Cannot boot because computer rebooted itself before I could program EasyBCD

kewl12

Member
I was dual-booting Windows 7 and 10 on separate SSDs on my desktop computer (Blackbird 002). After my 16-year-old grandson used the computer It would not boot and gave me the attached message. Neither the Windows 7 or 10 installation DVDs would boot to do a repair. if I removed windows 10, windows 7 would still not boot. But finally, I found that with the Win 7 drive removed I could boot into Win 10. After a couple of days, I decided to look at my EasyBCD 2.2 and see if I could fix things I had it remove the boot info that I had previously put in. Then I noticed that there was an upgrade to 2.4. I installed that and it said to not shut off the computer until telling it what to boot from or it would be unbootable. Unbelievably. my darn computer rebooted on its own as it sometimes does. And Voila, I now have a computer that will not boot no matter which OS drive is installed. Also, neither DVD will boot to do a repair. I made a Macrium rescue disk on my laptop and that would not boot. I even made a second one and that would not boot either.
Can anybody help me?
 

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Have you got the BIOS set to boot DVD before HDD ?
Yes by hitting F12 I can choose what to boot from. It will not boot from a windows repair or install disk for Win 7 or 10. However, I was finally able, with both SSDs removed, to put in a third drive and install win 10 on that one. Then with EasyBCD it finally would boot from any of the 3. Now I have removed that third drive and I am back to the above black screen and it won't boot at all. Even after putting the third drive back in. Very frustrating and seems to not make sense.
 
If you got it booting with the 3rd drive, then that had become the controlling BCD and obviously removing it would cause the boot to fail, though putting it back should have retrieved the situation provided you hadn't changed the physical connections you used previously.
When you next get the system back running with all three OSs, be sure to post screenshots of Disk Management and your EasyBCD "view settings" contents before you do anything else which might send you backwards again.
Is this a UEFI or a BIOS/MBR PC ?
 
If you got it booting with the 3rd drive, then that had become the controlling BCD and obviously removing it would cause the boot to fail, though putting it back should have retrieved the situation provided you hadn't changed the physical connections you used previously.
When you next get the system back running with all three OSs, be sure to post screenshots of Disk Management and your EasyBCD "view settings" contents before you do anything else which might send you backwards again.
Is this a UEFI or a BIOS/MBR PC ?
 
Hi Terry,

First, to answer your question, this has to be a BIOS/MBR PC. It is a 2007 Blackbird 002 that I had rebuilt in 2010 to Rahul Sood’s (the Blackbird inventor) specifications that he rebuilt his with. I’m quite sure this there was no UEFI back then.

is It has been several awful days. At one point I actually got all 3 drives working again but had to use the third one a disc drive that I put windows 10 on just for this problem. If I remove it nothing works. Put it back in and still nothing works again including the new disk. I keep trying different things including windows 7 installation and repair discs, Win 10 repair and installation discs. Eventually with the disc drive and the new windows 10, I can sometimes get it to boot. But to do this I have to annually choose the drive by tapping F12. This will only work with the disc dive. The normal Windows 10 and Win 7 are both on SSDs. 7 on a Samsung 840 and 10 on a Samsung 860.

Now right now I can boot by choosing the new windows 10 on the disc drive. However, I just realized that when I do this, I am not actually getting the disc drive. Although I am choosing it, I am booting into the old Win 10 on one of the SSDs. I know this sounds crazy. I choose disc, I get SSD 860. I remove disc and nothing will boot. I can’t get onto win 7 at all now.

It just occurred to me that maybe I am not supposed to have EasyBCD on all three drives. If I can access all the drives, and I am not sure that I can now, should I delete EasyBCD from 2 of them? If I can only boot into one drive as I can now, is it possible to still delete the program from the other two drives by double-clicking on them in my devices to see the content?

I don’t know how this started except that I let a 16-year-old use my computer. Another result was that I had to repair my NAS which also got screwed up.

Thanks for your help,

Tom
 

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I need to see the Disk Management screenshot to ascertain what's being used and from where, also can you repeat the "view settings" but in "detailed" mode.
 
Would that be one of these two? Also when I use F12 to boot. I am choosing Disc 2 (WD5000....) which is the only choice that works, but it is opening disc 1 (Samsung 860). I cannot get into Disc 0 windows 7(Samsung 840) at all. And this Disc 2 is one that I just put win 10 on to try to get into something, anything at all. I know this hardly makes any sense. In a third view attached "Discs and devices, we don't even see the WD5000 hard drive chosen to boot but we do see the two SSDs that I want to use and was using before the problem. As shown in the "uninstall" attachment. If you tell me that EssyBCD should only be on one drive, it looks like I can find it on the unbootable Win 7 drive and perhaps uninstall it from there. Also, what would happen if I just uninstalled EasyDCD from all drives? Would they just all go back to normal and be bootable each on their own?
Thanks,
Tom
 

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EasyBCD only needs to be installed on one partition, but it doesn't hurt to have it installed on multiple. If your hardware is set up correctly, then all three EasyBCD installations should be in sync and display the same information; changes made from one will be reflected in the others.

