIOS back to normal behavior.

 

[i386]

Just an update: in another forum someone point out to me that Windows 10 has changed their "shutdown" behavior, and by default does a "fast startup/hybrid" shutdown. learn something new every day. the suggestion was that since Windows 10 doesn't really fully shutdown, it prevents me from getting into BIOS settings. I tried a 'restart' (as I understand it by-passes the fast startup feature), I tried a full shutdown with "shift+shutdown", and I also tried disabling fast-startup feature in control panel and shutdown. None of these attempts allowed me to enter the BIOS settings from power-up. I'm still having to boot into Windows and performing the convoluted 9-step program to get it to restart into BIOS in order to get into the BIOS.

tomorrow, I'm going to pop the SATA SSD back in and see if that returns the BIOS back to normal behavior.

Actually that's a feature that was introduced with windows 8 and laptop/tablet hybrids.
If changing it in the control panel doesn't work try it in the command line with admin rights.

 

[BLinux]

Actually that's a feature that was introduced with windows 8 and laptop/tablet hybrids.
If changing it in the control panel doesn't work try it in the command line with admin rights.

Thanks for the suggestion.. i'll try it out. But, I'm suspecting it may not have to do with that at all - though I'm no authority on this matter as you can tell.

 

[BLinux]

Just to bring closure to this thread, I've found the solution to the issue with not being able to enter the BIOS setting during POST. The fix was to 'set BIOS to default settings' and save. (F9, then F10) For whatever reason, that seems to bring back the expected behavior again and I can enter BIOS settings by holding down 'enter' key during POST startup.

thanks guys for the suggestions. now i can move on to finish setting up this laptop....