Help me fix my baby. Possible RAM issue.

[DIckThundersword]

MSI MPG B550 Gaming Plus

Ryzen 5 3200

32Gb Corsair Vengeance RGB (2x16Gb DIMMs)

XFX R9 390 8Gb

Samsung 1Tb M.2 SS (also a couple other 1&2 Tb Hdd's and SSD's) 

Thermaltake 700W  Smart Series PSU

 

My computer just took a crap. I built it about 6 months ago, and everything has been fine, until now. I was playing Just Cause 4 today, and the game froze, so I rebooted. When it came back up it took a looooooooooooong time to boot, like 5+ minutes. It normally boots up in a few seconds. When it got to windows, it told me that windows could not be started, and needed to be repaired. I assumed this was due to the recent update I've heard so much about lately. 

 

So I put in my recovery usb stick, and it took several minutes to load up. When it finally loaded up, it came to a purple screen with a mouse cursor, and nothing else. 

 

I powered it down, removed the RAM sticks and CMOS and tried one RAM stick at a time, then both in various slots and configurations. Both RAM sticks worked, but the pc took 2-3 minutes to POST every time. The EZ-Debug DRAM LED turns white and stays white for 2-3 minutes, sometimes even as long as 5-7 minutes, before the post screen shows up on my monitor. The LED goes off, and the MSI POST screen shows up, and the LED doesn't come back on until the next boot. 

 

I've checked the bios and verified the correct speed RAM is selected, and run MSI's onboard diagnostics, everything passes all the tests. I've tried booting into a couple different utilities like medicat and HBCD, none of them actually boot all the way up. I'm currently trying a freshly created windows recovery disk, and have been watching the circles spin for about 15-20 minutes,while typing this. But that's as far as I ever get. Nothing ever actually loads, no matter what I'm trying to boot into. 

 

 

[Midevil Chaos]

6 minutes ago, DIckThundersword said:

MSI MPG B550 Gaming Plus

Ryzen 5 3200

32Gb Corsair Vengeance RGB (2x16Gb DIMMs)

XFX R9 390 8Gb

Samsung 1Tb M.2 SS (also a couple other 1&2 Tb Hdd's and SSD's) 

Thermaltake 700W  Smart Series PSU

 

My computer just took a crap. I built it about 6 months ago, and everything has been fine, until now. I was playing Just Cause 4 today, and the game froze, so I rebooted. When it came back up it took a looooooooooooong time to boot, like 5+ minutes. It normally boots up in a few seconds. When it got to windows, it told me that windows could not be started, and needed to be repaired. I assumed this was due to the recent update I've heard so much about lately. 

 

So I put in my recovery usb stick, and it took several minutes to load up. When it finally loaded up, it came to a purple screen with a mouse cursor, and nothing else. 

 

I powered it down, removed the RAM sticks and CMOS and tried one RAM stick at a time, then both in various slots and configurations. Both RAM sticks worked, but the pc took 2-3 minutes to POST every time. The EZ-Debug DRAM LED turns white and stays white for 2-3 minutes, sometimes even as long as 5-7 minutes, before the post screen shows up on my monitor. The LED goes off, and the MSI POST screen shows up, and the LED doesn't come back on until the next boot. 

 

I've checked the bios and verified the correct speed RAM is selected, and run MSI's onboard diagnostics, everything passes all the tests. I've tried booting into a couple different utilities like medicat and HBCD, none of them actually boot all the way up. I'm currently trying a freshly created windows recovery disk, and have been watching the circles spin for about 15-20 minutes,while typing this. But that's as far as I ever get. Nothing ever actually loads, no matter what I'm trying to boot into. 

 

 

This may sound stupid, but try booting up a live Linux distro. Just to see if you can actually get past anything. Like that you get to know for sure if it's the hardware OR the hardware that just doesn't like Windows for some reason. Otherwise, try other branded ram sticks instead.

 

[DIckThundersword]

10 minutes ago, Midevil Chaos said:

This may sound stupid, but try booting up a live Linux distro. Just to see if you can actually get past anything. Like that you get to know for sure if it's the hardware OR the hardware that just doesn't like Windows for some reason. Otherwise, try other branded ram sticks instead.

 

Nah, that doesn't sound stupid. I tried a couple different ones, I was able to boot into a passmark MemTest live disk, which is command line based, but none of the others have worked. I get to a splash screen for the distro, and it stays there. The memtest live disk does its thing, and passes all its tests with no errors, but I haven't had any luck getting anything else to boot into a gui. I'm going to burn a couple more usb drives and see what I can get to work. 

[Midevil Chaos]

3 minutes ago, DIckThundersword said:

Nah, that doesn't sound stupid. I tried a couple different ones, I was able to boot into a passmark MemTest live disk, which is command line based, but none of the others have worked. I get to a splash screen for the distro, and it stays there. The memtest live disk does its thing, and passes all its tests with no errors, but I haven't had any luck getting anything else to boot into a gui. I'm going to burn a couple more usb drives and see what I can get to work. 

I assume you have older hardware as well? If so, try swapping some of those older ram in there. I keep my older PC just in case something craps out lol. Obviously old as hell, but if you need to test stuff out, could be worth a try.

[DIckThundersword]

1 minute ago, Midevil Chaos said:

I assume you have older hardware as well? If so, try swapping some of those older ram in there. I keep my older PC just in case something craps out lol. Obviously old as hell, but if you need to test stuff out, could be worth a try. 

All my older hardware is DDR3, this system uses DDR4 memory. I might pick up some other DDR4 sticks in the next few days to try and see what happens

[DIckThundersword]

I actually got elementary OS and Manjaro KDE to work without any issue. But it took almost 10 minutes to boot into the live disks. 

[Midevil Chaos]

50 minutes ago, DIckThundersword said:

I actually got elementary OS and Manjaro KDE to work without any issue. But it took almost 10 minutes to boot into the live disks. 

If it works fine while in the OS and you have no issues at all when doing whatever (including gaming), and everything is displaying the correct specs. Motherboard maybe? Can you update the firmware on it?