Random boot up issues

[SimonMMason]

I'm reposting this as I thought I'd fixed the issue, but apparently not.

I have a random boot up issue that happens more often than not.

When starting the PC from cold, the HP post screen shows with the rotating circle. Then the "Your computer ran in to a problem. We'll restart it for you" screen comes up.

Underneath it says "inaccessable boot device"

The PC then restarts and at post I hear 2 long beeps and 2 short beebs. This continues until I press and hold the power button to turn off the machine.

I then press the power button and the computer starts up as normal. Albeit slowly.

I have tried unplugging verious usb devices, but still no joy.

Does anyone have any idea what might be happening and how to fix it?

Thanks. Simon.

[WAWood · Accepted solution]

@SimonMMason 

When you simply restart your PC, you are doing something known as a Warm Start.

When you power off your PC completely and then restart it, you are doing something known as a Cold Start.

Failing Warm Starts can often be attributed to a new hybrid sleep option in Win10 known as Fast Startup.

Win10 has enabled a new hibernation process known as Fast Startup -- which is different from Fast Boot. This is supposed to dramatically speed up the booting process, but in some PCs, it actually slows it down or causes it to hang. This could be what is happening to your PC.

Disabling Fast Startup might fix the booting problem.

There are two ways to disable FastStartup in Win10: (1) through the Control Panel, and (2) through an elevated command prompt.

Control Panel - Open Control Panel --> Power Options.
Select "Choose what the power buttons do"
Select "Change settings that are currently unavailable"
At the bottom of the Window, under Shutdown settings, uncheck the box regarding fast startup

Elevated command prompt - run the following command:
REG ADD "HKLM\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\Session Manager\Power" /V HiberbootEnabled /T REG_dWORD /D 0 /F

In both cases, reboot Windows.

NOW, FastStartup is disabled.

[SimonMMason]

Thanks for your reply.

Actually I used the HP's assistant chatbot, which suggested I performed a hard reset.

ie. Shutting down completly, disconct the power and holding down the power button for a good ten seconds.

So far this seems to have resolved the issue.

The problem may well have started after performing the recomended BIOS update, so a hard reset makes sense.

I tend to leave my PC on all day, going into sleep mode if I'm away for more than a couple of hours.

At night I tend to shut down completly and then turn off the power at the outlet. When I next start up the PC starts up normaly, ie takes around 2-3 minutes.

Last night as a test I left the power connected after shutting down, this morning it performed a fast start. I'm guessing this is normal.

I'll give it a couple more days to see if the start up issue repeats before marking this thread a resolved.

Thanks for your help.

Simon.