System will not boot to any media

[Radioactive999_]

My PC has been working fine until today when I went to power it up. Upon powering it up today windows just infinitely loads (little spiny circle with the windows logo) waited 10-15 mins here to be sure and nothing, just infinite loading. The OS was getting more unstable recently with increasingly common crashes when booting so at first I assumed windows had finally gone and messed itself up for real.

 

First thing I have tried is going into startup repair. The windows logo shows saying "loading startup repair" or whatever, then goes away and my screen is just black. Waited 10-15 mins to be sure and still nothing just black. Therefore I cannot get into safe mode, restore to a previous point, or clean install windows.

 

Next I decided I would just cleanly install windows because it has been unstable anyways. I go and create a install usb drive with the windows media creation tool, plug it in, try to boot from it, and its the exact same issue. Just infinitely loading. 

 

Next I did some searching online and realized it may be an issue with UEFI/legacy boot modes so I tried all sorts of settings with the CSM in the bios menu but nothing I changed made any difference. Also reset my bios settings and that didn't work either.

 

At this point I start to think hardware issues so I took my ram out and in, and tried running one stick of ram at a time but no luck. I think I can safely rule out ram as an issue.

 

I can't find any similar situations anywhere online so any help at all would be greatly appreciated. My specs are below.

 

OS: Windows 10 64 bit

Motherboard: Asus crosshair vii hero

CPU: ryzen 3900x

GPU: rtx 3080 evga xc3 ultra

PSU: gigabyte 750W

RAM: Trident Z Neo 16gb/3200mhz

[Bombastinator]

1 hour ago, Radioactive999_ said:

My PC has been working fine until today when I went to power it up. Upon powering it up today windows just infinitely loads (little spiny circle with the windows logo) waited 10-15 mins here to be sure and nothing, just infinite loading. The OS was getting more unstable recently with increasingly common crashes when booting so at first I assumed windows had finally gone and messed itself up for real.

 

First thing I have tried is going into startup repair. The windows logo shows saying "loading startup repair" or whatever, then goes away and my screen is just black. Waited 10-15 mins to be sure and still nothing just black. Therefore I cannot get into safe mode, restore to a previous point, or clean install windows.

 

Next I decided I would just cleanly install windows because it has been unstable anyways. I go and create a install usb drive with the windows media creation tool, plug it in, try to boot from it, and its the exact same issue. Just infinitely loading. 

 

Next I did some searching online and realized it may be an issue with UEFI/legacy boot modes so I tried all sorts of settings with the CSM in the bios menu but nothing I changed made any difference. Also reset my bios settings and that didn't work either.

 

At this point I start to think hardware issues so I took my ram out and in, and tried running one stick of ram at a time but no luck. I think I can safely rule out ram as an issue.

 

I can't find any similar situations anywhere online so any help at all would be greatly appreciated. My specs are below.

 

OS: Windows 10 64 bit

Motherboard: Asus crosshair vii hero

CPU: ryzen 3900x

GPU: rtx 3080 evga xc3 ultra

PSU: gigabyte 750W

RAM: Trident Z Neo 16gb/3200mhz

So it posts at least, POST is a hardware check so there’s a decent chance your motherboard and cpu hardware is fine.  If you pull the drive entirely you might have a different result. Aside from not having any way to boot to windows of course.  Is your bios current? 

Edited September 25, 2022 by Bombastinator

[sharkaroid]

Maybe you forgot to change the boot device order from the BIOS. It might be insisting to boot from the HDD instead of the pendrive.

Just as a test, try to pull the HDD out to see if it boots from the pendrive.

[Radioactive999_]

7 hours ago, Bombastinator said:

So it posts at least, POST is a hardware check so there’s a decent chance your motherboard and cpu hardware is fine.  If you pull the drive entirely you might have a different result. Aside from not having any way to boot to windows of course.  Is your bios current? 

I have not updated the bios since I built the system. I will give it a update in a bit and see what happens.

[Bombastinator]

57 minutes ago, Radioactive999_ said:

I have not updated the bios since I built the system. I will give it a update in a bit and see what happens.

I’m a bit astounded that it works at all then.  AMD CPUs have to ape Intel ones, because devs frequently don’t test on their hardware.  This is a reason why the QVL is more important for AMD owners.  The bios is one of the few ways AMD has to tweak things and as a result keeping one’s bios current with AMD cpus can be really important. If there’s a bug you can always just roll it back. That happens a lot too.  There’s a lot of stuff they just don’t catch immediately.  There was a weird one for zen2 for example that only happened in certain situations when a rig had two monitors.  Not 1 or 3, just two.  They fixed it with a bios update.

Edited September 25, 2022 by Bombastinator

[Radioactive999_]

10 hours ago, sharkaroid said:

Maybe you forgot to change the boot device order from the BIOS. It might be insisting to boot from the HDD instead of the pendrive.

Just as a test, try to pull the HDD out to see if it boots from the pendrive.

So I ended up disconnecting nearly everything non essential from my system until the only deice that was connected is my boot drive and I am able to suddenly boot from usb or boot drive. From there I restored windows and began adding back devices. As soon as I add my oldest storage drive suddenly windows refuses to boot and became unbootable until restoring again. I have my system working now with this drive removed. No clue what exactly was causing it but it works when this hard drive is removed from the equation.

[Bombastinator]

11 minutes ago, Radioactive999_ said:

So I ended up disconnecting nearly everything non essential from my system until the only deice that was connected is my boot drive and I am able to suddenly boot from usb or boot drive. From there I restored windows and began adding back devices. As soon as I add my oldest storage drive suddenly windows refuses to boot and became unbootable until restoring again. I have my system working now with this drive removed. No clue what exactly was causing it but it works when this hard drive is removed from the equation.

Ooh.  Sounds like crystaldiskmark for that thing.  Or possibly a screwdriver and wind chime kit.  The platters are really shiney and they’re very high quality metal so they make a pretty “ting” sound when you bang em together. Good for scaring birds out of gardens.  The magnets in em are really fun too.

Edited September 25, 2022 by Bombastinator

[sharkaroid]

Yeah, HDDs make quite a mess on your system when they break. I hope you didn't have anything too important in there.