I powered up my PC and tried to open Google Chrome, but everything froze while Windows was still starting. I ended up turning my PC off and on again, and now it just boots directly into the BIOS screen. I attempted to exit the BIOS without saving anything since I didn't change any settings, but it keeps rebooting back to the BIOS. I'm concerned that maybe Windows isn't booting from my SSD anymore. How can I confirm if the SSD is set as the boot device, and what else should I be looking into?
3 Answers
You might want to look for any startup messages before it takes you to the BIOS. Sometimes that can give clues about what's going wrong, like an error message before it boots.
Turning your PC off with the power switch can mess up system files or even your SSD. It's really better to avoid that. You might need to reinstall Windows either from a recovery partition or using a USB drive, assuming you can't get it to boot normally.
Is there really no other way to troubleshoot before going straight to reinstalling?
Try checking the boot options in BIOS and see if your SSD shows up there. Sometimes it gets reset and needs a reminder which disk to use. I’ve had a similar issue where I just had to tell it to boot from the right disk again to get it to work.
I can't check the exact options right now, but it looked like it only listed a generic "Hard Disk 1," and there was no mention of my SSD at all. How can I confirm it's recognized in the BIOS?
I didn't see any messages—it just goes straight to the BIOS after a few seconds.