Windows 10: Bootup Takes Two Tries

Well your system is far beyond System Recovery (Vista).

I think the flash on Win8 would be fine. There never are guarantees though.

If you feel more comfortable with a Win7 drive, sure that should work too.

The decision always falls back to you, I'm just a guide, you're leading this safari *Wink

You're right, it's not just HP, but they excel at it *Smile

I do like your CanDo attitude. I hope that after all of this the issue is resolved., there isn't much left to try. But try we will!

Bill
. I've seen "What if I don't see my operating system" which is why I began to backpedal. I have never flashed a BIOS except from the original manufacturer. The few flashes I have done have been on motherboards of systems I have built. Still, I will only flash the BIOS from HP because I am well award that every OEM changes things around to suit themselves. I believe they even order their mobos with specific features added or left off.

Ha! This desktop was beyond System Recovery once I had updated to 8.1 from the MS Store. I had to send it back to HP for recovery while it was in the first 30 days of warranty! And when I got it back, the OS was only half-baked and I had to call support to finish the installation! Grrrrrrrrr!

I just ordered a WD Blue 500 GB for $44.99. Newegg had a promo of $5.00 off $49.99, so that was good. It will be here in a few days, but in the meantime, I'm going to scavenge the hard drive from my Pavilion g Series and install Windows 7 on it.

I think first, though, I'll have to use CopyWipe on it, since it's been my experience that an older OS won't install on a hard drive once a newer OS has been on it. Don't know why that is, but well . . . junk happens.

 

First I'd reset BIOS to defaults, disable Secure Boot, set CSM enabled, turn off any related UEFI settings, boot Legacy installation media as a non-UEFI device.

If you have pics I can usually spot the germane settings as there are a dozen of these UEFI install issues a day at 7F, every day of the year.

Wiping the HD with Clean CMD is all that's needed to overcome any interfering boot code and clears the partition table.

 

Ok, just to be clear - you will be flashing the BIOS from the mfgr (HP).

$0.09 / GB good deal

I usually use Diskpart clean (not clean all) - it's quick because it wipes the 1st and last 100 mb from the disk. That's where disks contain information about what's on the disk (partitions, file system format, files, etc).
See: Disk - Clean and Clean All with Diskpart Command - Windows 7 Help Forums

DO NOT follow Step 9 - that's the long wipe.

The clean install tutorials also address this in a fashion where it instructs you to modify the disk during the install process.
See: Clean Install Windows 7 - Windows 7 Help Forums
Step 8 (1st bullet in Note box - delete partitions until all unallocated)

I have data partitions that I want to keep, so I create unallocated space for a Windows install. The 100 MB System Reserved partition gets created by the install process. The key distinction is all unallocated space or a only a portion of the drive is unallocated. If the 100 MB partition exists I don't think another Reserved part will be created. Hmmm never tried that scenario, maybe next time I install. Anyway, I commonly delete the Windows and System Reserve partitions (the unallocated space I will use to install) when, leaving my data partitions intact.

To make this work, my user profiles are not on the C: drive, and my data is scattered across a number of partitions and external drives. It only took me 20 years to come up with a schema that made me happy *Wink

I'll wait for your post saying you got the drive, installed Win7, and you have updated the firmware. You've done it before, so you know how easy and fast it will be.

You might want to boot into BIOS and reset to defaults, save and exit. Then launch the F.49 flash before launching anything on Windows. It's not required though, just squeaky clean.

Bill
.

 

Greg, if the laptop has Secure Boot, HP has fixed it so it doesn't show. The only things in Security are the two bootup passwords, which I don't have entered.

 

Sometimes it's under Boot or Advanced. It can also disappear when turned off so it only comes back if reset to Defaults, or it's hidden under some other obscure setting. This is why its best to Reset to Defaults before changing between UEFI<>Legacy then go over the settings choices closely. Pictures can help us help you better. It's also standard to suggest reading the Manual on the PC's Support Download webpage although they rarely tell much about UEFI.

Do you want to try a Legacy install to MBR, perhaps to another HDD? The reason I ask is because we have a lot more options to resolve an issue like you have with the more familar Legacy install. It could even be boot code, though my first suspect would be a UEFI-related BIOS setting.

 

Greg, if this computer has UEFI, how do I find it? I have not seen anything except legacy BIOS. And, believe me, I have been all over the innards of the thing!

 

I'm only sending a couple of pics at a time because this camera takes megabytes.

 

I'm only sending a couple of pics at a time because this camera takes megabytes. And of course, the files didn't upload at all. I don't know what's wrong, but I have only been successful at sending files one time. I tell it to upload files and it looks like it's uploading, but nothing happens.





OK, that uploaded just fine, but I cannot get a .jpg file to upload.

I'm giving up for tonight.

 

Power went off for short, short intervals three or four times and then went off for about half an hour. This hasn't happened for a long, long time, but I just don't trust that it won't go off again today. They may be working on the lines somewhere.

Sooooooo, no flashing of BIOS for moi today! I'm just not going to take the chance.

 

Power went off for short, short intervals three or four times and then went off for about half an hour. This hasn't happened for a long, long time, but I just don't trust that it won't go off again today. They may be working on the lines somewhere.

Sooooooo, no flashing of BIOS for moi today! I'm just not going to take the chance.

I have loaded the System Defaults in BIOS. I was hoping that would take care of the boot problem, but it didn't. I really didn't expect it to, since I hadn't been in the BIOS to change anything before the problem started.

 

An interesting note concerning BIOS and my HP laptops:

My 15.6" HP Pavilion g Series laptop seems to have been manufactured around 2010/2011. The Warranty start date is June 15, 2011.

At any rate, that laptop has the updated F.49 BIOS and no UEFI that I can discover. I know that I haven't flashed the BIOS, so I'm pretty sure that's what it came with.

EDIT: This is not the laptop that has the "Bootup takes two tries" problem. It boots fine and has been the same route as the problem laptop except that it started out with Windows 7.

 

Hi Greg:

I decided to go at it a different way, since the .jpg files wouldn't upload. I figure they're way too large, since just these two were more than 6 MB. Instead, I used my Snipping Tool and made .png copies. They seem to have uploaded just fine.

I will still only put a couple on a page, since I'm not sure how much is too much.

 

And here are a couple more . . . Well, I took a chance and tried the last three.

Let me know if you need more, since I was rather tired of trying to upload .jpg last night and StarFerret got rather grumpy.









Edit: Under Boot Options, when there's a Jump/Flash/Thumb drive attached, it is also shown as an option.

 

OK, standard Legacy BIOS.

Have you run a few Startup Repairs to see if it finds any issues?

 

Will that work with Windows 10?

I'm a big coward! *Smile