Windows no longer able to boot from drive

[LewisC]

After updating my intel optane drive firmware to the latest version, on reboot to finish the installion process windows was no longer able to boot. I managed to diagnose this issue as windows being unable to detect my drive by checking connected volumes in the command prompts in the repair environtment. This is not a hardware issue with the drive as my BIOS still correctly detects the drive and even lets me disable intel optane (though I cannot do this without being able to access my windows software, otherwise I would make my data inaccessible). I believe that the cause here is obviously the firmware update making windows unable to detect my drive for some reason. Is this a common issue with a fix? Even reinstalling windows is difficult given I cannot access the drive and I am on a laptop and the drive is part of the system itself and cannot be replaced easily. My system is a ASUS FX504GD-E4603T with 16GB Optane Memory

[LeonWaksman]

Hi @LewisC 

Try to set Windows boot mode to SAFE. In SAFE mode there is possibility that your Windows may boot again. You can set the Windows to boot in SAFE mode, by issuing the following command in Command Prompt:

1. In the Command Prompt write the following command: bcdedit /set {default} safeboot minimal and press enter to execute this command
2. Close the Command Prompt window by clicking the X in the upper right corner of the Command Prompt window.
3.  Select Continue and sign in to Windows 
4. While in Windows, press Windows key + r. Run msconfig
5. Chose Boot tab and uncheck Safe boot. Reboot your system. 

Hope this will help

Leon

[LewisC]

Hi @LeonWaksman ,

Thanks for the response. I have tried step 1 in the command prompt like you suggested and the following error was the result
>The boot configuration data store could not be opened.

>The requested system device cannot be found.

[JosafathB_Intel · Accepted solution]

Hello, LewisC.

Greetings from; Intel® Memory and Storage support.

As we understand, you needed assistance related to your Intel® Optane™ Memory Series installed on your ASUS* FX504GD-E4603T PC. If we inferred correctly, please review the following information:

1- We advise you to contact your OEM (original equipment manufacturer) to get instructions on how to deactivate the Optane configuration from the BIOS and to attempt the recommendation provided by the community to recover your OS.

2- Feel free to check your BIOS settings looking for the Deconcatenate option.

Please visit the What Does Deconcatenate Intel® Optane™ Memory Mean in the System BIOS? https://www.intel.com/content/www/us/en/support/articles/000058658/memory-and-storage/intel-optane-memory.html Article for more information, and as mentioned in the How to Disable System Acceleration with Intel® Optane™ Memory article https://www.intel.com/content/www/us/en/support/articles/000024626/memory-and-storage.html:

“We recommend you contact your system vendor to confirm the correct process to disable system acceleration from the system BIOS.”

We will not close this thread, and you can still post and share your findings with the community. If you need assistance related to an Intel® product, please do not hesitate to contact us back by opening a new thread, and please submit a new question. We will no longer monitor this thread.

We hope fellow community members have the knowledge to jump in and help.

Thank you for your patience and understanding.

Best regards,

Josh B.

Intel® Customer Support Technician.

[LewisC]

I was able to solve this problem following your advice @JosafathB_Intel . I used the ASUS UEFI to disable Intel Optane like you suggested(I did not know that this was possible to do so safely, I thought that doing so would corrupt my files). This made it so my laptop could now see the hard drive when trying to boot, however there were still issues when windows tried to boot from it. I could not use system restore or any other method using my original OS drive however I could access all of the files using command prompt in the repair envinronment to confirm they were not corrupt, they were safe and not corrupted however I could not transfer files in this state due to an error (probably related to the windows install itself), so after performing a few hours worth of disk checks I replaced the drive with another one with a fresh install of windows and proceeded to boot like usual with the new drive. I am in the process of transferring files to the new drive since I took the opportunity to upgrade to an SSD. However, if anyone else has this issue a temporary replacement might be able to fix the problem before putting the original back, but I did not attempt this.