Help - Troubleshooting a blue screen on the Windows Start Screen

[rushrage]

Hello!

I've got a little bit of a problem on my hands. I was recently investigating why some of the USB ports on my computer weren't working. I tried uninstalling some of the USB controllers and interfaces (through device manager) and restarting. I didn't seem to work. With further research I decided to look into reseting my BIOS, or something. So I entered my BIOS to look around. I didn't think I changed anything. But when I left the BIOS screen and went to boot windows it crashed on the start up screen.

Here's a video of what it looks like: https://youtu.be/FiBJ-3DQCGk Basically the Windows logo starts to slide into place when it freezes for a second, shows a blue screen for a breve moment, and then restarts the computer. Here is a picture of the blue screen that it temporally flashes (it's a bit fuzzy because it flashes for only a little bit):

From there I tried launching the Windows "Startup Repair" option but with no success.

I also tried the Windows repair tool that you get by spamming f8 before Windows starts but Windows then doesn't recognize my mouse or keyboard (no water what port I plug them into):

So I researched the issue further and decided to try and flash my BIOS. I have a Z77 Extreme4 motherboard, so I went to [urlExt=https://www.asrock.com/mb/Intel/Z77%20Extreme4/#BIOS]their website[/urlExt] and downloaded the drivers to flash. I flashed both the 2.9 and the L.22 versions (now I'm wondering if I should try the 2.90p version). Both successfully finished their installation but didn't fix anything. The only different is that the L.22 BIOS made it hang on the black before the Windows logo before going to the blue screen.

I then tried to reset the CMOS (I stuck with the 2.9 BIOS version). I changed the jumper from 1-2 to 2-3, replugged in everything (nothing turned on), and then moved it back to 1-2. I think it did reset some stuff (because I had to go back into my drives to select the right boot drive), but it also didn't change anything.

Any ideas of what I can do? I've been reading up and can't find anything else (I'll continue looking). I'll post my PC spec below.

Thank you so much for your help!

- Matt

• 
  Specs:
  Windows 7 (64bit)
  ASRock - Z77 Extreme4 ATX LGA1155 Motherboard
  Intel - Core i5-3570K 3.4GHz Quad-Core Processor
  Gigabyte - GeForce GTX 770 2GB WINDFORCE Video Card

 

[johnbl]

basically, windows could not read the registry. I would go into bios and check what sata mode the sata controller is in. Most likely the sata mode changed when you reset the bios.
try setting the sata controller to AHCI (most common setting) and reboot to see if you can access the hard drive.
other modes might be RAID or IDE mode.

There are also conditions where you will have to boot onto a repair disk and run chkdsk c: /f
(make sure you set the sata to the correct mode first)

 

[rushrage]

That did it! It was in AHCI and when I changed it to IDE it worked right away. Thank you sooooo much for your help! I had been working on this all day. Cheers!