[Question] How to re-establish PXE booting with Synology NAS

[SynNoob]

First of all thank you for your help. I had a system set up for me with Synology NAS to back up my files, and unfortunately I didn't pay close attention to how it was setup. Anyway, I swapped out the primary HDD in the PC with another, and then attempted to switch back and now I get the error message "Reboot and select proper boot device."

I did think it was odd when I first booted with the other HDD that my files kept showing up as though i'd booted in to the first, so now I believe there must've been some kind of LAN connection to the Synology.

Unfortunately the person who set it up for me is out of contact, so can anyone help me understand how I can re-establish a boot connection with a Synology NAS system to get back to work? The system in question is a DS218+

Could switching out the HDD's changed vital BIOS settings that enabled the connection?

Thank you so much for your responses, and if anyone can nail it i'd be happy to Paypal $50!

 

[fredbert]

No need to offer payment, this forum is a place to freely share help.

 

[Akira]

Are you sure you want to PXE boot? That would mean your computer would be completely unable to boot without the NAS which sounds (at least to me) like a very odd configuration.
What sounds more likely is that the computer is trying to boot from the wrong hard drive. Often pressing ESC or Delete as soon as your PC is switched on will take you into the BIOS settings and allow you to configure the boot drive.

From my experience the only time you would ever really want to PXE boot is if you were re-imaging the computer from a backup or using something like SCCM to rebuild it from a task sequence.

 

[SynNoob]

Are you sure you want to PXE boot? That would mean your computer would be completely unable to boot without the NAS which sounds (at least to me) like a very odd configuration.
What sounds more likely is that the computer is trying to boot from the wrong hard drive. Often pressing ESC or Delete as soon as your PC is switched on will take you into the BIOS settings and allow you to configure the boot drive.

From my experience the only time you would ever really want to PXE boot is if you were re-imaging the computer from a backup or using something like SCCM to rebuild it from a task sequence.

Thanks for your response.

The issue is this is the only thing I can think of that makes sense. I changed boot order, tried to fix the boot manager etc.

The PC recognizes the Hard Drive, but doesn't recognize any Windows Installation.

When I originally switched the HDD's across, I was still getting my previous windows installation despite being on a completely different HDD, and this persisted for about two or three restarts until it went away, and so that is why I have this idea that maybe the HDD I have isn't the windows boot.

I should've paid more attention when he set it up for me :P

Unless something corrupted in the HDD? Not sure.

Thank you for your response Akira.

 

[Rusty]

Have you checked in PC BIOS your HDD boot order? Is it looking at the correct drive? If you were but windows cant boot you should get a message saying that.

Synology NAS from what I can understand was just the backup destination for you pc and you swapping the drives has nothing (at this point) to do with your NAS.

 

[Akira]

I personally have an issue with my Lenovo laptop booting from SSD drives.
It never had a problem with HDD but since changing to an SSD as the boot drive it regularly says it can't find the boot drive and tries to PXE boot instead (I believe it's due to the power draw being much lower on an SSD than it is on an HDD).
It happens around 50% of the time, it's of no real consequence to me as it's my backup PC but also it loops itself around until it finds the boot drive anyway.
Could you be experiencing a similar problem?

 

[SynNoob]

Have you checked in PC BIOS your HDD boot order? Is it looking at the correct drive? If you were but windows cant boot you should get a message saying that.

Synology NAS from what I can understand was just the backup destination for you pc and you swapping the drives has nothing (at this point) to do with your NAS.

Yes I tried to play with the Boot order & also tried to recover startup with windows installation media.

When I open command prompt in the installation media recovery suite, and I look at the directory for the disk, it doesn't have many files and doesn't have any Windows installation media files.

The thing that is throwing me off is having disconnected my HDD & still booted up in to my original desktop environment with folders & documents, even when connected to a totally different HDD.

If I hadn't had that experience i'd have written it off as a corrupted HDD, so I assumed it had to have something to do with the Synology over LAN to boot me in to my previous environment despite disconnecting the HDD.

Confusing, I know :P Ty for responses.