Question Windows Boot Multiple Disk suddenly stops working, refuses all attempts to fix

[marcUK2]

Fairly new system, 3 SSD,
SSD1. Windows 11 (and BootMGR partitions)
SSD2. Windows 10 (Graphics Software) default boot
SSD3. Windows 10 (Music Software)
Has been working fine for about a year on all 3 OS's as selected from default blue chooser sceen on startup (Ill call this OSchooser from now on)

99% of time I am working in SSD2, so not sure when problem started, updated EFI/BIOS about 2 months ago, and this is probably the first time i noticed, but not sure
SS1 boots up fine still, but SSD3 will not boot (unless special procudure used - so I do know it boots up ok)
After hours of trial, research and attempting all known fixes from internet, Recovery/CMDline/BCDedit/easyBCD/ and USB recovery (both win10 iso USB and other disk utilities) ...
The only way I can boot into ssd3 is to press F8 on startup and select the (only) boot option. (or do it through EFI)
Then when the OS chooser comes up, I can boot into SSD3 just fine and everything is as it should be. (so I know its working)
This only lasts *ONE TIME* until I reset, then the OS chooser will fail if I choose SSD3 and I cant get back in to SSD3 unless I boot by using F8.
Tired of this, 8 hours atleast, experimenting with bios settings for boot, nothing works to clear the error.

Other specs (assuming they dont matter really to this problem) are ASUS z690 Prime D wifi / 14900 / 64GB / 4090.

Im out of ideas, especially when USB boot utilities scan and repair but dont fix the error.

I also threw in another (mechanical) drive, installed Win10Pro on it, and it wouldn't boot up either after one successful load, even when listed in OSchooser.

The Error is always Status 0xc000000e (winload.efi) --> I checked all the installs and this file is present in all OS.


I cant reinstall the OS on SSD3 either at the moment, as it will involve redownloading thousands of GB of DAWs and im too busy working,

Anyone have any idea what else could cause this strange behavior and how to fix bearing in mind I have tried all solutions I can find.?

 

[Tech Junky]

For multi boot windows it can do stupid stuff like this with a simple bad update. You might be better off using grub to manage the disks/OS. There's a program called grubrescue that will scan the disks and make them all bootable.

The other thing that could be causing it is the mobo but, the efi error suggests it's msft being the issue not the HW.

 

[lantis3]

Boot managers just sucks, Linux or Windows. If there is no problem, then no problem.

Once problem starts to occur, almost no way to fix it. When I erased the disk then install Linux and Grub manager, it's not getting better. I saw tons of ACPI errors when Linux boots up and I'm totally confused!

Recently my old laptop (INTEL) and my brand new mini pc (AMD) just refuses to deal with Windows installation, it could be Windows 10/11 or even Server. The Windows server installer just won't see the NVME SSD in the BIOS on the HP Intel 10th gen laptop, but when it boot into the installer, it will proceed to where it see the partition, then it stop to continue.

I have flashed the newest BIOS firmware, tried MBR, EFI partition on different internal disks, even used diskpart utility to erase disk or convert disk over and over, yet nothing works!



I have been struggle to do anything for over a week. Somehow, someway I eventually re-installed Windows 11 on HP laptop. And the only way I can use the new mini PC is use the recovery image directly from the vendor!

This UEFI BIOS era just sucks!

BTW, Windows installation in VM has no problem at all.

 

[lantis3]

OK, found Dual Boot Repair 10 utility on Visual BCD site.
No personal experience.

Dual-boot Repair tool for Windows 10,8.1,7

Dual-boot Repair Windows 10 - fix Windows boot manager/loader - Windows 10/8.1/7/Vista and Server 2008/2012 on BIOS and UEFI firmware.

www.boyans.net

 

[marcUK2]

OK, found Dual Boot Repair 10 utility on Visual BCD site.
No personal experience.

Dual-boot Repair tool for Windows 10,8.1,7

Dual-boot Repair Windows 10 - fix Windows boot manager/loader - Windows 10/8.1/7/Vista and Server 2008/2012 on BIOS and UEFI firmware.

www.boyans.net

Tried this, didn't work, interestingly though, it renamed my working drives to default, Windows 10 and Windows 11, but it did not rename the drive that wont boot normally.

Something else is going on, I've studied the output from BCDedit extensively until I know with some degree of certainty what is going on, I dont think the problem is there. However, since the drive will boot fine If I manually force it too by using F8 bootloader, Im wondering if the problem is that the EFI/bios is not selecting the boot files correctly.

 

[lantis3]

Since you were able to boot into SSD3, so extract the Win10 ISO file into a folder, then rerun Win10 setup, see if it can add SSD3 Win10 installation into Windows Boot Manager

 

[marcUK2]

Since you were able to boot into SSD3, so extract the Win10 ISO file into a folder, then rerun Win10 setup, see if it can add SSD3 Win10 installation into Windows Boot Manager

Tried, didnt work...Windows went all the way through the installer, but because it wouldnt boot after a restart, the installer automatically reset to the old installation for safety reasons.

What im really failing to understand is why if I manually select the bootloader with F8, it will boot fine. Why is this different than the efi selecting the bootloader. As far as i can see they are the same, and i can only see one on the whole system (as expected)