I have a serious problem with a bunch of computers. They're all equiped with a ASUS P9X79 Pro Mainboard, running Windows 7 Ultimate and refuse to boot starting with one machine yesterday morning and 4 more today.
All showing the same Symptom: Reboot or Insert proper boot decvice
I got one of them and reinstalled Windows 7 Ultimate, which worked absolutely fine. Afterwards I installed the newest drivers from the ASUS website. Then I searched for Updates and after about 2 hours Windows Update told me it has found 220 new Updates. So I installed them which took me another 1.5 hours. After all the updates were installed, Windows required me to reboot to complete the process, so I restarted. Doing so resulted in a screen showing Stage 1 of 5, then 2 of 5 and so on. At Stage 5 of 5 it stalled at 32% for about 30 minutes, then rebooted. Again it showed Stage 5 of 5 but that time the percent numbers climbed rapidly to 100%. Another reboot followed, which resulted in Reboot or Insert proper boot decvice
When the first machine came up whith that problem, i expected a damaged hard drive, but now with 5 of these machines, equiped with the same type of mainboard and the same behavior I belive that one of those Windows updates killes the boot sector. Also one of the operators of one of the affected machines told me that his machine was installing updates on shutdown the evening before the problem occured.
I tried to boot from the Windows 7 Ultimate Install disk, selected Repair -> command prompt, where i hoped to fix the problem with BootRec.exe /fixmbr but with no luck. Also if I do BootRec.exe /ScanOS I get 0 found Installations.
But if I do a dir on drive C: I see the Windows installation.
Can anybody give me a hint on how to fix those installations?
Update 26.04.2016:
I've got one of the machines on my desk today and it refused to boot. After that I went to the BIOS to see that there are more boot options then in the past. The new entry is called "Windows Boot Manager". Is it possible that a windows update can create a new boot option? I know that for sure because these machines tended to loose their BIOS settings once in a while and I had to reconfigure that over the phone a few times and there was no "Windows Boot Manager" entry. This is so weird because i recognized that entry on the first machine i got back and changing the boot order to that one didn't make the machine boot. But for some unknown reason this time it worked!?
Any way, i will try to figure out which update causes this kind of Problem as suggested by @Massimo
This seems to be the root cause of my problems: http://www.heise.de/newsticker/meldung/Windows-7-Update-verhindert-Boot-auf-Asus-Mainboards-3198586.html (Sorry, the article is in german). Interestingly i never saw the red warning which is shown in the articel for some strange reason!?
Do you recall if any of the updates you installed were a driver update for your mass storage controller? If a new/updated device driver for your mass storage controller is not working as expected, it could prevent Windows from booting off the hard drive.
I would do another test. But this time before applying Windows Updates, disable driver updates using this Microsoft guide, How to stop Windows 7 automatically installing drivers.
If you suspect an update is causing this issue (an assumption I agree with), here's how I'd trobuleshoot it:
Once you have identified which update is actually responsible for your problem, then you can open a support case with Microsoft.
basically it is a hardware error on your machine which is found in case of system can't detect Hard Disk Drive. Anyway you have need to 1. Reinsert HDD once again (both cable data cable as well as power cable). 2.configure 1st boot device Device HDD in boot order & then save it. 3.Check once again in BIOS setup if configuration is changed automatically replace C-MOS battery. 4.i hope your issue is fix now & if possible install update manually, avoid specific update which is related to hardware configuration or updates.