inaccessible boot device after windows update - windows 11

Question

i had my pc update windows 11 while i went to work today and returned to find it stuck in a boot loop while returning the error message inaccessible boot device

startup repair is unable to automatically fix the problem, and i cannot uninstall the most recent feature or quality updates. attempting to to reset from a system restore point also fails showing error code 0x80070002. i used the cmd to try to find my drives and run a disk check and it only shows the external hard drive i have connected via usb

i tried using a usb stick with a windows 11 installation tool on it to attempt to do a clean install but the install tool is similarly unable to find the two NVME m.2 SDDs or the HDD i have installed in my computer.

Answer 1

i've managed to restore my existing install of windows 11. the windows update i scheduled on 1/12/2023 evidently updated my BIOS settings which enabled VMD and locked me out of my windows installation/drives. disabling VMD in bios returned access to my windows install and everything appears to be running as it did prior to the 12th.

i suspect it is the update microsoft pushed out: "ASUSTeK COMPUTER INC. - Firmware - 10.1.2.1620" that is the update that changed my bios settings. my issue is resolved but if anyone has insight into potential disadvantage regarding leaving VMD disabled I would like to know

Answer 2

Please perform the following steps:

1. Find a flash drive that you can format
2. Find a working computer
3. On the working computer create a bootable Sea Tools flash drive

https://www.seagate.com/content/dam/seagate/migrated-assets/old-support-files/seatools/USBbootSetup-SeaToolsBootable.zip

https://www.seagate.com/manuals/software/seatools-bootable/

4. Move the bootable Sea Tools flash drive to the applicable port on the problematic computer
5. Boot to the flash drive

https://www.disk-image.com/faq-bootmenu.htm

6. Run the Sea Tools long generic test on all drives
7. Post images or share links into this thread using one drive, drop box, or google drive
8. Boot to the Windows Media Creation Tool (MCT) (Windows iso) > Windows Recovery Environment (RE) > troubleshooting > command prompt > type:

bcdedit

diskpart

lis dis

lis vol

sel dis 0

det dis

lis par

sel par 1

det par

sel par 2

det par

sel par 3

det par

sel par 4

det par

sel par 5

det par

sel dis 1

det dis

lis par

sel par 1

det par

sel par 2

det par

sel par 3

det par

sel par 4

det par

sel par 5

det par

sel dis 2

det dis

list par

sel dis 1

det dis

lis par

sel par 1

det par

sel par 2

det par

sel par 3

det par

sel par 4

det par

sel par 5

det par

Take pictures > post images or share links into this thread

Answer 3

https://answers.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/forum/windows_11-windows_install/inaccessible-boot-device-bsod-during-windows-11/69bc1ffb-2064-4003-aa50-f9b31f271818?messageId=35ddc0a7-1933-41a9-82a2-cfb8a123f54b

Answer 4

You could be right, now windows update delivers BIOS updates as well. BIOS settings are rarely altered by the way it happened with your PC. Lesion learned & may be helpful to someone who might head to Microsoft community with similar issues. Thanks for your update.

Answer 5

Hi INDIANCHAN,
This is Tamal trying to help you with the issue
You have already reached to the extreme at fresh installation of the OS.
You can't see the ssd at installation interface that means it requires a driver to be installed. Please download Intel sst driver from PC manufacturer support site in another PC, extract it's content to a folder and copy the driver folder from extracted location to root of your USB installation media. Later point driver installer to the location & get it recognized during installation. If the system is AMD based then finding storage controller driver is bit difficult. You should look at the manufacturer support site for storage drivers. Sometimes they are included with chipset drivers but extracting from there is difficult. In that case you might have to look inside the Windows installation directory on USB for a folder starting with sp on the root.