Laptop trouble - my drive letters changed?!

dalchina said:

That looks fine- UEFI.

In your BIOS, is it possible it's somehow set to legacy? You said you had no internal disk boot option.

How To Fix HP No Boot Device, No Bootable Device, Boot Device Not Found, Exiting PXE ROM, No HDD etc - YouTube

Screenshots (not great!) from a HP laptop:
Attachment 329123
Attachment 329124

I actually can, BIOS looks the same to be honest. Give me a second, I'll turn it on.

I did, the system won't run, but I can get back to Hiren. Legacy boot order allows me boot from "Notebook Hard Drive", doesn't specify which.

dalchina said:

At about 8 min in that video - you should have Legacy disabled, as your system disk is UEFI configured.

Ok I just checked - just like the video, scanned the drives - all clear. Disabled secure boot, switched to Legacy boot. Still no bueno - windows throws me off to recovery again.

Should I move on to opening the Omen and removing the HDD?

dalchina said:

Should have legacy disabled or use UEFI boot - whatever the nomenclature is as I said.. your disk configuration is UEFI not legacy.

And then proceed with just the system disk.

All clear. In I go then.

- - - Updated - - -

dalchina said:

Try removing the HDD leaving just the SSD. Then repeat the above.

Removed the drive, turned on the system. Returned BIOS to UEFI, enabled safe boot again. Won't run, even though there is only SSD in now. Booted the Hiren again, went to Macrium. Told it again to fix boot errors, told it the path is C:\Windows - it again recognized the hard drive and did its thing. Got the three green checkmarks again.

I restarted the computer, but it automatically went into recovery again. Choosing advanced restart options like safe mode, boot logging, etc etc didnt really change anything. Again it won't boot.

Frustration rising.

dalchina said:

Clearly you can rescue any files you haven't already backed up.

The question becomes whether your Windows partition itself has in some way become irretrievably corrupt.
You say:

The way to avoid such stress and to provide yourself with a means of recovery within 2 hours or less is to have been using disk imaging regularly and routinely. I imagine that's what you will do once you have a functional system, however that's achieved.

I suggest you now try this:
a. Create a disk image (saved to an external disk) of just your Windows partition on your system disk (any data partitions you created there can be left). (You could use the Macrium Reflect on your Hiren's disk).
b. Clean install Windows to unallocated space on that disk, which means as per the tutorial, deleting all partitions comprising your existing O/S (typically 4 for UEFI).
c. Check that boots.
d. Now, using the MR on Hiren's, restore the image of your original Windows partition in place of the newly created one.

Restart when completed: either automatic repair will sort booting out, or you can run Startup Repair or MAcrium's Fix Boot utility as necessary.

If still no success, it would be reaonable to assume your Windows partition is corrupt.

I guess my best friend should be a disk imaging program. I really ought to finally develop the routine of creating damned images.

Can you just clarify step b a bit please:
I should
- first delete all four partitions, turning 500gbsystem ssd into one big unallocated space partition
- start a windows install from a bootable usb stick

Also, before starting, should I reconnect my HDD now or leave it disconnected?

dalchina said:

Basically always think -'what could go wrong, and how can I avoid it, and have a backup if it does?'.

I guess I'll tattoo this now.
Deleted SSD partitions, installed fresh copy of windows off of the media creation tool. Restarted several times, booted in finely.
I had some issues with Macrium, kept giving me error 9 which google told me is an issue connected to SOURCE drive. I grabbed a fresh Macrium from the internet, copied into Hiren, and that one worked nicely.

Now, I assume I should attempt the image restore from Hiren? Another thing I noticed - originally I had 5 partitions, while now I have 4. Will this make a problem during the restore of the image I created?