Windows 10: My PC Win10 won't post up and gives no beeps -how to find the culprit

You have not updated you Profile , so we have no idea of you Hardware or Motherboard but it is possible on newer Boards for there to be a SATA Error which can stop the boot dead , on my new computer , there is a LED on the MB for that and a 3 digit Code readout too to tell if something like this happens.

Yes the MB will have 4-8 different Ports for the SATA cables , for HDD/SSD/DVD's etc so swapping them around is possible.

Windows 10 does not need a Key , if fact you don't get but a generic one everyone gets if you upgraded from Win7/8 , so just skip that and it will activate by itself once it has Inet access , as your activation is tied to your Motherboard. I have found on one machine that it would not re-install until I reconnected the inet per how it was connected the 1st time I activated that Motherboard, in that case the 1st time it was connect via wifi, 2nd time via ethernet and once I switched the wifi back on it would install.

It sounds like Acronis has corrupted the MBR or something else, did you just mount the image or did you restore the Image? if you did a restore you have likely damaged the Win10 MBR as the Clean install of 10 would of repartitioned the drive differently than what was in the Acronis Image. A startup Repair may find the new Win10 partition and reset it for you ?

If all else fails Wipe the NEW Hdrive and just install Win10 Clean again..... maybe faster and easier and less frustrating at this point.

KB.

 

This has just gone from mysterious to insane. I woke up this morning intent upon a day off but I just wanted to do one thing- mount the HD via USB to my laptop and see whether it was recognizable and where the OS landed etc. The laptop showed nothing, so I decided to reboot the laptop to see if that might help it see the external HD. But now my laptop won't start and Windows diagnostic tools can get it to start. So I'm writing from my phone. I am now totally confused.

P.S. I couldn't resist doing a little bit more today, so on the laptop I went to Command line on Windows Repair told and entered at the starting place which is X: Windows\ system32 bootrec /rebuildbcd. The response is- "successfully scanned Windows installations. Total identified windows installations: 0
P.S. 2 on the laptop,a boot disk called Super Grub v1 seems to show that all the usual folders exist on the os drive except Windows' folder! EDIT: that was wrong,I finally relaxed enough to look up the proper commands to view the directories, and it's all there. Using a second boot disk called AOSS by PC TOOLS to scan for the Windows folder (I should have just used command line 'dir/p' for that, but I forgot about that route. I can't understand why Windows repair can't replace the corrupted mbr, or whatever it's called nowadays. Maybe I'll get a hold of Easy cbd and see if that will fix it up

On the PC I've reinstalled Windows and will set it up in a very basic way and use it for a few weeks to test the hardware-Mb for stability.

 

Does that external HD have an active partition? If so, it might confuse the boot process. Does the PC boot without the external HD? Change any partitions to inactive to avoid problem You could try a Macrium Reflect repair disk if your boot configuration has been corrupted.

 

Steve
Well that drive is now working because as I said in my last update which you may have missed - I put it back into the PC, reinstalled Windows onto it and am going to run it in a simple way for a few weeks to test the MB and hardware in general. (I'm writing to you now on it.) So I don't know but am fairly sure it did have an active drive on it which when I rebooted maybe the bios -mbr got confused with the external and the internal hds and rewrote the boot mbr?
Every tool I use says there is no windows install on the hd even tho I can view the windows folder etc.

 

Steve
I tried a older Macrium repair boot disk and it went thru its paces but the machine failed to boot anyway.