Question New Problem - Unreliable PC Start

[jmwest1987]

So I've made no changes recently to my setup, but startup has become unreliable. E.g. this morning started up from cold, the DEL or F2 BIOS prompt appeared, disappeared and reappeared a couple of seconds later, then the TUF Gaming splash screen with the cycling dots - which froze. I pressed the reset button, same thing happened. I pressed the reset button a second time and this time the BIOS reported it was repairing my storage device (which took a minute or two) - after which it booted into Windows.

Yesterday the repair bit didn't happen but it booted into Windows on the second or third attempt. I have reset BIOS to optimised defaults.

Any ideas why this should start happening? How I can diagnose it? Fix it?

ASUS TUF B450-M Plus Gaming
Ryzen 5 2400G
16GB 2400MHz RAM
Powercolor Radeon RX 5500 XT 8GB GPU
Kingston 240GB SATA SSD
Toshiba 1TB 7200RPM SATA HDD

 

[rgd1101]

recheck the hdd/ssd data and power cable.
make and model of the psu?

sound like you should replace it
https://forums.tomshardware.com/thr...-plus-ethernet-adapter.3511086/#post-21214785

 

[jmwest1987]

recheck the hdd/ssd data and power cable.
make and model of the psu?

sound like you should replace it
https://forums.tomshardware.com/thr...-plus-ethernet-adapter.3511086/#post-21214785

It's an Aerocool Integrator 500W Power Supply, 80 Plus Bronze. Not quite sure of relevancy of post you linked which is to do with Ethernet,

 

[rgd1101]

the motherboard have issue

 

[jmwest1987]

Forgive me, but that seems insufficient grounds to diagnose a faulty motherboard. All components have examples of people having problems!

Latest: yesterday it wouldn't boot into Windows at all until I used Safe Mode and then I was able to Restart into Windows but not use shutdown/startup. For the moment I'm not switching it off!!!

I have used sfc and it reports no errors. The disk has no errors either.

I've checked the RAM and GPU seating and SATA cables are secure.

Wondering if the next stage is to restore Windows or whether there are more diagnostics i can perform on hardware?

 

[Deleted member 14196]

No it isn’t insufficient. You have problems with the motherboard right while it’s starting up so there is a problem with the motherboard. it has nothing to do with windows at start up

You have a faulty motherboard

 

[Quanticriver]

usually the first thing a pc does right after the bios splashscreen is accesing your ssd/hdd, whatever you have as a primary boot source, the fact that it was repairing the storage device also points in the direction that your boot source is borked

My suggestion would be to get a hdd/ssd from another pc that has a bootable partition on it (windows, linux, whatever) and try to boot your pc with it, if it works you'll have to replace your initial ssd/hdd

 

[jmwest1987]

I suppose I could make my D Drive bootable with Windows or Linux and see if it boots to that OK.

 

[Quanticriver]

good luck, do post your results for ppl stumbling upon this thread

 

[jmwest1987]

No it isn’t insufficient. You have problems with the motherboard right while it’s starting up so there is a problem with the motherboard. it has nothing to do with windows at start up

You have a faulty motherboard

I'm not doubting what you say, but what makes you say with certainty it's the motherboard? What motherboard fault is indicated by the symptoms?

 

[Deleted member 14196]

first things first.

go into bios and TURN OFF the silly splash screen so you can see what it is doing when it POST and boots. This will tell us more about where it might be failing. If it all worked and suddenly doesn't, and you did not do anything like update BIOS then the mobo is having issues either with some other piece of hardware or something on it's own board.

Turn the splash screen logo thing OFF and see what it says while booting and report back, If your mobo is failing to run bios properly, it's new mobo time. If it's some other hardware issue, you should see it as it posts.

i always turn off the splash screen. detest them all.

 

[jmwest1987]

OK thanks - did that. I also turned off Fast Boot. What follows is pretty repeatable.

First I get a screen with American Megatrends logo at the top - it reports my system, processor, RAM, USB etc and lists my two drives.

