Many Problems, PC Slowly Dying. Bootloops, corrupt apps, start menu messing up etc.

[kerrieseatter]

OS: Windows 10 64-bit
Motherboard: Gigabyte X79-UD3
BIOS: F18
Processor: Intel Core i7-4820K CPU @ 3.70GHz (8 CPUs), ~3.7GHz
Graphics Card: NVIDIA GeForce GTX 660

I'm not really sure how to format this or if I'm doing it right. I'm also pretty inexperienced when it comes to PC workings, so bear with me. I use this PC for web browsing and gaming.
I'm afraid my PC is slowly dying, most of the problems have come about within the past month or two, but the bootloop problem has been ever-present.

I've had this PC for about 3 years now? I've lost count. It was prebuilt from Arrow Computers Australia.

I'll just list the problems in chronological order.

1. Nearly every time the PC goes into sleep mode, upon waking it goes into a bootloop, sometimes it recovers on its own after a while, other times I have to hold the power button. After holding the power button it boots semi-normally. In both ways, recovering from the bootloop results in the main BIOS having to be restored from a backup (corruption if I remember correctly).

2. Apps disappeared from the start menu. I've tried a couple solutions but nothing is working. Only a select few apps are appearing in the "all apps" section, the rest aren't there. Trying to open some apps that are visible in the start menu does nothing, the app shortcut is pressed but the app doesn't open and the start menu doesn't close.

3. Every couple times I boot up the PC, I get a notification saying Windows Defender is not on, I go to turn it on but nothing happens.

4. Upon boot, on the motherboard splash screen, disk checking begins (with the option to cancel, of course). The repair becomes very slow and takes a few minutes to go from 52-55% then jumps to 100% complete.

5. Notifications tell me I should scan the drive for errors & fix them. Upon clicking the notification, the security & maintenance panel from the control center opens, with no options to scan & repair drives. The panel tells me all drives are normal.

6. Firefox became corrupt. Suddenly started constantly crashing tabs. After a PC restart, Firefox wouldn't open and an error message displayed saying something was corrupt. Had to do a reinstall.

7. For about 5 minutes during startup (which is now MUCH longer), disk usage is at 100%. The main offenders are:
- Service host: Superfetch
- Antimalware Service Executable
- System
- Various NVIDIA processes, from the GeForce Experience app


8. Overwatch also became corrupt (I think). The launcher couldn't locate core files - including the application itself - after a couple of unsuccessful repair scans through the Blizzard Client, a repair scan and actual repair froze up the PC. After waiting about 10-15 minutes, the PC forced itself to restart with no bluescreen (that I saw). During the repair scan that froze the PC, strange noises started coming from the tower. Not sure how to explain it. Imagine a low vibrating noise for about a second, a second of silence then a very short little buzzing beep. This was constant. Every time the little beep happened/happens, the red light on the tower flashed (hard drive being accessed?). This noise now persists upon boot and startup for about 5 minutes after boot. the noise seems to happen during 100% disk usage.

9. After the above forced restart, a notification shows up saying a USB device I plugged in malfunctioned and is not working, I think it's the NETGEAR USB network adapter, as my PC has no way to connect to the internet. Unplugging and plugging the adapter back in allows me to use the internet, the notification still persists.

10. Overwatch crashed, a graphics card crash. I updated to the latest driver and the problems seem to have gone away.

11. The PC bluescreened! I started up the PC, startup was taking a while and those weird noises were there. Suddenly during this, there was a bluescreen. 'CRITICAL_PROCESS_DIED' This is the first bluescreen I've experienced with this PC. There was a forced restart and a drive repair scan. It took forever, I was contemplating turning the PC off via power button, I thought it was hanging!.

Now, a while ago (a year? I don't know), the PC was updating Windows and something went wrong. It hung on the boot screen with only a flashing underscore. the fix was to completely reinstall windows and format the hard drive (iirc). Maybe this can provide some insight.

Sorry for the information overload, I just wanted to provide as much info as possible.
If someone has any help whatsoever please help! I'm afraid the PC might die at any moment
Just looking for a solution to any of the above problems, I have a nagging feeling that they're connected.

Thanks!

UPDATE:more corruptions it seems, the Blizzard app is "either not designed to run on Windows or it contains an error. Yay. I'll reinstall the app.

