Windows 8 Windows 8 is now "Missing"

[davidvkimball]

After I upgraded my graphics card driver, my PC got a blue screen with a sad face.

It continually would load up, show a blue screen, shut down. This process continued (while I was attempting to troubleshoot) until it finally said, "Missing operating system" and it's been hanging there ever since.

My computer's info:

System Manufacturer/Model Number HP Pavilion p6331p
OS Windows 8 Pro with Media Center
CPU AMD Athlon II 630 Quad-Core Processor
Motherboard H-RS880-uATX (Aloe)
Memory 8GB DDR3, PC3-10600 MB/sec
Graphics Card NVIDIA GeForce 9500 GT, 4GB (upgraded from stock)
Sound Card Integrated Realtec ALC888S Audio
Monitor(s) Displays HP 2009m 20" diagonal 16:9
Screen Resolution 1600 x 900

Keyboard HP USB keyboard, 6 ft cable, Height: 1.1 inch, Width: 6.3 inches, Length: 17.3 inches
Mouse HP USB mouse, 6 ft cable,
PSU 300W
Case Mid-size ATX, Height: 15.23 inches, Width: 6.89 inches, Length: 16.29 inches
Cooling Single system cooling fan
Hard Drives 750 GB, Interface: SATA, Transfer rating: 3.0 Gb/sec, Rotational Speed: 7200 RPM

 

[Saltgrass]

I see one site that seems to suggest the minimum recommend Power Supply is 350 Watts. If the system was being starved for power, some strange things might happen.

Have you tried going back to your original Video Card?

Do you have any recovery media or Install media?

 

[davidvkimball]

I do have recovery media and install media...sort of. Would any of this information help? Windows 8 Constantly Crashing recently

 

[Medico]

Boot to the Recovery Console and try using the Elevated Command Prompt and type: sfc /scannow

You can also try the Repair Install.

 

[kemical]

I think Saltgrass is on the right track, check out this review from Guru3D:

[h=3]Power consumption[/h]It's time to do some actual testing with these card. We'll start off by showing you some tests we have done on overall power consumption of the PC. Looking at it from a performance versus wattage point of view.Our test system contains a Core 2 Duo E8400 Processor @ 3.0 GHz (FSB 1333), the eVGA 680i SLI mainboard, stock cooling on the CPU, DVD-rom and a WD Raptor drive. The results:

PC state	Idle	Peak
Wattage (PC total)	168	212

A fairly standard power supply will be more than sufficient for this graphics card. Any 450 Watt PSU and above will suffice.

A classic sign of not enough power for the gpu is a bsod. Plus notice the above peak figures, that's only leaving you 88w to run the rest of the system, it's simply not enough.

Reference:
GeForce 9500 GT review - 3 - Power Consumption, Heat and Volume levels