You need to get back to a clean slate, which means let your system boot into an operating system without pressing any F keys at startup, without manually selecting any boot devices, without changing the master/slave drive configuration in the BIOS, without changing the order of any boot devices, without manually selecting a boot loader. This is your "natural" boot using the system default boot device with the default hardware configuration.

EasyBCD is a software bootloader configuration tool and it completely eliminates any hardware (BIOS) switching of boot devices, but on the flip side, for it to work you cannot keep changing what disk your PC loads from. Once your PC is "naturally" booting into an OS, use EasyBCD to set up entries for the other disks.
 
The reason why you don't see your HDD in Explorer is because you haven't given it a disk letter in Windows Disk Management, which is why it's also referred to as hardidskvolume4 in EasyBCD.
Decide which of your SSDs you wish to be the controlling system ( W10 would be best) and use EasyBCD
to copy the working BCD from your HDD into C.
Set the BIOS to boot naturally from that SSD and then reboot the PC according to mqudsi's advice above
Once booted use EasyBCD to add an entry for W7 on L and you should be back to where you want to be and you can dispose of the temporary HDD.
 
EasyBCD only needs to be installed on one partition, but it doesn't hurt to have it installed on multiple. If your hardware is set up correctly, then all three EasyBCD installations should be in sync and display the same information; changes made from one will be reflected in the others.

You need to get back to a clean slate, which means let your system boot into an operating system without pressing any F keys at startup, without manually selecting any boot devices, without changing the master/slave drive configuration in the BIOS, without changing the order of any boot devices, without manually selecting a boot loader. This is your "natural" boot using the system default boot device with the default hardware configuration.

EasyBCD is a software bootloader configuration tool and it completely eliminates any hardware (BIOS) switching of boot devices, but on the flip side, for it to work you cannot keep changing what disk your PC loads from. Once your PC is "naturally" booting into an OS, use EasyBCD to set up entries for the other disks.
I must apologize to both you and Terry. I was waiting for an email from the forum to see if I received a reply and did not get any. So I checked here and found replies from both of you from Thursday. At this point, I cannot boot into anything again. Even before when I could boot into Windows 10, it was only via using the F12 key and choosing the third drive. So there is no natural state where it will boot into anything. So now I removed Windows 7 and the WD drive with Windows 10. I have been trying to repair the Windows 10 SSD drive using the installation disc. I changed the BOIS to boot from DVD first instead of using F12. I finally discovered that I can boot from this disc but it takes almost 10 minutes. However, this disc has been unable to do a repair. So I tried the command prompt. I was successful at the first step "bootrec/FixMbr" but not the second entry as you can see attached it says "access denied". I'm just trying to get back to a state where I can boot into something and then make the necessary corrections. I cannot get to a system restore. Perhaps I should try to repeat all this with the Windows 7 drive and the Win 7 installation disk that is from 2010
 

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The reason why you don't see your HDD in Explorer is because you haven't given it a disk letter in Windows Disk Management, which is why it's also referred to as hardidskvolume4 in EasyBCD.
Decide which of your SSDs you wish to be the controlling system ( W10 would be best) and use EasyBCD
to copy the working BCD from your HDD into C.
Set the BIOS to boot naturally from that SSD and then reboot the PC according to mqudsi's advice above
Once booted use EasyBCD to add an entry for W7 on L and you should be back to where you want to be and you can dispose of the temporary HDD.
Thanks so much Terry. Working on trying to boot into anything now but will keep working this weekend and report back ASAP. With covid and a lockdown here in Ontario there is not much to sidetrack me from working on this
 
OK I'm at my wit's end now. I can't do anything. I could not boot into any of the three drives using the BIOS configuration, the F12 button or a DVD either for Windows 10 or Windows 7. The WD drive that I put Win 10 on to work on this is no longer accessible at all. The computer doesn't even recognize it. I think it said it needs a driver. I took a 4th disc to try to put Win 10 on and use that but I can't even boot from a DVD to install it. I keep getting BOOTMGR is MISSING. Is this something that needs to be fixed in the BIOS? I don't have a clue. Here is what I see in the BIOS for choices. At one point earlier I was able to boot the DVD but it could not do a repair
 

