No hard drive found ONLY on cold boot

[carmen617]

Have a Dell AIO, later model, Windows 10 in my shop. When starting from a cold boot, gives error message no hard drive found, press F1, F2, etc. If I press F2 and enter BIOS from that state there is no hard drive reported. If I go to diagnostics from there, same thing.

However, if the power button is pressed after the original error message, the system boots normally. I can then restart the system any number of times, go into bios, run diagnostics, see system normally, etc. However, if i shut the system down totally I get the same error message. The problem is not random - it's totally predictable. In other words, I doubt it's a hardware issue or the drive would sometimes fail to show up when I am restarting. It ONLY fails to show up on every cold boot, and ALWAYS reappears after tapping the power button a second time.

What I've tried so far? Reseating the drive, updating the BIOS. I've run full diagnostics on the drive and it checked out fine. I ran Dell's diagnostics on the system and it came back with no errors. I found this thread online and tried to follow the steps in the third post, but they didn't line up with the BIOS I am working with - however, I think it might be the direction I need to head, I'm just not sure how to proceed.

Anybody have any suggestions for me? Thanks!

 

[GTP]

I had the same thing on an HP a few months ago. Damned if I can remember what I did to fix it!
It was something to do with UEFI settings....
Have you tried using Legacy Mode? Does it boot normally if you disable UEFI?

 

[carmen617]

I had the same thing on an HP a few months ago. Damned if I can remember what I did to fix it!
It was something to do with UEFI settings....
Have you tried using Legacy Mode? Does it boot normally if you disable UEFI?

Nope, that doesn't help. Neither did unchecking "enable USB boot", which I found in there and thought might be a winner. BIOS doesn't see drive on cold boot still.

 

[HCHTech]

Where is the hard drive in the boot order? It sounds like the BIOS isn't running the boot order correctly. Is there a BIOS update? If not, could you reflash the current BIOS version?

 

[Diggs]

If it is a standard HDD it sounds like it is getting old and powering up too late for the BIOS to see it on the first pass. New SSD time?

 

[carmen617]

Where is the hard drive in the boot order? It sounds like the BIOS isn't running the boot order correctly. Is there a BIOS update? If not, could you reflash the current BIOS version?

Performed a BIOS update as my first troubleshooting step. The current BIOS doesn't give me much to work with, no boot order I can find, and no obvious way to slow it down. This Seagate article gives me something to think about, wondering if the drive is no longer starting up at a normal rate. Anyone know how I would test for that?

 

[Diggs]

Are other (substitute) drives recognized by the BIOS during boot? Meaning - Clone it to something else and see what the BIOS does.

 

[carmen617]

Are other (substitute) drives recognized by the BIOS during boot? Meaning - Clone it to something else and see what the BIOS does.

Sounds like a winner. Have a suitable SSD in stock, put in a call to the client to see if she wants me to proceed.

 

[Diggs]

You can actually throw any bootable drive in there from any computer. It will instantly test the BIOS but eventually fail or throw error messages because it's not the right drive for the system. But, it will at least tell you if that old drive is the issue or something else.

 

[carmen617]

You can actually throw any bootable drive in there from any computer. It will instantly test the BIOS but eventually fail or throw error messages because it's not the right drive for the system. But, it will at least tell you if that old drive is the issue or something else.

Good idea, thanks!

 

[Larry Sabo]

Also check the TRC battery. You can tell the spin-up time from SMART parameter 03 (Spin up time).

 

[Markverhyden]

Good idea, thanks!

That's why I keep a small HD with Linux installed. Was an old laptop HD but that died so I know use a 32gb SSD. No licensing nonsense to deal with, usually has all of the drivers needed for basic testing.

 

[nlinecomputers]

In other words, I doubt it's a hardware issue or the drive would sometimes fail to show up when I am restarting.

Nonsense. It is almost certainly a hardware issue. This kind of behavior can be the result of faulty capacitors on the motherboard or the HDD itself. These caps don't get a full charge and thus fail to trip whatever transistor they are attached too. The reboot gives them another jolt and is enough to open the gate and switch on the bus line that isn't working correctly. A borderline PSU might also be the issue here as well.

 

[nlinecomputers]

If it is a standard HDD it sounds like it is getting old and powering up too late for the BIOS to see it on the first pass. New SSD time?

This too is likely. Bad spindle motor that isn't fully running on boot but stays at full speed on the reboot so is seen by the BIOS. That SHOULD produce SMART errors but not all drives report that as they should...

 

[ComputerRepairTech]

Nonsense. It is almost certainly a hardware issue. This kind of behavior can be the result of faulty capacitors on the motherboard or the HDD itself. These caps don't get a full charge and thus fail to trip whatever transistor they are attached too. The reboot gives them another jolt and is enough to open the gate and switch on the bus line that isn't working correctly. A borderline PSU might also be the issue here as well.

I agree with nlinecomputers, this is the first thing that came to my mind as well.

 

[sapphirescales]

I had an issue like this on an HP laptop. I flashed the BIOS, changed the hard drive, etc. NOTHING worked! What I ended up doing was setting it up for legacy boot and reinstalling Windows so it would boot in legacy mode. The UEFI mode was basically broken.

 

[backwoodsman]

First thing I'd do is restore default BIOS settings in case something got tweaked. If that doesn't fix it, pull the drive and plug it into a different machine, and see if the problem goes with it.

 

[carmen617]

Thanks very much for all the answers and suggestions. The system is on the latest BIOS with default settings. What I tried was to clone the drive to a bench spinner as I don't have the SSD that I thought I had. The problem persisted with the cloned drive. I tried another Windows startup disk that I had pulled from a different system - same problem. So it must be the motherboard or perhaps the power supply. This is a 4 year old Dell AIO - what's the next step consensus, if any, here?

 

[backwoodsman]

Try a different SATA port? Preferably one on a different controller.

 

[Porthos]

Try a different SATA port? Preferably one on a different controller.

Not a choice on an AIO. If your lucky you could try the try the port the CD is installed on.

Reason #101 why I hate AIO's.