I turned on my PC this morning, left for a bit, and when I came back, I saw the loading cursor and couldn't do anything. I rebooted hoping that would help, but instead, I went straight into the Asus UEFI. My Samsung 980 Pro NVME and Kioxia storage drive were still detected. However, when checking the boot priority, it was empty. I tried updating the BIOS, and suddenly the drives appeared in the boot priority, but Windows still won't start. I created a USB Windows 10 installer to check my drives, and they seem fine. One drive has three volumes: a C: drive for storage, a 100 MB FAT32 partition, and a 500 MB NTFS partition. What should I do next? Should I back up my drive and start fresh, or is there a better fix?
3 Answers
It sounds like your BIOS might be flipping between UEFI and Legacy boot modes. Have you tried checking your boot options to ensure it’s set to UEFI? Sometimes toggling this setting can bring back the boot capabilities. It’s worth a shot, especially since I’ve seen it work on many work PCs I’ve dealt with.
Honestly, updating the BIOS often doesn’t impact the booting issue. It’s more likely that your SSD is failing or that the BIOS reset due to a CMOS battery issue. Just keep that in mind while troubleshooting.
This reminds me of that SSD issue caused by a Windows update that I heard about. There’s a video that discusses it: [Jayztwocents’ take](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YjcMM5hZqmA). Maybe there’s a connection?
Actually, that update wasn't responsible for the SSD failures. It affected only a small number of drives with faulty pre-release firmware. Don't worry too much about that issue!
I totally agree! If the settings aren't correct, the drives won't show as bootable. Here’s a link showing the right boot configuration that helped me before: [boot settings](https://imgur.com/a/7YdYDwX). Always good to double-check those!