Hard disk drive won't boot; shows up in BIOS and in Windows 10 install wizard using bootable USB drive

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adcarlton

Commendable
Jul 27, 2016
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Last night I shut down my PC and this morning it booted into a "Disk read error press ctrl + alt + del to continue" type screen. It then got to the "Prepairing Automatic Repair" screen where it then hung indefinitely on a black screen.

Initially I thought the the drive had died, though there were none of the typical warning signs of a dying drive at any time leading up to it not booting. All of my drives are showing up in the BIOS. The drive is also appearing when trying to install Windows 10 as three partitions: 1 System reserved, one Primary, and one "OEM (reserved)" partition, which I imagine is normal behavior for a Windows partition.

However, the primary partition is saying there is 931/931GB of free space available, which when I shut down the PC was certainly not the case. I'm not sure whether this is relevant, but Windows Setup says I cannot install to the disk because it has an MBR partition table, and on EFI systems Windows can only be installed to GPT disks.

I'm not really sure of what to make of this issue, and whether or not I should go ahead and attempt a Windows reinstall, or even better, if there is another way to potentially fix it. For reference, my motherboard is an MSI Z77A-GD65 with UEFI BIOS. If anyone has any ideas, I would greatly appreciate it.
 
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1. So as things now stand you cannot boot to the 1 TB HDD which previously contained a viable OS. Have you tested the health of the HDD with the manufacture's drive diagnostic program to determine whether or not the disk is defective? If not, do so A/S/A/P.

If there's any problem with the diagnostic program testing the drive, connect it (assuming it's practicable) as a secondary drive in the other PC you're apparently using.

2. While it's connected as a secondary drive in another PC can you access any data on the disk? What's reflected in Disk Management? Is there an indication that the disk is devoid of data?

3. Assuming you're not dealing with a non-defective disk the only practical courses of action would be to...
a. Employ a...
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ArtPog

Admirable
Sep 17, 2014
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Your post is somewhat confusing. You first say the non-boot problem you're experiencing occurred sometime after the system had been properly operating. But then you later indicate you're apparently attempting a reinstall of the Windows OS but have run into problems there. So is the latter process your objective at this time, i.e., you're currently opting for a fresh-install of the OS?

In any event, are you working with a OEM PC?
You mention an "OEM (reserved)" partition yet you indicate the PC is equipped with the MSI Z77A-GD65 motherboard, presumably a "generic" component. Could you clarify?

If this is (was) an OEM PC can we assume the original Win 10 OS was installed by the OEM?

What is the disk-capacity of your HDD or SSD?

Is it currently MBR or GPT-partitioned?

What is the media you're using to install the OS?
 
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adcarlton

Commendable
Jul 27, 2016
2
0
1,510


Sorry for the confusion! I made this thread after a very long day of trying to figure out the problem with no luck.

The system was operating properly. I haven't actually attempted a reinstall of Windows 10 yet. I used an bootable Windows 10 intallationg USB drive for the purpose of checking whether or not the drive was being recognized and appearing as a usable disk. I am holding off on attempting a reinstall until I can figure out what is actually wrong.

The PC is one I built myself several years ago, but I had originally installed an OEM version of Windows 7 Pro which was upgraded to Windows 10 Pro last year.

The HDD is a 1 TB, and according to the Windows 10 setup wizard is MBR-partitioned.

I hope this cleared some confusion up. Thank you for the reply, by the way!
 
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ArtPog

Admirable
Sep 17, 2014
2,951
3
8,965
1. So as things now stand you cannot boot to the 1 TB HDD which previously contained a viable OS. Have you tested the health of the HDD with the manufacture's drive diagnostic program to determine whether or not the disk is defective? If not, do so A/S/A/P.

If there's any problem with the diagnostic program testing the drive, connect it (assuming it's practicable) as a secondary drive in the other PC you're apparently using.

2. While it's connected as a secondary drive in another PC can you access any data on the disk? What's reflected in Disk Management? Is there an indication that the disk is devoid of data?

3. Assuming you're not dealing with a non-defective disk the only practical courses of action would be to...
a. Employ a data recovery program and hope the lost data can be resurrected.
b. Fresh-install an OS.
 
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