HP Microserver N40L won't boot after BIOS update

[bennybennybenny 0]

Hey guys,

Not sure if this is the correct section to post this, but in a bit of a pickle after attempting to flash my HP Microserver N40L to the modified bios last night.

 

The story goes - I've had myN40L microserver for the past few years running Windows 8.1 and acting as a media server for the house. I recently upgraded a laptop I have so had a spare Samsung 840 EVO 120gb SSD that I thought I'd throw in the microserver as the boot drive. 

 

I ghosted the existing windows install (which was on a 250gb mechanical hard drive) over to the SSD, rebooted the computer and everything was working file. When I checked the performance of the SSD using the Samsung Magician software it indicated thatt the SSD wasn't running at full speed due to AHCI being disabled. I then did a bit of research and found that SATA port 5 (normally meant for an optical drive) that the SSD was connected to doesn't run at full speed and in IDE mode. I read that the modified bios that's floating around for Microserver's can fix this.

 

So I flashed the bios to my machine however now when I boot up it gets to the loading screen for windows and then errors and reboots. This boot loop just continues constantly with no way to get into windows.

 

I've tried setting the hard drive mode to both IDE and AHCI in BIOS with no success, I've reverted the BIOS back to default settings, took out the CMOS battery overnight, tried to re-flash back to default HP firmware, re-flashed the modded BIOS with no drives in the server and even run the windows 8 startup repair with no success whatsoever, it just continues to error and boot loop.

 

I did leave all 4 of my other SATA hard drives in the machine when flashing the modded bios originally so don't know if this affected it. I wish I'd just left the original BIOS on there now.

 

Is there anything I can try to fix this? I'd really prefer not to have to reinstall windows 8 as it took me awhile to set everything up for media (Sonarr, CouchPotato, iTunes, Serviio etc).

 

Any help is greatly appreciated.

 

Cheers Benny

Edited July 4, 2016 by bennybennybenny

[bennybennybenny 0]

Hi guys,

This thread can be closed, I eventually got it all working. It was because Windows 8 was originall installed as IDE mode on the mechanical drive. I was able to rectify the problem by following instructions at the following link - http://superuser.com/questions/471102/change-from-ide-to-ahci-after-installing-windows-8

 

Cheers Benny

Edited July 4, 2016 by bennybennybenny