T410 died

[mikemex]

Thank you. Yes, Legacy, so no options in BIOS. BIOS is the latest version/last Lenovo issued. No passwords.
Have run CHKDSK /f, /r, and /b. Finds nothing wrong, not even one bad sector.
I'm going to post up a video in a separate thread. Maybe someone will have some advice. Maybe this is "normal", but it's a new issue so I can't see that.
Thanks again
Here's the video btw - will post elsewhere too. https://youtu.be/i9YIVSaAcVY

I think it's doing just what I said: it's trying to boot in UEFI mode, give up and then restart in MBR mode.

When you install Windows on a fresh hard drive and you allow it to format it, Windows will normally create a small system partition. In Windows 7 this partition didn't do much other than push the other partitions to align to some disk geometry. In Windows 10, however, it stores the UEFI bootleader and this can be problematic with non-UEFI machines.

I have little experience with Windows 10 to be honest, but I'd try to partition the drive manually to remove such partition and then re-install Windows as usual. Windows 10 supports MBR so it should just load the legacy boot sector and go directly booting Windows and skip the whole bootloader routine.

But who knows, maybe there is something esle faulty with your machine.

Check IDE/AHCI settings.

[davidblackshoes]

Thank you. Yes, Legacy, so no options in BIOS. BIOS is the latest version/last Lenovo issued. No passwords.
Have run CHKDSK /f, /r, and /b. Finds nothing wrong, not even one bad sector.
I'm going to post up a video in a separate thread. Maybe someone will have some advice. Maybe this is "normal", but it's a new issue so I can't see that.
Thanks again
Here's the video btw - will post elsewhere too. https://youtu.be/i9YIVSaAcVY

I think it's doing just what I said: it's trying to boot in UEFI mode, give up and then restart in MBR mode.

When you install Windows on a fresh hard drive and you allow it to format it, Windows will normally create a small system partition. In Windows 7 this partition didn't do much other than push the other partitions to align to some disk geometry. In Windows 10, however, it stores the UEFI bootleader and this can be problematic with non-UEFI machines.

I have little experience with Windows 10 to be honest, but I'd try to partition the drive manually to remove such partition and then re-install Windows as usual. Windows 10 supports MBR so it should just load the legacy boot sector and go directly booting Windows and skip the whole bootloader routine.

But who knows, maybe there is something esle faulty with your machine.

Check IDE/AHCI settings.

This makes sense.

ACHI is set correctly - with this machine, it has to be to boot. Turn that off and you find out you need it.

Since I have an identical machine - only difference is that has Intel HD graphics (integrated) rathe than NVIDIA (discrete) - and that one doesn't have this boot issue, I'm going to look at every setting in BIOS and see if anything is different between the two.

I guess I should be glad it loads Windows so quickly once I get through boot and that the machine is peppy and without issues once in Windows.

Thanks again for your help.

[davidblackshoes]

Thank you. Yes, Legacy, so no options in BIOS. BIOS is the latest version/last Lenovo issued. No passwords.
Have run CHKDSK /f, /r, and /b. Finds nothing wrong, not even one bad sector.
I'm going to post up a video in a separate thread. Maybe someone will have some advice. Maybe this is "normal", but it's a new issue so I can't see that.
Thanks again
Here's the video btw - will post elsewhere too. https://youtu.be/i9YIVSaAcVY

I think it's doing just what I said: it's trying to boot in UEFI mode, give up and then restart in MBR mode.

When you install Windows on a fresh hard drive and you allow it to format it, Windows will normally create a small system partition. In Windows 7 this partition didn't do much other than push the other partitions to align to some disk geometry. In Windows 10, however, it stores the UEFI bootleader and this can be problematic with non-UEFI machines.

I have little experience with Windows 10 to be honest, but I'd try to partition the drive manually to remove such partition and then re-install Windows as usual. Windows 10 supports MBR so it should just load the legacy boot sector and go directly booting Windows and skip the whole bootloader routine.

But who knows, maybe there is something esle faulty with your machine.

Check IDE/AHCI settings.

Solved this today. Thanks for your help.
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