Windows crashes / won't boot unless I manually select boot device with F9

[Brika]

Hi guys,

A couple days ago I received my new HP gaming laptop, the 15-cx0514na. Pretty little thing! Now the first thing I always do when I build a PC or buy a laptop is do a clean install of Windows 10 because I want to remove any bloatware / pre-installed stuff. I created a bootable USB using the microsoft tool on my PC and set up to reinstall Windows. Below are the steps as I took them:

1. By pressing F9, selected the USB as boot device.

2. Removed all Partitions, ended up with solely Unallocated Space, and created a fresh partition (Windows created some of its own partitions, as it does).

3. Ran the installer.

4. Went to do something else, when I came back encountered a BSOD. Before I could investigate further it auto-restarted and, expecting more reboots, went into the BIOS and changed the boot order so it boots from USB first.

5. Reran the Windows installer tool.

6. Removed the USB from its port after the installation.

7. Encountered another BSOD, this time I noticed the error it gave was INACCESSIBLE_BOOT_DEVICE. Did a bit of digging, went into BIOS to revert the boot order (ended up just resetting it all to default using F9 because that felt the safest).

8. On next startup, pressed F9 to manually select the hard drive as boot device.

9. Windows boots! Nice. I start doing setup, install some programs, and it doesn't take long for Windows Update to come nagging so I reboot.

10. BSOD, same error.

11. Try to restart, still get BSOD error or the laptop starts attempting Auto Repair (which then just freezes).

12. Whenever I get the Windows recovery screen, I try startup checks but it then says it can't do those.

Basically I'm now stuck where I can only boot the laptop if I use F9 to select the correct boot device.

I do have one clue, which is that C:/Windows/System32/LogFiles/Srt/SrtTrail.txt shows an interesting error:

Startup Repair diagnosis and repair log
---------------------------
Last successful boot time: ‎28/‎11/‎2018 16:45:31 (GMT)
Number of repair attempts: 1

Session details
---------------------------
System Disk = \Device\Harddisk0
Windows directory = D:\Windows
AutoChk Run = 0
Number of root causes = 0

Test Performed:
---------------------------
Name: Check for updates
Result: Completed successfully. Error code = 0x0
Time taken = 0 ms

Test Performed:
---------------------------
Name: System disk test
Result: Completed successfully. Error code = 0x0
Time taken = 0 ms

Test Performed:
---------------------------
Name: Disk failure diagnosis
Result: Completed successfully. Error code = 0x0
Time taken = 0 ms

Test Performed:
---------------------------
Name: Disk metadata test
Result: Completed successfully. Error code = 0x0
Time taken = 16 ms

Test Performed:
---------------------------
Name: Disk metadata test
Result: Completed successfully. Error code = 0x0
Time taken = 0 ms

Test Performed:
---------------------------
Name: Target OS test
Result: Completed successfully. Error code = 0x0
Time taken = 16 ms

Test Performed:
---------------------------
Name: Volume content check
Result: Completed successfully. Error code = 0x0
Time taken = 0 ms

Test Performed:
---------------------------
Name: Boot manager diagnosis
Result: Completed successfully. Error code = 0x0
Time taken = 0 ms

Test Performed:
---------------------------
Name: System boot log diagnosis
Result: Completed successfully. Error code = 0x0
Time taken = 0 ms

Test Performed:
---------------------------
Name: Event log diagnosis
Result: Completed successfully. Error code = 0x0
Time taken = 0 ms

Test Performed:
---------------------------
Name: Internal state check
Result: Completed successfully. Error code = 0x0
Time taken = 0 ms

Test Performed:
---------------------------
Name: Check for installed LCU
Result: Completed successfully. Error code = 0x20
Time taken = 0 ms

---------------------------

It looks for D:/Windows here, which is the letter of my now unplugged USB drive! I created only 1 partition so the only drive I have is C:/, which is where Windows is installed on the hard drive. So this is very likely the root cause somehow, but I have no idea how to fix it...

Thanks in advance!!

[CherylG]

About the only thing I can suggest is to delete all partitions again and do not create one. Just choose the unallocated space and let Windows installer do all of the partitioning.

[Brika]

Hi Cheryl! Thanks so much for the suggestion, I tried it out immediately however sadly to no avail. As soon as the Windows Installer finished installing on Unallocated space I ran into the BSOD again...

[CherylG]

I assume you didn't really use the laptop much before wiping it to clean install to know if there was a problem? Go to your Support page and install HP PC Hardware Diagnostics UEFI-under Diagnostics category. After installing you should be able to boot into the Diagnostics at startup. Immediately after powering on start tapping the Esc key. This will open a menu where F2 System Diagnostics is an option. Tap F2 key and run the tests.

https://support.hp.com/us-en/drivers/selfservice/hp-pavilion-gaming-15-cx0000-laptop-pc/20284020/mod...

[Brika]

Well my partner turned it on no problem and set up Windows. I told her to at least play around a bit to make sure there were no obvious faults with the laptop, and whether she liked the feel of it. That way if she had doubts we could also still take it back and exhange it.

Anyway for that hour or so everything seemed fine, so I felt OK doing the wipe.

I installed and performed the diagnostics, below are the tests I ran (I went with an extensive one to be sure):

System Quick Test: PASSED

Hard Drive SMART Check: PASSED

Hard Drive Short DST Check: PASSED

Hard Drive Optimized DST Check: NOT AVAILABLE

Hard Drive Long DST Check: PASSED

I assume that means everything is OK Hardware wise... My next step will be to format the Windows installation software USB and recreate it, just to have done everything twice as a double check. Unless you have another suggestion of course! Thanks for all the help so far!