Fail to Boot after Intel RST Install - Repair Apparently Impossible

DJG · 05 Sep 2015

I have my OS on a 2-ssd RAID 0 that is awesome quick and have never had a problem under normal circumstances. When working out my OC I often go through several BSODs and the RAID 0 keeps ticking. Once in a blue moon after several bad BSODs I notice some different behavior, like the firewall starts asking the same old questions again. At that point I do an image restore (I always back up before heavy OC workouts). But even then the system is still working. I keep my data stuff on a RAID 10.

sasquatchgeoff · 06 Sep 2015

Well, after doing some investigating, I am finding that it is possible the whole reset was not necessary. I will never know for sure, but my suspicions are based on a fail to boot this morning (I know, after everything I have been through).

I use Raxco Perfect Disk for defrag purposes, and I ticked the option to do a boot time defrag on my system partition. After reboot the machine went into a BCD fail error screen - one of the same ones I had seen in my ordeal before. I double checked my bios before changing back to a restore point and the HDD boot order had changed to my RAID 0 storage array.

I reset the bios boot order back to the SSD that contains my system partition - no boot - same BCD black death screen. I went back into the bios - reset the HDD boot order back to the RAID array. Voila - booted up normally after Perfect Disk did the boot-time defrag.

This is extremely odd. The bios only sees the RAID array as a viable boot drive. Is it possible that RST tatooed some boot signature on the RAID disk and now the in-built Windows 10 ICH drivers defaults to that boot signature and ignores my SSD??? Looking in disk management I find sure enough that a partition on the RAID array is marked system, active and primary, where my actual system drive is marked boot, page file, active, crash, and primary. I would think that not being marked "system" would prevent the drive from booting even though it is marked "boot."

I know there must be a way to correct this - likely from the command prompt.

This is weird, and in all my years of fiddling with computers and such (about 20) I have never seen anything like it.

Fail to Boot after Intel RST Install - Repair Apparently Impossible-capture_090615.png

DJG · 06 Sep 2015

Have you tried doing a Startup Repair with the Windows install DVD?

sasquatchgeoff · 06 Sep 2015

DJG said:

Have you tried doing a Startup Repair with the Windows install DVD?

Yes - with both the 8.1 disk as well as the 10 disk. From reading the srtLogFile The 8.1 disk would always throw the error "The operating system version is incompatible with Startup Repair" - when I ran startup repair from the 10 disk RE it would at least "attempt repairs." Likely the repairs were being made to the RAID array boot sector - there is no system on the RAID array, apparently only a system signature, and when booting (and writing with BCDedit), windows defaults to that signature as opposed to the actual system drive. Very confusing.

DJG · 06 Sep 2015

What about at the BIOS level - can you limit booting to one disk? In my Asus I can specify what disks are available for booting and in what order of preference. I normally just specify the one system disk. I assume Gigabyte BIOS has something similar?

sasquatchgeoff · 06 Sep 2015

DJG said:

What about at the BIOS level - can you limit booting to one disk? In my Asus I can specify what disks are available for booting and in what order of preference. I normally just specify the one system disk. I assume Gigabyte BIOS has something similar?

Yep - I even attached the sata cable to the "GSATA" port on the mobo, and disconnected every other drive from the board except the optical disk. Windows refused to repair (or see) the boot record, in spite of the drive showing up just fine in the bios. I believe that the RST drivers were on the drive, and at such a level in the boot sequence that windows used them every time, creating a conflict (maybe with the GSATA drivers??) or something that was irreparable. There simply did not appear to be a solution other than reset.

Back in the day (talking 2000 pro here) in the recovery or installation environment windows would have you hit F6 to load RAID drivers from a floppy in order to install into the boot sequence, otherwise, no RAID drivers would load. Those were the good times I guess.

DJG · 06 Sep 2015

Ahh, floppies! Nothing like installing OS-2 from 28 floppies and have the 25th one crap out

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If you have a backup image, you could try installing a new Windows over the current one which would set up a new boot sector, then just restore the Windows partition ...