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After installing El Capitan can't start Windows (Different Drives)


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Hello there!

 

What happens to my BIOS once I install Mac OS X?!

 

I installed El Capitan on a drive to test it. It works good.

Since I need Windows now, I decided to take out the hard drive with El Capitan from my computer and connect an SSD with Windows 10 in it. I work a lot with this drive in my system.

There are a lot of boot issues: first, there is no trace of the SSD from the BIOS, then, when I press F12 to choose from which disk to start, there are three choices:

  1. Mac OS X
  2. UEFI OS
  3. UEFI OS

Why is there these kind of options since the hard drive with El Capitan is not connected? There are no USB Pen Drives either. 

After turning off the PC 2 or 3 times and change SATA port, I can finally see the SSD I am trying to boot to, but Windows 10 tells me that there are some issues and that the system must be restarted. It performs an automatic repair with no success.

 

Since the hard drive with EL Capitan is out of the system, I shouldn't encounter this situation, right? What am I missing?

When I work on other computers, when I change the hard drive I usually boot from it with no problems.

 

My system specs:

  • Gigabyte z87x UD5 TH (BIOS Version: F2)
  • i7 4770K
  • 16 GB of RAM
  • ASUS GTX 770 2GB

 

Thank you so much for your time.

 

UPDATE

 

I tried, for the second time, to connect the SSD to a different SATA port. Since I have two controllers, an INTEL controller and a Marvell controller, I tested the second one and Windows started again. Since I am not an expert, I am missing something here, I hope you can help me.

I didn't change BIOS configuration for these tests.

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I'm worried that my working drives will not work. I am also worried to update it, even if some advised it. There are not many case studies about working thunderbolt connections, so I am worried.

Can I downgrade my BIOS firmware?

 

Thank you for your reply :)

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Check your motherboard becuase you have many diffent sata ports and your harddrive with the OS should be connected to sata 1 or as low as possible so you connect to the "main" sata host device since you have 2.
No you shouldnt get that problem and downgrading firmware isnt needed either just upgrade to latest version if you are not using it.
Nothing happens to your bios unless you change something it yourself with flashing a custom bios or doing some other tweaks to it.

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Thanks LuXs.

 

Maybe I can set the system like this:

 

SATA 1 - Mac OS X

SATA 2- Windows

SATA 2+x - Other drives

 

I also have, as stated before, two different controllers (Intel and Marvell). Do you suggest to use one for Mac OS X and the other one for a different OS like Windows?

 

I am worried that upgrading my BIOS my system won't work. On El Capitan it seems that my thunderbolt connections work well (I am using a Promise Pegasus R4). The downgrade question was about testing different versions of the BIOS firmware, I am unaware if I am able to downgrade after an update if something goes wrong (I have to check with my motherboard manual if it allows firmware downgrade).

 

Thank you for your kind reply.

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if you flash the motherboard using a usb stick it should be able to downgrade and upgrade i think i did that many years ago since i got a new graphic card that didnt work correctly with the current bios i got a beta bios then a newer bios at a later time mixing downgrade and upgrade so it shouldnt be a problem.
 

you could probably have sata 1 os x and sata 2 windows and so on but i have never tried it so i cant tell you if it will work or not its probably dependent on what bootloader software you are using to choose what OS to boot/start.

I would run both on the same controller and i think intel is the main controller and marvell is the second controller since its running on a intel chipset and to give you more usb ports and sata ports then the intel controler support, they put on a marvell controller to give more ports.

 

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After some tests, I find a very strange situation and I am unable to understand it.

 

Modifying SATA ports and BIOS configuration doesn't change a thing. Sometimes the system is not able to see the SSD. I changed the SATA cable just to be sure. I don't think it's a problem with the SSD, even if I am not so sure about it.

 

When I try to start the computer, I get different errors, depending on the SATA port I choose to connect the SSD with Windows 10.

 

Sometimes Windows 10 tells me that there is an error:

 

Inacessibile_Boot_Device

 

Other times the system is not able to boot from the SSD:

 

A disk read occurred. Press CTRL+ALT+CANC to restart

 

Reboot and select proper boot device or insert boot media in selected boot device and press a key

 

When I get this message, I can't see the SSD from the BIOS.

I'll try with another hard drive, just to be sure it's not an issue with my SSD.

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