PC won't load windows or enter BIOS

[cesrai]

I'm sweating.

It worked.

Remember the time you first built a PC, anticipating the moment of truth, multiply that by 100, that's how I felt after installing the new motherboard and pushing the power button.

Still no idea what the fuck went wrong.

Hopefully I don't run into any issues with Windows or drivers or anything software related, obviously everything in the BIOS is reset, hopefully that's all I need to spend time adjusting to how it was before all of this..

Hopefully this doesn't happen again, I don't know how to take precautions from an issue I still don't understand, don't know why this happened.

So new motherboard ?

[Hunched]

So new motherboard ?

Yes, a new Z97-A

I can get into the BIOS

Haven't hooked anything else up besides the absolute necessities to power it on and not overheat.

 

I'll deal with looking at every BIOS setting later and trying to remember what I had previously set, then hope Windows wants to be friends with my new mobo and doesn't want to fight and cause issues.

Worst case scenario I might need to reinstall Windows if things are going to be a bitch.

All hardware seems to be functional thankfully.

[Hunched]

This post is from my PC, not laptop, everything is installed, GPU and all. Seems to be functional.

Probably going to play some games I bought during the Steam Sale while I had no PC to play them.

 

Thankfully I was smart enough to open notepad and enter every BIOS setting I changed that I could remember after I was convinced I wasn't getting it to boot any time soon, so most of that should be in there.

Seems like that's about the only time I need to spend to get things back.

 

At least after this experience, I know about every single method and step for how to troubleshoot a motherboard, hopefully one of them works in the future if I ever have issues again.

 

I had to call an automated Microsoft number and enter about a 50 digit code to reactivate Windows, seems to have worked.

For whatever reason now I appear to have a permanent water mark in the bottom right corner displaying "Windows 8.1 Build 9600" but whatever.

No more weird stuff please.

Edit: watermark disappeared after a restart