SSD with Bitlocker not booting after CMOS being cleared

Question

I have a HP Envy with Windows 8 installed on a SSD. The drive is encrypted with BitLocker. Today, I disassembled my laptop to clean the fans. After putting it back together and turning it on, I got a messaged that said: CMOS checksum failed, reset to default settings. After doing this, I get a message saying that no OS drive was found. When I reboot the laptop again, I keep getting the same message.

Here are the things I tried:

• I reset the CMOS again by disconnecting the power plug, battery and CMOS battery, pressing the power butting for 10 seconds, and booting up again
• I reset the BIOS to default settings
• I looked for a way to change the drive from IDE to AHCI as I found that could be an issue with SSDs when the CMOS is cleared. My BIOS shows no option to do this, and I found that HP laptops use AHCI as default
• I tried putting the drive in the other hard drive slot to no avail. According to the UEFI diagnostic tool, the drive is detected and passes whatever test it is doing

I don't know if the problem is that the BIOS is not recognizing the OS in Bitlocker. I don't know what else to try or what could be the problem. Thanks

EDIT: I have tried putting a usb drive with windows 8 to see if it boots from there, but it isn't recognized either. I will check if the usb drive has been made correctly by plugging it to another pc and see if it can be booted from the usb

Answer 1

I had a similar problem recently, and it turned out that my main BIOS was corrupted because the battery went dead on me after 6 years (yep, apparently you need to change the motherboard batter every 6 years or so :D).

Exact same everything, with the checksum failed message and all. My computer would only boot from the backup bios ("Dual Bios" feature in Gigabyte boards).

I solved it by removing the old battery for about an hour (as that's what I read you need to do in order to fully clear the CMOS). And then replaced with a brand new battery. After which I re-flashed the main BIOS with the latest version which I downloaded from Gigabyte's website for my board.

Computer went back to normal operations after that!

I'm assuming in your case it wasn't a dead batter, so you can skip replacing it, and just re-flash your BIOS.

I found the solution in this thread originally, if you want to check it out. Many people there with the same problem.

Hope it helps!

Answer 2

I had a case when the "BIOS battery" was empty (but I had not noticed): Windows failed to boot properly, and offered to "repair" the problem. Of course Windows was unable to repair the problem, but in fact it ruined the installation completely. That's why I write this statement of warning.

What actually had happened was this: Windows had been installed with the SATA controller to be in AHCI mode, but after the battery was empty the default was different (EIDE, maybe). So the correct fix would have been to set the mode properly.

In the old times when BIOS just had a few settings, it was recommended to write down the settings (remember the times when you had to "jumper" I/O cards, and tell BIOS which interrupts are in use?). Modern BIOSes sometimes allow to save the setting to a file (on USB stick for example), and (of course) to restore settings from there. Sounds like a good idea.

Answer 3

I can not write comments for now so this is a possible answer. it depends on your machine. It could be that the TPM-Chip was cleared and so that the keys had been lost. It also could be that your computer vendor set password for hd-drives and now that are gone. If those passwords are set the ssd's will using it automatically. But tghis does not explain the USB Stick situation. I think the best bet is if you check that UEFI is enabled and CMS is disabled. Maybe TPM has to be enabled either. Probably this is not the default setting for your model because it was not shipped with Windows 8 but with windows 7 in compatibility mode when the start to sell it.