Windows boot up problem - Desperate

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SiIverTongue

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So I got some old pcs that is getting donated to some children safety centres, one of them is a Dell Optiplex 3070 which i thought the hdd was broken when it kept saying no boot devices found, I put a Tb hdd in as a replacement, made a Windows 10 usb bootable installation stick and started installing windows, it installed but after installation when I removed the usb stick and restarted the pc it just said there’s no boot device found again. I was gonna reinstall it again but grabbed the wrong usb instead and plugged it in, restarted the pc expecting to get to the install/repair screen but instead it booted into the windows 10 fine. after realising it wasn’t the installation usb and just one with some software downloads on that I plugged in I eventually had to restart again, and again without a usb plugged in it said “no boot device” so tried the software usb again and again it worked, making the pc boot up perfect, eventually I noticed it would boot up every time as long as there was any usb plugged in, even a empty usb would do the trick. I tried uefi and legacy settings, raid all the various settings but just won’t boot without any usb plugged into it.
I then tried linux and a android so but without a usb it wouldn’t boot up on any of them so it’s not the OS, must me a setting or something in the bios I’m missing, if anyone have any advice it’s really desperately needed, thank you
 
I’ll try it thanks, I noticed when I press F8 at boot up to go to advanced boot menu it shows the usb sticks in the list of boot devices but it’s not showing the hdd, it shows the hdd in the general info of the bios but again not under boot sequence which is making me think for some reason it’s not seeing the hdd as a bootable device. sucks that these new bios don’t have the “detect hdd” feature anymore, unless I’m looking over it.
In the meantime I’ll try your advice so long, thanks again
 
Change the boot mode in the BIOS to UEFI and AHCI. You should be able to change the boot order to the Windows partition or the HDD.
 
Ok so somewhere somebody changed something that I can’t find, it must be a setting or maybe a jumper or something by the PC itself.. I found a old sata laptop drive, plugged it into the PC and same thing, it won’t boot up without this damn usb stick, on the laptop drive was a windows 8.1 which actually booted as long as that usb is plugged in, as soon as I try to boot without usb it just say there’s no boot device found. I’m thinking I should just try disabling the usb ports in the bios and see what it does then..
if the drives are reading correctly once booted up with “help” of the usb, run smooth, copy stuff install programs everything like normal except for booting up can SATA cable cause it not to want to boot, I mean if it’s got no problem using the drive once booted? Or would it not have worked at all if the cable was faulty??
sorry for the annoying questions, I don’t have any other sata cables with me to test right now so thought I’d ask just to be sure..
 
Malle said:
Change the boot mode in the BIOS to UEFI and AHCI. You should be able to change the boot order to the Windows partition or the HDD.
Click to expand...
Changed it to UEFI and AHCI and tried both secure boot enabled and disabled, if it’s on UEFI it don’t want to boot up even when the usb is plugged in. also tried ahci and raid with it with no difference..

also when I change it to Uefi it dont show any devices in the list where it says add/delete boot option, by the Uefi /legacy settings in bios.

I have advanced boot options with enable legacy option roms or enable attempt legacy boot

also Uefi boot path security with -always except internal hdd, - always except internal hdd&pxe

by Sata operation I have -disabled, -AHCI, - RAID on

under Drives it shows the hdd as SATA-0, Type 1000gb hdd, and then device iD st1000dm010…

not sure if it would help if I try upload some screenshots of my bios for you to see what settings there are
 
HandyTechTipper said:
If that doesn't work then here's something that worked for me:
Click to expand...
So I don’t want to start jumping around out of sheer achievement just yet, but it seems after following that video I was able to figure out a few places I f+#&€d up along the way when some of my stuff in the command prompt part of the video wasn’t quite like it showed in the video, made some changes and followed the video again closely and so far it’s going good, better than before. Some of the stuff I did was just really stupid mistakes, like I didn’t reinstall windows when switching between UEFI and Legacy modes, I think I installed windows while on legacy and then when it didn’t boot I changed to UEFI and expected it to work without reinstalling it fresh on UEFI, i used to know these things but IPad Pro have made me to lazy to bother with PCs the past few years forgetting the most basic of stuff..
Also I didn’t delete all the partitions, left a system partition in tact, don’t even ask me why, again stupidly from a old rusting brain, when I noticed it didn’t show EFI in the cmd prompt I changed everything to UEFI again, reinstalled windows and it wasn’t even necessary to go through the cmd part of the setup again, it booted up perfectly the first time.

What I been struggling with since last night about 21:00 till just now when I got it sorted out with the help of you extremely brilliant guys, THANKS SO MUCH!!! You guys are truly the very best!! Thanks for all the help and advice, can’t begin to tell you how much it’s appreciated..

#PS I’m just wondering about one more thing now, if I had to ask for your advice on fixing the LOADSHEDDING how long it would take you guys to come up with a better solution than the ANC could ever come up with in a 100 years!
 
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