Windows 7 stopped booting up after updating our NUC NUC5i7RYH to BIOS 0350 from 0249. I will just get a black screen will a flashing cursor (underscore) as soon as it goes past the BIOS and after a while I will get this error: "Invalid system disk. Replace the disk, and then press any key".
I did a lot of troubleshooting using the Windows 7 recovery DVD trying to fix the BCD (e.g. bootrec /rebuildbcd), but nothing would fix the bootup. The bootrec /rebuildbcd command actually failed with this error: "The requested system device cannot be found".
I went as far as reformatting the drive and trying to do a clean install (don't worry, I had a full backup), but the Windows Installed said "Windows cannot be installed to this disk. The computer's hardware may not support booting from this disk. Ensure the disk's controller is enabled in the computer's BIOS menu".
I did go through all the BIOS settings to see if there was an incorrect setting, but couldn't find anything, even after comparing the BIOS settings with another NUC that still had the old firmware and was still booting up. I was able to install Windows on the NUC after I downgraded the BIOS back to 0249 (the Windows Installer did not show that error any more).
I have now downgraded the BIOS back to 0249 and restored the Windows installation, and the drive booted up again. I then upgraded the BIOS to 0348 and immediately the PC wouldn't boot. BIOS 0350 also doesn't boot. The PC booted up fine once I downgraded again to 0249.
I am using a 256GB Samsung SM951, M.2 (22x80) PCIe 3.0 (x4) AHCI SSD in this NUC.
Has anyone seen this same problem?