Upgraded Laptop Always Needs a Hard Restart

[robz]

On 4/1/2025 at 5:11 AM, petedk said:

I wanted to upgrade my laptop by replacing the hard drive with an SSD card and add more RAM and at first planned to do it by myself, but as I had it with me when buying the components I asked the shop to do it for me for 500 Baht.

 

Surprisingly, it took them nearly all day and they re-installed a new copy of Windows plus extra software that I don't need. Anyway, now whenever I start it up I have to do a hard restart, otherwise nothing happens.

Any ideas as to why? and what I can do about it. 

I don't want to spend a whole day going back to the shop just yet.

 

A legal copy ist already 1200 Baht.

 

Sounds like the shop did a full reinstall instead of just cloning your old drive, and they may not have set up the SSD properly.

A few things to check:

 

Check boot order in BIOS/UEFI:
Maybe it’s trying to boot from the wrong device first. Enter BIOS (usually by pressing Del, F2, or Esc during startup) and make sure the SSD is the first boot device.

 

Fast Startup / Hibernate issues:
Windows Fast Startup can cause boot problems on fresh installs. Try disabling it:
Control Panel > Power Options > Choose what the power buttons do > Change settings that are currently unavailable > Uncheck “Turn on fast startup”

Drivers or firmware
If the SSD firmware or chipset drivers are missing or outdated, the system might hang. Go to the SSD manufacturer's site and get the latest firmware/drivers.

 

Windows installation mode (AHCI vs RAID):
If the SSD was installed with incorrect BIOS settings (like using RAID mode instead of AHCI), it can cause weird startup behavior. Changing this after installation requires care though, or Windows might fail to boot.

 

As a temporary workaround:
If you always have to hard-restart to make it boot, try doing a full shutdown (Shift + Shutdown) and see if that helps. Also test whether it behaves the same after sleep or hibernate.

 

[Blueman1]

20 hours ago, KannikaP said:

Is the mic plugged into the motherboard via mini jack, or USB mic? Or an external sound card?

Is the mic plugged into the motherboard via mini jack....It's Plugged into the Tower via a Mini Jack M8.....That's All I Know I'm NOT A Comuter Whizz Kid !!

[petedk]

I have noticed that if I close down the computer and restart within a short time (up to 30 minutes) there are no problems, but when I shutdown at night and try to turn on in the morning I need to do a hard restart.

 

I have disabled fast start up. Set all button and lid settings to "turn off computer"

 

A Google search said that it could be a RAM problem, but this is a new RAM module and a Lenovo Vantage scan showed no problems.

 

I still have my old hard disk installed and there were some bad, unreadable sectors on that, but I can't imagine that that causes this.

[KannikaP]

31 minutes ago, Blueman1 said:

Is the mic plugged into the motherboard via mini jack....It's Plugged into the Tower via a Mini Jack M8.....That's All I Know I'm NOT A Comuter Whizz Kid !!

It was a simple question needing only a simple answer, and not your personal inability to understand, or to spell Computer correctly.

[lungbing]

Which also applies to you.  The word does not need a capital 'c'.