GA-Z77-D3H motherboard, Windows 7 x64 professional
Updated the bios, now won't boot. On switching on, get bios splash screen. Then powers off, then powers on (itself) taking me to windows startup repair, which fails.
I have set the HDD to AHCI - this solution seems to have worked for a lot of people, but it doesn't work for me.
I was even driven to consider reinstalling windows, but it won't do an installl from the DVD drive, as even when I boot from the windows disk and try to install, it tells me it can't to the HDD because it's partition type is GPT.
In the boot order section of the bios I have UEFI myHDDname. There is an alternative myHDDname option, but if I try to boot from that, it is not recognised at all.
I then repeated flashing the bios starting from step one, downloading the file, using a different mirror. Completed the process but no joy, still in the same position.
Then tried rolling back to the backup bios using the power switch on an off method. Strangely this results in the old gigabyte splash screen, but not quite the old bios version - the interface is still new. Anyway, no improvement. This version was F10.
I managed to get some access to the HDD by booting up with a Windows recovery disk inn the DVD drive. At first this would not work, and gave a message "This version of system recovery options is not compatible with the version of windows you are trying to repair". After a bit of internet investigation I brought up the boot choice on bootup to find there were two entries for the DVD drive, one preceded by UEFI. The windows recovery disk would then fire up. Windows startup repair did not, of course, work. Neither did a system restore (but I did not expect it to really).
I got access to the command prompt and was able to establish that my HDD had not failed, neither was it obviously corrupted. All my files were present and I was able to back up the more recent work since my last backup to a usb stick. So I am secure that I have all my files, which is more than anyone else in this position.
I daresay I could now manage to reinstalll windows, but I am not sure that would solve the problem. I am now convinced the issue is in the bios settings. I reflashed back up to F22 to root around again in the boot order etc, settings. UEFI MyHDDname is number one. Then my DVD drive, then USB. I disable the last which was showing PO MyHDDname, as this does not work. I made sure SATA was set to AHCI.
And, I am still in the same position, unchanged. Power on the machine, bios splash screen, then it powers off and restarts, bios splash screen, then windows splash screen, then to startup repair wich as I already know from many tries, does not work.
Are there any other SATA or boot settings I should change? It just seems to be an issue of bring the bios into the right state to set my HDD into proper boot up motion.
Thanks for your help!
Len