Help troubleshooting a dead PC

My desktop is old, it is on it's last leg and I know it. That said I would rather not build a new machine unless I need to. I used to leave my PC on 24 hours a day and never thought much about it but I have been trying to get better with power consumption. Last night I shut down the PC and everything was fine. This morning I turn on the machine and it get a blank screen that simply says BOOTMGR is missing. Tried using my system recovery disk and had it repair start up issues, no luck. So then I go in to the command prompt and the Microsoft troubleshooting says to try to rebuild the BCD. the problem is when I run Bootrec I get an error that says Element Not Found. Within command prompt I can get to the boot drive, BIOS is seeing it just fine. I can list files on the drive, according to Diskpart it is the active partition etc....

This is on Windows 10 BTW. Any help would be greatly appreciated.

So I took apart the machine, unslotted and unplugged everything. Swapped out the SATA cables for new ones and checked the power connectors. Turned on the machine and it came right up. I am afraid it is being held together with chewing gum and baling wire. Was this just a fluke or should I look at starting a new build.

I mean you're probably already on it, but make sure your data is backed up. Don't forget things outside your user folder, like game saves and stuff. Fonts maybe.

How old is old? A PC can, theoretically, last decades if its not abused. At a guess it was probably your SATA cables. I've had them go out and cause similar problems. Just in case run SeaTools to look for HD problems. I've also had similar symptoms from a dying graphics card, failing drivers cause all sorts of start up gremlins.

You can start a process of refreshing your build as time and/or budget allows.

Agree with Mermaid regarding your backups. Use Game Save Manager for games that aren't in cloud saves.

The bulk of the PC is I believe 5 years old, the video card is fairly new. Will check out SeaTools.

Thanks!

Yeah, if the CPU is 5 years old it should be nowhere near its last legs. If you've been carrying an old hard drive and/or cables from old builds that's the most likely cause of your problems, imo.

My 7yo PC died of power supply failure (probably), it might be that.

My desktop is old, it is on it's last leg and I know it.

Just to chime in on this front: is there a specific reason you think it has problems, other than the boot failure this time around? Are other things going wrong too?

I'm not sure how well-made current electronics are compared with the older stuff, but there's lots of computers from the 80s and 90s still trucking along just fine.

Some of the USB ports on the motherboard don't work anymore and the onboard audio is starting to get really flaky, it will crackle a lot or just cut out at times. Thought it was the speakers but a brand new set is doing the same. I suspect most of the components are ok but I think the motherboard is going to need to be replaced.

Given those symptoms, that seems entirely possible. Finding old motherboards can be a real PITA, though. Intel changes sockets as often as their socks.