Computer stuck in a never-ending reboot loop

[HelpAGirlOut]

Hey fellas, I am in need of serious help here. I'm a pretty well known streamer on twitch so my paycheck depends on my computer working 24/7.

I've had this issue many times before and it seems it just "fixes" itself over time. Basically, I will turn my computer off for the night and when I turn it back on, it will hang on the BIOS screen for 5-30 secs, proceed to the "Windows Starting" screen, then reboot back to the BIOS screen infinitely. I've already done troubleshooting, its much easier to do since I have a PC for gaming, and a PC for encoding the stream/ rendering videos. I figured it was an issue with my hard drive, so I swapped my SSD in my gaming pc (Samsung Pro 850, 256GB) with the one in my streaming pc (Crucial MX100 256GB) and lo and behold, the mx100 starts holding at the BIOS and the 850 PRO boots right up, so I can mark off the hard drives being the primary issue here. I did this same thing for ever piece of hardware in my two computers, RAM, PSU, GPU, and the same thing happens. No matter what the gaming pc will not boot properly, and the streaming pc will, regardless of what hardware is in which pc. The only hardware that i did NOT remove was the motherboards, and CPUs. I have reason to believe that the motherboard is the issue in my gaming pc, its an ASROCK h97 FATAL1TY. I have fixed this issue before like i said, I just let startup repair run 5-10 times and it eventually boots back up. I didn't recently install anything, nor is anything over heating, the OS is legit, I've done re-installs of the OS on the gaming PC and it doesn't help, everything is connected correctly,

Please help a girl out here!!!

 

[oskerw]

I agree that it might be your motherboard as well. Have you changed any settings in the BIOS? You can try clearing the CMOS and seeing if that helps. You can jump the pin which is located beneath the first PCIE x16 slot on that motherboard, or just remove the motherboard battery and place it back in after a minute or so. Shut down the computer first before trying this. You can also look through your BIOS and look for anything suspicious. Make sure your primary boot disk is set to your HDD...things of that sort.

 

[Dee Kay]

With all the things you listed I didn't see any mention of updating the BIOS and or other drivers. Have you blown the dirt/dust out of the ram slots on the problem unit? You switched the ram but did you run memtest86 test it for errors that may only show up on one unit? What are the specs of the PSU for the gaming unit?

Did you check both ends or switch SATA cables in case that may be the problem on your gaming unit? Have you run prime 95 to check the CPU on the problem system? Have you checked the board for any evidence of bulging caps or bad traces? Just trying to rule out a few possible causes.

 

[HelpAGirlOut]

@oskerw

Ive cleared the CMOS by jumping the two pins in addition to removing the battery, nothing was fixed, I also disabled the "restart on system failure" option to see if it would give me any error codes, it does not.

 

[HelpAGirlOut]

With all the things you listed I didn't see any mention of updating the BIOS and or other drivers. Have you blown the dirt/dust out of the ram slots on the problem unit? You switched the ram but did you run memtest86 test it for errors that may only show up on one unit? What are the specs of the PSU for the gaming unit?

Did you check both ends or switch SATA cables in case that may be the problem on your gaming unit? Have you run prime 95 to check the CPU on the problem system? Have you checked the board for any evidence of bulging caps or bad traces? Just trying to rule out a few possible causes.

Ive ran memtest while the RAM from the gaming computer was in the streaming computer, no issues after 12 passes. I keep my computer dust free OCD certified. All drivers are up to date. I have not ran prime 95 on the gaming computer, I can not get to the desktop, is there a way to run that without the computer booting up all the way?

 

[oskerw]

You've ruled out a lot of things already. I would recommend updating your BIOS like Dee Kay said, and if that doesn't work you might have to contact ASrock to replace your motherboard under warranty. A boot issue I've had in the past (failure to post) was solved when I returned the motherboard and ordered a new one.

 

[HelpAGirlOut]

I agree that it might be your motherboard as well. Have you changed any settings in the BIOS? You can try clearing the CMOS and seeing if that helps. You can jump the pin which is located beneath the first PCIE x16 slot on that motherboard, or just remove the motherboard battery and place it back in after a minute or so. Shut down the computer first before trying this. You can also look through your BIOS and look for anything suspicious. Make sure your primary boot disk is set to your HDD...things of that sort.

The BIOS has been cleared already, then updated to 1.7 from asrocks website.

 

[HelpAGirlOut]

With all the things you listed I didn't see any mention of updating the BIOS and or other drivers. Have you blown the dirt/dust out of the ram slots on the problem unit? You switched the ram but did you run memtest86 test it for errors that may only show up on one unit? What are the specs of the PSU for the gaming unit?

Did you check both ends or switch SATA cables in case that may be the problem on your gaming unit? Have you run prime 95 to check the CPU on the problem system? Have you checked the board for any evidence of bulging caps or bad traces? Just trying to rule out a few possible causes

Ive swapped the CPUs with each other, gaming PC still wont turn on, and the gaming CPU is in the streaming PC running prime 95, no issues to report

 

[Dee Kay]

Reboot and try hitting f-8 and seeing if you can get to the windows advanced options. If you can then click on last known good configuration and hit enter. Also try the same and see if you can get to safe mode to show any problem devices. If that fails then try placing your install disc in your optical drive, changing your BIOS to boot from cd first, and then seeing if you can enter windows to do a repair install.

 

[HelpAGirlOut]

Reboot and try hitting f-8 and seeing if you can get to the windows advanced options. If you can then click on last known good configuration and hit enter. Also try the same and see if you can get to safe mode to show any problem devices. If that fails then try placing your install disc in your optical drive, changing your BIOS to boot from cd first, and then seeing if you can enter windows to do a repair install.

All of those actions failed, just threw me back into a reboot loop, as for entering windows to do a repair install, the screen for "windows is loading files" comes up, then it reboots

 

[Dee Kay]

Did that SSD fully load windows on your other PC? If it did then it pretty well rules out a bad block/sector on the SSD. It sounds like a hardware error on the gaming PC. Try removing any external devices like dvd, sound card, printer, etc, one at a time and see if you can get any different results.

 

[HelpAGirlOut]

Did that SSD fully load windows on your other PC? If it did then it pretty well rules out a bad block/sector on the SSD. It sounds like a hardware error on the gaming PC. Try removing any external devices like dvd, sound card, printer, etc, one at a time and see if you can get any different results.

Ive completely swapped the hardware out between the two computers, except for the motherboards, regardless of whats attached to the streaming pc, it all works, and the opposite happens with the gaming pc.

 

[Dee Kay]

Then I would contact ASRock and start a case with them to see what they can do as far as an RMA on the board.