Next the screen switches to show the Window (blue parallelogram) with the circle of moving dots ... and the moving dots stop. A very short time after (sub-second) the top of the parallelogram gets sliced off flat, as if something has written to that part of the screen, although nothing is visible.

I then need to press the reset button. On the next boot after the system details usually it states Preparing Automatic Repair followed by Diagnosing Your PC. It then states my PC failed to start correctly (great diagnosis!!!) and gives me options.

It seems pretty consistent that if I choose System Start options and then on restart choose option 5 (Safe Mode with Networking) Windows will start OK. (I'm in Windows Safe Mode now.)

If I choose restart we go back to the start - locking up on the progress circle.

If I restart from Safe Mode, currently it won't boot into Windows either (which it did this morning and yesterday).

 

[jmwest1987]

I suppose I could make my D Drive bootable with Windows or Linux and see if it boots to that OK.

So I’ve installed Ubuntu on D with a new EFI MBR on D. On boot now I get the grub menu. If I choose Ubuntu it loads fine. If I choose Windows Boot Manager I get the lockup problem.

Does this suggest a faulty C drive (SSD)? Or that I need to repair Windows on it? (SFC reports no issues.)

chkdsk on C did not report errors a couple of days ago and SMART is not reporting anything untoward. 2 years seems a rather disappointing time to failure!!!

 

[jmwest1987]

Final (for now?!) piece of diagnosis. I switched the SSD from SATA1 to SATA4 but still have the same symptoms - thereby discounting the SATA port itself.

To my mind this points to the disk - except - why is it that when on the increasingly rare occasions I do get into Windows, it seems to run smoothly enough and it's only on startup I get these problems? Is it a faulty EFI sector (can I repair that?) Or just files thst Windows needs on startup? In which case why does SFC / SCANNOW report nothing back?

(This reply posted from Ubuntu installation...)

 

[Quanticriver]

i do think that disk is borked if you want to know for sure, try it in another pc

but i would just RMA/replace/...

 

[jmwest1987]

I think you’re right. Probably going to order a new one. In the meantime I’m going to try repairing the EFI partition and bootloader just for fun!

 

[Deleted member 14196]

Format and reinstall windows drive.

 

[jmwest1987]

OK - so I managed to install WIndows from a USB onto the SSD - it worked OK ... I installed the Radeon drivers and then Rebooted - to find the same old problem is still extant. Locking on the windows start...

 

[Deleted member 14196]

So it’s the graphics driver is causing the problem

 

[jmwest1987]

So it’s the graphics driver is causing the problem

😭

 

[Deleted member 14196]

can you use DDU to remove all video drivers from the system then install the last known good version of the AMD drivers? That might solve it

 

[jmwest1987]

It's not the graphics drivers - that was simply the reason for the reboot...

 

[jmwest1987]

can you use DDU to remove all video drivers from the system then install the last known good version of the AMD drivers? That might solve it

Humbe Pie time!!! Sorry for doubting you. The reason I assumed it could not be the graphics driver was that with the same version of the driver the system had been working fine for the previous several weeks. I had not updated the driver and the problem started to happen.

Latest status is I installed a new SSD (I had been wanting a new one anyway!) and installed Windows. All was fine - until I installed the AMD driver. I tried 20.4.2 and 20.8.3 (edit — 20.4.2 MS certified). Both cause the same symptoms to appear. I then enter Safe Mode OK.

Given that this problem started happening about a week ago with me not making a recent Radeon driver update, and that IIRC the problem became gradually worse (one reason for suspecting SSD issue) = I guess there are two possible causes I can think of. May be more...

1) A windows update causing a conflict with the driver - but I can't see any specific reports on the Internet of the latest Windows update causing problems wityh the more recent Radeo drivers

2) A GPU hardware issue ... ???

 

[Deleted member 14196]

Yeah you could have GPU issues

 

[jmwest1987]

Here's the latest - I tried once more to install the Radeon drivers having uninstalled my AV (BitDefender) ... and the PC hangs as usual. So I then shut down, removed the GPU, and rebooted. Successfully. The Radeon software is still working with the onboard Radeon graphics. Need to do a few more reboots to ensure it's still working. This makes the GPU number 1 suspect I fear.