Windows 7 on NVMe drive continues to restart repeatedly after chkdsk completes.
Windows 7 on NVMe drive continues to restart repeatedly after chkdsk completes.
Hey everyone, I'm in a tight spot. I need quick assistance. I was using Dell Optiplex 7040 NVME drive with Windows 7, but the free space was almost gone. I tried Macrium Reflect and Clonezilla, but they didn't work until I ran a chkdsk. After that, Windows only restarts to Startup Repair. Safe mode won’t help, and even advanced recovery options are limited because it’s a Dell image—just Startup Repair and a factory reset. Once the clone was done, I could play around with the drive. I attempted gparted for MBR and boot fixes, but nothing worked. The Windows boot media can see the disk, yet I can’t access it. I found an ISO with NVM support, but it didn’t boot. Windows 10/11 media works, but what should I do now? bootrec keeps showing errors like access denied and device not found. I’m stuck and need advice!
Use F6 with the Intel iRST driver. Place it on the same installation media and choose it.
I tried copying it to a SATA-SSD and now the boot media recognizes the drive. However, I’m unsure what to do next since the bootrec commands are writing to the USB stick instead of the actual drive.
Start from the Windows 10 installation media. Press Shift + F10 to open Command Prompt and launch Notepad. Use the Save As dialog to check which letter corresponds to your Windows 7 installation drive (the one containing your files like Windows and Program Files). I’m assuming this is C in this guide, though it might differ when booting from an installation CD. I’ll take C as a reference here, but you could use D instead. This setup isn’t the standard behavior on fresh disks. On a new disk, it usually places the bootloader in another 100MB space. Putting it on a different drive than your Windows installation is a big mistake. I’m assuming this partition is D for now, but you can adjust if needed. This configuration isn’t recommended. If you want to dual-boot with other OSes, use bcdboot with the correct paths. For Windows 11, you’ll need to build the bootloader yourself—just skip the automatic cleanup scripts.
legacy mode needs CSM and non-UEFI (MBR not GPT), but it seems you might be confused about how Win7 was installed. Win7/8/10/11 should always run in UEFI on systems with DDR4/NVMe storage, which explains the issue you faced. Older hardware only supports AHCI SATA, so you must adjust the BIOS settings—check if it's SATA AHCI, RAID (requiring F6 driver), or a native NVMe driver. Since Windows 7 doesn’t natively support NVMe, you’ll need to install the F6 driver during setup to fix drives. If it wasn’t installed initially, you’ll need a boot disk with the driver to recover it later.
I don't see any justification here. My setup uses Windows 8 on an NVMe and DDR5 system in legacy mode, and performance meets expectations. What you might be missing is a resizable bar, which isn't crucial in this Optiplex Yes Win7 configuration. Although it doesn't have native NVMe support, it now works with a universal NVMe driver after an update—though you'll need to integrate it into the ISO for recovery use. The universal Phison driver I currently rely on also functions on 8 and 7. Ideally, install the NVMe driver promptly. If not, you can try the Windows 10 ISO to upgrade from Windows 7 or 8 (I believe it supports BCDboot). It's better to use the Windows 10 ISO with its native driver and BCDboot for any fixes.