Windows 10 not booting with BSOD: Drive seems to have disappeared

guyyst · 22 Feb 2017

I bricked my system by (I think) interrupting sfc /scannow somehow.

Whatever I did, Windows won't boot anymore and throws this error. I tried all the usual things with recovery tools, like CHKDSK, sfc /scannow and the standard boot repair. But after entering Diskpart's List volume command, I noticed that the only volume listed is that of USB recovery drive.

If I go into the BIOS I can definitely see my 500gb SSD, so it's just not being recognized by Windows.

I already came across this post, suggesting that one could use TestDisk to recover bootable drives, but I felt like I should ask if this is even applicable to my situation, or if there's an easier solution.

Edit: Fixed it, see comments.

axe0 · 28 Feb 2017

Hi guyyst,

Apologies for the huge delay.

You may want to download an ISO from this post, a Win10PE with preinstalled software that may help in recovering the partitions like the Minitool Partition Wizard :)

guyyst · 28 Feb 2017

No worries.

I used rufus to burn the Win10PE ISO to a USB drive and tried booting to it on my laptop (the corrupt machine) but wasn't able to select it as a boot option anywhere. Did the same thing on my main computer and it worked flawlessly. Had no luck with 2 other USB drives either.

I'll have to add that the laptop is definitely able to boot to USB in general, since I already booted to a live version of Ubuntu a couple days before.

On a side note: I tentatively tried to reinstall Windows to check if I would even be able to select my drive in the installation process.
Following step 13 and onward, of this clean install guide for the Dell XPS 15, I loaded the driver for the for the PCIe SSD and saw all of these partitions from my drive. I don't know if this information is of any use use for the recovery of the current Windows installation, but at least it tells me that I could always just reinstall Windows if nothing else works c:

Attachment 123163
(Had to just throw that image in here since Imgur is down :c)

axe0 · 28 Feb 2017

Seeing your booting with MBR, you may want to try this tutorial for repairing MBR (if it is corrupt or damaged).

guyyst · 28 Feb 2017

axe0 said:

Seeing your booting with MBR, you may want to try this tutorial for repairing MBR (if it is corrupt or damaged).

This wasn't successful for me either. 'bootsect /nt60 SYS /mbr' failed with:

Code:

The system partition was not found:
    The requested system device cannot be found

That error does make sense though, seeing how the SSD isn't even listed if I do:

Code:

diskpart
list disk

(Only shows the USB drive)

axe0 · 28 Feb 2017

I already booted to a live version of Ubuntu a couple days before.

Did you find the Windows partition?

guyyst · 28 Feb 2017

axe0 said:

Did you find the Windows partition?

Oh sorry, I should have added that I indeed used Ubuntu to look for the SSD, but didn't find it using fdisk or lsblk.

guyyst · 01 Mar 2017

I think I just fixed the problem,

due to a suggestion from the original "Reinstalling Windows" guide for the Dell XPS 15, I was using RAID mode instead of AHCI. So just out of curiosity I changed back to AHCI again.

When booting now, the PC immediately tried to repair itself, which ultimately failed, but at least it left me with access to the recovery tools and especially the console.

So I again tried, what was the first suggestion when googling my error code, and it worked much better (bootrec /scanos actually found an OS)

After I rebooted again I was now stuck at the Dell Logo, so I went to switch back to RAID mode to see what happens... And it worked! I'm back in Windows and everything is where I left it.

axe0 · 01 Mar 2017

Glad to hear you solved the issue :)