Turned on my gaming PC for the first time in a couple of weeks and I get this:



Boot drive is a Crucial MX100 256GB SSD.

This happened once before a few months ago and after playing around in BIOS it started back working but I don't know what it was I did that "fixed" it.

Specs:


Intel Core i5-6600K 3.5GHz Quad-Core Processor
Cooler Master Hyper T4 70.0 CFM Rifle Bearing CPU Cooler
Asus MAXIMUS VIII HERO ATX LGA1151 Motherboard
Corsair Vengeance LPX 16GB (2 x 8GB) DDR4-2666 Memory
Crucial MX100 256GB 2.5" Solid State Drive
Toshiba 2TB 3.5" 7200RPM Internal Hard Drive
MSI Radeon R9 390X 8GB Video Card
Corsair 300R ATX Mid Tower Case
Rosewill Hive 750W 80+ Bronze Certified Semi-Modular ATX Power Supply
Asus DRW-24B1ST/BLK/B/AS DVD/CD Writer
Microsoft Windows 7 Home Premium SP1 OEM 64-bit
LG 29UM67P 29.0" 60Hz Monitor

The BIOS didn't lose the boot order did it and it's trying to boot your Toshiba drive? You say it happens after a few weeks of non-use,is the CMOS battery ok? Does the system forget the time?

I have the exact same SSD and it has been very reliable.

Had that a few months ago.
Fixed it after I read somewhere, that it might help, just to unplug (corrosion?) the sata-cables on both ends. Plugged in again, no troubles anymore...

Since that time I have a regularly updated clone of my ssd nearby though

Thanks for the ideas, I'll check those things tonight!

MBR is probably damaged, if you can manage to boot windows on that pc it will likely restore bootability

try a rescue disk

If your a lucky man, you know Skatezilla.
And he'll help you.
He has me, several times. But he's a busy man.
I think he's pretty 'aware', of digital problems.

Try posting in the Hardware/Software forum, if you don't figure it out soon.
He hangs out there.....'sometimes' he shows up.

Worth a try.

Good luck.

I too had the same error reported, on checking the BIOS the boot order had got messed up after I had swapped a USB HDD, but it was a moment of panic thinking that my SSD had died.

My SSD is a Samsung Evo 850 500GB, it is on an Asus PT6se mother board so it is quite an old one from 2009.

I have 6 internal hard drives and one of the last Win7 updates messed up my entire boot order.
Have an Asus X79 MB and luckily it has software on my system I can access upon boot up to re-order
the drives on boot up. Win7 updates can be a real problem.

I got busy doing other things and only got around to checking this PC today, and it fires right up. Weird.

Might just be a loose cable or power supply to the drive. As mentioned above, reseating everything can be worth a shot (and it's free!)

Ok like I stated in my last post the issue seemed to correct itself. Regardless I did go in and swap out the sata cable just to be safe.

But then tonight it happened again, it actually occurred while I was running DCS A-10C. Monitor lost signal and shut down, at first I thought it was a loose HDMI cable to my monitor but I checked that and it still wouldn't come back on. Out of frustration I held down the PC power button and restarted, after doing this a couple of times I got the same screen as seen in my original post above. Shut down, re-booted into BIOS and my Crucial SSD is missing in BIOS! Only drives it shows are my Toshiba HD and my DVD drive. I reboot again an "ta-da" it finds the SSD and starts up.


I am at my wits end as to what is causing these random losses of that drive.

It's likely the controller chip in the SSD. Probably, heat is causing the chip to become unseated due to bad solder joints. I would consider it lucky that the drive is warning you, but failure is a strong possibility at this point, in my experience.

Thanks, if it does this again I'm probably going to replace the drive. I've just tried the last thing I could think of and that was to swap out the power cable on the SSD for a different one.

And within 15 minutes of my last post, it happened again.

After posting I fired up DCS was trying to get my HOTAS setup and again it acted as if the monitor had been disconnected, I could even still hear the DCS menu music. But when I tried to Alt F4 or Ctrl-Alt-Delete nothing happened, tried multiple times. Then I hard rebooted the PC and back to the "select proper boot device" screen.

If the SSD "dies" while I'm in DCS, why could I still hear music?

Your drive is just the storage. It's still largely running out of RAM. Anything in RAM will work fine, but when it goes to access that drive for the next thing it needs...read error...read error...read error and various things will freeze up while others keep working.

Sound is notorious for working while everything else dies and dying while everything else still works anyway.



The Jedi Master

I forgot about the Q code LED on my motherboard so I fired up the problem PC again and after a couple of reboots got it to boot windows. It only worked for a few minutes but when it "choked" again I checked the code, it was A0 which means "IDE initialization is started" which, according to my web searches, is normal.

Clone it, hit it with a hammer a few times and throw it in the trash.

If you can�t clone it you�re SOL.