Oops I might have borked my mobo

[SonofJohn]

Esteemed Tech Tippers,

 

I come to you in a time of need.
 

TLDR—ever since I tried to update my chipset drivers for a second time my computer will either not boot into windows at all, or it will get to the sign in screen and blue screen a few seconds later after I input my password. Halp!

 

System Spec:

 

5950x

Crosshair viii Formula

980 pro 1 tb

firecuda 520 2 tb

G Skill trident z RGB 64 GB

EVGA G2 1200 W

 

Here’s the full story:

 

I tried to update my chipset drivers a few weeks ago, and thought it had completely successfully. Armory Crate downloaded it and said it needed to restart to install it, so I did, and the computer restarted fine no more than a minute later. Ever since then, I noticed my second SSD, which I install my games on, was acting very strange. Sometimes I would boot up my computer and couldn’t play any games, and my SSD was now where to be found according to windows, but the BIOS would always recognize it immediately.

 

Other times, I would boot up and everything would work fine. I finally had the thought that perhaps my secondary SSD’s PCIE lanes were routed through the chipset or something like that and that was the source of my troubles. So, I opened up armory crate and lo and behold there was a new chipset driver available. Without thinking or checking the date the updated driver was released, I thought I could upgrade to this new driver to solve my issues, but instead, when the computer asked to restart, I said yes and it got stuck with the lights on but a black screen for hours on end. I couldn’t get any video output whatsoever. Code 02 over and over. I now think armory crate is just dumb and I just installed the same driver twice thinking it was new.

 

I panicked, so I cleared CMOS—no dice. I reflashed my BIOS—still no dice. Finally I unplugged and replugged my DP cables and got into the BIOS. Thinking my problem was solved, I attempted to boot into windows. Before I even got to the sign in screen, I suffered a blue screen. Sometimes it will get to the sign in screen, but will blue screen after I input my password and then power cycle before I can read the error message. I tried to boot into safe mode—but windows recovery wouldn’t allow me to change my startup settings—they weren’t appearing at all. Additionally, the startup repair tool said it could not fix windows.

 

Dejected, I was going to reinstall windows, my last resort. But guess what, it wouldn’t let me delete, reformat, or install windows on my primary system drive. I now have no idea what to do. 
 

Does anyone have any suggestions? I just wanna play some blade and sorcery. 
 

-Johnson

[Poinkachu]

8 minutes ago, SonofJohn said:

Esteemed Tech Tippers,

Please list your full system spec.

So that the people in this forum can help you better & faster.

[Fasauceome]

35 minutes ago, SonofJohn said:

Dejected, I was going to reinstall windows, my last resort. But guess what, it wouldn’t let me delete, reformat, or install windows on my primary system drive. I now have no idea what to do. 

If you can interrupt windows boot 3 times in a row while it tries to boot, it will bring you to the recovery options. In that menu, you can find the option to boot to secure boot.

 

From there, you can uninstall programs like armory crate and see if it improves stability.

 

Armory crate is junk, if you can grab the drivers directly from Asus' site, do that instead.