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Terry60 and mqudsi,

Thank you both so much for your help. I spent days working on my problem including the entire day today until after 9 pm. I'm 72 and not very tech savy and as you can imagine this is a huge weight off my shoulders. Last night or this morning things were going downhill. I got to a point where I could not boot from anything. I tried:
  • Windows 10 installation DVD
  • Windows 7 installation DVD
  • Windows 10 and 7 Rescue DVDs
  • Windows 10 installation USB thumb drive
  • Macrium rescue disk
  • Windows 7 and 10 SSD drives
  • Windows 10 on a WD HD
I finally found some instructions on the web to rebuild BCD I think it was bootrec rebuildbcd. SO now everything works. Regarding EasyBCD I'm actually afraid to touch anything even though I think perhaps there are more settings I should use. When I boot it will either go directly into Win 10 or preferably give me a choice. I don't know why I don't always get the choice but I'm afraid to tinker at this point. I will post the settings below

 

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That looks perfectly fine now for a proper dual-boot with W10 on C in control.
Your Disk Management screenshot posted in #8 should now be showing C as Active, System and Boot

(Disk Management flags have the following meanings

"boot" = "this is the system you're running"
"system" = "this is where I found the boot files for the currently running system"
"active" (on the first HDD in the BIOS boot sequence) = "this is where I started the search for the boot files"
"active" (on subsequent HDDs in the BIOS boot sequence) ="this is where I will look if I don't find something in the MBR on the first HDD")

If you don't always get a menu choice, see if this is relevant
Incidentally, I'm a year older than you are.
Mqudsi (the author) developed this stuff whilst doing a post-grad course and is still only a mere baby at around half our age.
 
That looks perfectly fine now for a proper dual-boot with W10 on C in control.
Your Disk Management screenshot posted in #8 should now be showing C as Active, System and Boot

(Disk Management flags have the following meanings

"boot" = "this is the system you're running"
"system" = "this is where I found the boot files for the currently running system"
"active" (on the first HDD in the BIOS boot sequence) = "this is where I started the search for the boot files"
"active" (on subsequent HDDs in the BIOS boot sequence) ="this is where I will look if I don't find something in the MBR on the first HDD")

If you don't always get a menu choice, see if this is relevant
Incidentally, I'm a year older than you are.
Mqudsi (the author) developed this stuff whilst doing a post-grad course and is still only a mere baby at around half our age.
Thanks so much again, Terry. I hate to admit it but after my last post, I got back into trouble again. I put the third drive back in, the one that I used to sort of rescue the other two. Now that everything was working fine I thought I would put the third one back in and reformat it before putting it away ( I have a lot of spare drives). Low and behold putting it back in made the system unbootable again. Taking it back out was the same

I then again tried all the installation and repair disks as well as some instructions from the web to use a command prompt and repair the bootrec. Finally then I was able to repair the third drive using an installation disk and start over from there. I have it working fairly well now.

I have both boxes unchecked in EasyBCD. Does this mean I am no longer using it? Should I delete it and perhaps just not use it or reinstall it? I also see a button called BCD backup/repair. The "repair" aspect intrigues me but I am afraid to push it because I may just screw everything up again.. I will study all the info you have sent me. Sorry about my delay in replying but there is a lot going on around here. My daughter and family, including the dog, have moved in with us because they sold their house and there is nothing for sale or rent for them to go to. So there are four of them working and doing school from home. We love having them but it's kind of crazy around here.

Now I sometimes get a choice as shown in the attachments but other times it just boots into Win 10 so I assume that is the natural drive. Not sure why sometimes one thing happens and other times another. When I get the black screen with the choice am I getting that from Windows, or from my computer or from EasyBCD?
 

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The boot menu choice screen is presented to you by MS bootmgr.
Although you haven't ticked a default choice, the text on the menu page indicates that bootmgr will assume the first entry is the default default.
Check that you don't have fast start enabled in W10.
That could explain "strange" boot happenings.
 
The boot menu choice screen is presented to you by MS bootmgr.
Although you haven't ticked a default choice, the text on the menu page indicates that bootmgr will assume the first entry is the default default.
Check that you don't have fast start enabled in W10.
That could explain "strange" boot happenings.
Terry, you're a genius. I cannot thank you enough. I read your other thread and went into Windows 10, followed the instructions and everything is now perfect. I get the black screen with the choice of operating systems. It is the same if I boot from off or from a reboot. Yesterday before the fix it booted into Windows 10 the first time and then I got the choice about 5 times in a row. Today when I turned on the computer it booted into Wi 10 like lighting (I see why it's called Fast Srart). But now all is well. Nothing can be more frustrating than a computer problem as I'm sure you know.
Thanks again and have a wonderful weekend,
Tom
 
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