BOOT LOOPS WITH NO POST! HELP!

helphelphelp · September 6, 2020

Here are my specifications:

intel i7 - 4770 processor, with the stock cooler/heat sink
intel DB85FL motherboard
8 GB of DDR3 RAM from Crucial
Seagate SKYHAWKS 1TB HDD, no SSD
Zebronics 450 watt power supply
and a nvidia GTX 1050ti

The problem:

Boot loops without POST. [Please check the bullet points, if the following paragraphs are too long]

Almost for a week now my PC started to give out random BSODs every now and then, when a video game was running. I thought maybe extra RAM was required, so I placed an order [UPDATE BELOW]. But then the computer started to crash more frequently while running lesser loads. (Casual browsing twitter, YT, twitch, discord, and some light VS code. Even android studio used to run without crashes. Sounds like a lot now that I type it out, but I had no problems before). The crashes were followed by a boot loop, where the PC lights up, fans spin then turns off almost immediately. This goes on for a while and only sometimes I get a POST error. I hit “N”, then it usually restarted a couple of times before booting up into WIndows 10.

I checked the reliability monitor, and one of the errors from every day of the week since the BSOD stared to show up, read “Windows 10 failed to shutdown properly”, even when I had hit shutdown. I thought maybe an OS re-installation could fix it, so I backed up my data and set out to reinstall the OS.

I managed to installed pop_os! [Latest version] since I already had created an image beforehand on a USB drive. The HDD was formatted during the installation process. The PC did go into a loop once during the first try, but it managed to install and run normally during the second run. After a while, I tried shutting it down, but it went to a restart loop. I was already tired and frustrated, so I pulled the plug out, and figured I will deal with it the next day.

I ran into the same boot loop with no POST problems once again the following day.

I replaced the PSU [among other things, please check the list below], all the effort was useless since I’m, facing the same problem, and rarely if the OS tries to boot up normally, I run into a black login screen. I did manage to run the OS off the USB drive, but not without looping for several times.

Also, when the PC was working normally, the CrystalDiskInfo software did display the status “Good” for the Hard drive.

I ran into this issue of BSODs and boot loops at the beginning of the year, I formatted and installed a fresh copy of Windows 10, and everything was normal for a while.

I tried the following:

Cleaned the PC.
Reseat the RAM stick, I had no beeps.
Ran the computer with only the CPU, HDD and the PSU. I heard three beeps, which I believe indicated the missing RAM [I’m not sure, please let me know if I’m wrong here]
Ran the computer without any external USB connections.
Checked the seating of the cooler. [Seated normally]
Changed the SATA cable connecting the HDD to the motherboard
I bought a brand new PSU and replaced the old one, but still running into the same problems.
Reset the BIOS to default settings also did not help.
I finally tried to reset the bios by removing and reinstalling the CMOS battery, and it has not helped.
Also, like I mentioned before, formatted and installed a different OS, did not help.
UPDATE: I also tried booting with the new RAM stick, and with both of them installed, did not solve the issue. While I did manage to boot up off the USB drive with the HDD disconnected, but upon restart, the loops did resume. During the successful boot the memory did detect both RAM sticks, so I believe the RAM sticks are fine.

I’m wondering if I should just give up and get a new PC, but with the pandemic going on I am not sure I can get one in time for my projects and assignments. Thanks for reading, I really appreciate it. Hopefully someone here can help me out. Apologies, if the post was too long. Thanks.