Thank you for being a valued part of the CNET community. As of December 1, 2020, the forums are in read-only format. In early 2021, CNET Forums will no longer be available. We are grateful for the participation and advice you have provided to one another over the years.

Thanks,

CNET Support

Question

Hard drive destroyed After Update To Windows 10??????

Sep 21, 2017 9:40AM PDT

After I upgraded Windows Technical Preview, which is running in dual-boot alongside Windows 8.1, my computer turned off. When I turn it back on, the BIOS asks which hard drive to use but there aren't any listed apart from the CD-Drive???
Help,
DavilBac

Discussion is locked

- Collapse -
Answer
Is the HDD actually destroyed? Or boot area issues?
Sep 21, 2017 9:47AM PDT

HDDs are not forever devices. One glitch and you are reaching for your backup, restore and recovery systems. OS upgrades do stress machines but not one machine at office or home lost a HDD or OS over the past 2 years (that's hundreds of upgrades!)

-> Try this. Power off, remove power and open up this PC. Unplug the SATA and power cables (both ends) and plug them back in. Gently push them firmly home.

If the BIOS does not show a HDD, there is a HDD or SATA port issue. Windows does not currently destroy or kill HDDs.

- Collapse -
Answer
Not really an answer but...
Sep 23, 2017 4:19AM PDT

I had a vaguely similar problem a few years ago with a Samsung Laptop, originally bought new with XP. I subsequently upgraded it to Win7, which had to be done with a clean install, in place upgrade not supported. I used a partitioned hard disk to build a clean 7 and it worked for a while but when I enabled the original partition as a secondary, I started getting "Operating system not found" messages on booting the Win7 system.

On investigation, the BIOS had no reference to the HDD at all. Adding a HDD with automatic detection didn't work but I could add one manually. If I then changed that to Automatic, it would work again for a few reboots, then the same issue.

Eventually, I spotted that the set of drivers I downloaded for Win7 didn't include a Chipset or CPU driver, which the original XP set did. Fortunately, when I tried copying the XP ones to 7, they worked and I had no more trouble. But to be honest, I was never really sure what the original problem was and whether this was an adequate fix. I've never used dual boot and I would have expected 10 and 8.1 drivers to be similar but it may be worth checking that you have a fully updated driver set.

Post was last edited on September 23, 2017 4:30 AM PDT

- Collapse -
Corrupted Boot Loader May Be the Cause
Sep 23, 2017 11:26AM PDT

You can try Easy BCD which is an app which can, among other things, repair a corrupted Windows Boot Loader. There's a link below, but it's a fairly well-known app that can be downloaded from various locations.
Alternatively, you can remove the hard drive and connect it to a different computer so you can look at what partitions and folders are on the drive. Deleting a conflicting partition may help your bootup problem, but be careful you don't ever remove the small (100MB to 300MB size) reserved partition.
If all else fails, assuming you have confirmed the drive still works when you connect it to another computer, you can re-format the drive and start afresh with a new Windows install.

https://www.techspot.com/downloads/3112-easybcd.html