 

[Colif]

have you thought about a clean install? When was last time you started clean? If never, that could be a good reason for some of the errors. It sounds like it could be a good idea

Are you on revision 1 or 1.1 of the motherboard? Neither lists F18 as a BIOS, current one for both is F20

 

[SoggyTissue]

RAM check - sounds like a faulty ram issue.

faulty ram fills your hdd with sht, corrupts any programs that are resident including sleep, etc etc. (which includes drivers to make your periphials work). shadowing (bios) makes it worse.

please run RAM check program, remove all but 1 RAM stick and see if your system is stable.

there maybe a bios issue as in your op point 1, which could cause RAm to behave poorly and exhibit symptoms similar to RAM fault.

 

[captaincharisma]

you may have a virus if defender refuses to enable. nut at this point i would backup you data and do a clean install. if it still constantly checks you disk or attempts a repair then your HDD may be going

 

[kerrieseatter]

Just tried a RAM check with Memtest86. 3hrs 40mins later and 0 errors. I removed all but 1 RAM stick, for both sticks. With both sticks the PC ran with no difference (other than slower loadup times of course). I wasn't paying attention with the first RAM stick, but when the second stick is isolated, the strange noises stop. Progress? Who knows haha.

I'll check the motherboard's revision in just a moment, the LEDs are blinding me.

 

[SoggyTissue]

maybe one of the RAM slots is damaged, which creates the noise. at least your ears are safe now !

 

[kerrieseatter]

Well with the noises, they've completely stopped! Not sure if taking the RAM out and putting it back in helped but that's a plus!

The motherboard is revision 1.1, I'm guessing I just upgrade to the latest BIOS? I'll look it up.
Edit: Since there are warnings saying it's pretty risky, I'll research it a bit and wait for a response, I just want to be sure.

 

[Colif]

updating bios might make it work better with windows 10 new power options which could be reason your PC bootloops on startup.
Your motherboard has dualbios

Motherboards that support DualBIOS have two BIOS onboard, a main BIOS and
a backup BIOS. Normally, the system works on the main BIOS. However, if the main BIOS is corrupted or damaged, the backup BIOS will take over on the next system boot and copy the BIOS file to the main BIOS to ensure normal system operation. For the sake of system safety, users cannot update the backup BIOS manually.

From your manual.

if you download your manual, it explains on pages 64 to 66 how to update bios. I would link it here but it shows pictures which i can't copy into here.

But many of your problems would be easiest fixed with either a reset of windows 10 forcing it to reinstall new drivers, or a fresh install. If you got a virus, even more reason to start from scratch as you cannot tell if its really all gone.

 

[kerrieseatter]

updating bios might make it work better with windows 10 new power options which could be reason your PC bootloops on startup.
Your motherboard has dualbios

Motherboards that support DualBIOS have two BIOS onboard, a main BIOS and
a backup BIOS. Normally, the system works on the main BIOS. However, if the main BIOS is corrupted or damaged, the backup BIOS will take over on the next system boot and copy the BIOS file to the main BIOS to ensure normal system operation. For the sake of system safety, users cannot update the backup BIOS manually.

From your manual.

if you download your manual, it explains on pages 64 to 66 how to update bios. I would link it here but it shows pictures which i can't copy into here.

But many of your problems would be easiest fixed with either a reset of windows 10 forcing it to reinstall new drivers, or a fresh install. If you got a virus, even more reason to start from scratch as you cannot tell if its really all gone.

Okay so new problem.. after restarting the PC to do drive repairs, it's hit a restart-bootloop where it hits a bluescreen. After restarting it does an automatic repair on the motherboard splash screen that doesn't result in anything useful. Yay! I'm just going to do a reset of Win10 as you've suggested (thanks! ), let's see if this works!

 

[kerrieseatter]

After failing to reset the PC on both modes, I'm doing a reinstall of windows. Only problem is that once the PC reset during the reinstall, it brought the reinstall back to the beginning? I'm so confuseddddd

 

[Colif]

Sigh... that is a fault of the installer when using a USB, the answer is either take the USB out and restart PC (as the install might just keep going) or when it gets to this page below and says its about to restart, take the USB out before it does, as after this stage it will be using your hard drive, not the USB.

 

[kerrieseatter]

ah yeah, I thought I deleted that message oops! Realised the problem as soon as I posted that. Anyway, the reinstall seems to have worked! (Thanks!) Things seem to be running fine so far!