SSD preventing system from booting, including safemode or from CD/USB

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HolmPC

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Apr 14, 2011
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I have a non-booting HP Pavilion DM1 that i'm having trouble fixing, but i've narrowed the problem down to the SSD. When I try to boot, the system gets past the post, allowing me to go into the BIOS, but straight after this point the screen goes black with some faint flickering horizontal lines. This stays like this indefinitely.

If I try to boot from an external DVD drive (this netbook has no internal) or from USB, the same thing happens. I also cannot access Safe mode.

If I remove the Samsung 840EVO SSD and replace it with a HDD, that boots into Windows fine, and allows me to boot from USB or DVD. I therefore know the screen is fully functional.

This system has been working fine with the SSD for a couple of months. Also, if I plug the SSD into another machine as an external drive I can browse it with no problem so I know at least the storage is healthy. If it's a faulty graphics driver update would I be seeing the effects this early? I wouldn't have thought that would stop me booting from USB or going into safe mode.

The OS installed on the SSD is Windows 7.

Does anyone have any ideas why this might be happening, and what I can do to make the SSD bootable again?

 
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mbarnes86

Splendid
Sep 16, 2010
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Hi
I presume you have recovered any data from the SSD
Find out if there is a manufactures test program from the SSD makers web site
If so do a full test while in a esata or USB tray or in a desktop

If it passes the manufacturers tests erase the disk
Then try a re install using a bootable USB stick or USB DVD drive containing windows 7 or windows 7 recovery disk

Check sata interface is in ahci mode before re installing windows

See if re install works ?

But I expect the SSD has a bad block at or near beginning of disk or partition sector causing problem booting

Diagnostics program may be able to fix this as there are spare blocks available in both SSD and hard disks.

If you can't find manufactures SSD diagnostics
Try western digital data lifeguard for windows

Regards
Mike Barnes
 
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HolmPC

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Apr 14, 2011
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I still have no idea what caused the problem with the SSD, but I have found a work around.

I used Acronis TrueImage to take an image of the partitions. I then used DiskPart to remove all partitions from the disk. This put the disk into a state where the PC would boot to USB with the SSD attached, and using USB I reinstalled Windows7 in order to recreate the Windows7 boot manager partition, and a new system partition.

I then restored the backed up windows partition containing all my client's data over the system partition, leaving the new boot manager partition.

The machine then booted perfectly, and no data was lost. I hope this helps someone with a similar issue in the future.
 
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