Dell Inspiron 15 - Cannot Find Boot Sector one time then it boots after F1

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learn4ever

Commendable
Jul 9, 2016
3
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Every time i start my PC it says can't find boot sector, press F1. When i press F1 it boots just fine.

Is this a HDD problem or a controller problem?
Strange that it always works after pressing F1. I first suspected the boot sector but i installed Kubuntu afterwards and still have the problem after reformatting. The disk shows up in bios without issues. I've reset Bios to default settigns and only "internal hard disk" enabled in boot sequence. It always comes up after a hard shutdown and always boots after pressing F1 once.
 
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Mark RM

Mark RM

Admirable
Jul 16, 2014
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have you flashed the BIOS to the latest rev? Does the BIOS have an option to delay the boot or can you turn it to normal boot from "fast".

And since you defined it as working from a hard shutdown, do you normally restart it from a window hibernation/sleep session?
 
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L

learn4ever

Commendable
Jul 9, 2016
3
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No not tried flashing bios, the PC booted fine till a few weeks ago. It was running Win7 back then when it started having boot problems. I decided to switch to Linux anyways and thought that would fix the boot problem too as i suspected some issues with the boot sectors.

Before that, the PC had a lot of problems prior with hanging in Windows, etc... since i've reinstalled it with Linux it has worked flawless safe for the boot problem. I also replaced the laptop battery but that one had been dead for a long time and works fine now. I'm thinking of replacing the HD but need to make sure it's not the MB

It wakes up fine from sleep, it gets the problem during an actual boot (reboot or shutdown to power off. I thought it was ok on simple reboot but i just tried it and i also get the F1 on reboot)
 
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T

tsnor

Splendid
Nov 20, 2008
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This could be a slow spin up on a HDD, or a slow controller boot on an SSD. Turn on diagnostic boot in BIOS to get memory test. You don't need a memory test, but slowing the BIOS down a bit might give the drive a chance to get ready.

Make your recovery disk now in case the drive fails, and get a good backup. Not finding the boot sector intermittently is not a good thing.

If this is a spinning drive then consider forcing a surface scan.
 
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L

learn4ever

Commendable
Jul 9, 2016
3
0
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I'll check what a surface scan can do. Meanwhile S.M.A.R.T error report below:
Obviously 65535 errors is not good :(. The top errors i can find are all during "device startup"


Error 65535 occurred at disk power-on lifetime: 53271 hours (2219 days + 15 hours)
When the command that caused the error occurred, the device was active or idle.

After command completion occurred, registers were:
ER ST SC SN CL CH DH
-- -- -- -- -- -- --
40 41 82 dc 0a 36 62 Error: UNC at LBA = 0x02360adc = 37096156

But...


=== START OF READ SMART DATA SECTION ===
SMART overall-health self-assessment test result: PASSED

Num Test_Description Status Remaining LifeTime(hours) LBA_of_first_error
# 1 Short offline Completed without error 00% 53273 -

I guess the disk is just getting old, i will replace it soon (nothing important on it anyways)
 
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