[SOLVED] "ntoskrnl.exe" on startup, bizarre boot error

[Crazyb2000]

Hello,
I've been troubleshooting this for about a full day now and wondered if anyone could potentially shine some light on the issue I'm facing. After a forced shutdown a couple of days ago, I wasn't able to properly boot my PC, the error on startup being that ntoskrnl was corrupted or missing. I went ahead and tried to use Windows 10 startup repair and it simply said that it couldn't "detect any problems". Using chkdsk on the SSD that Windows was installed on didn't show any problems either. After backing up all my files I then re-installed Windows 10, reformatting my drive for a clean install, and upon trying to start up my PC I was then shown the same ntoskrnl error saying that it was either missing or corrupt. This completely boggled my mind until I realized that, upon subsequent retries I would see a different Windows DLL as part of the "missing or corrupted" message. After jumping into my BIOS and restoring my default settings, I was able to boot into my new Windows 10 install with no problems.

However, upon restarting my PC, I was greeted with the same bluescreen telling me that ntoskrnl was missing. I jumped back into my BIOS but couldn't find any problems so I simply exited. Strange thing is, after going into my BIOS and restarting from there, I was able to boot into Windows again. Restarting from Windows resulted in the bluescreen but restarting and going into the BIOS and then exiting led to the OS actually loading. I can only imagine that something is iffy with my BIOS though it hasn't been that long since I've updated it. On that note, there haven't been any hardware changes recently either. It seems as though my PC works completely fine so long as I enter the BIOS setup first.

I haven't been able to find anyone else online describing a similar issue, so any help would be appreciated.

TL;DR I can only boot into Windows if I load into the BIOS first, otherwise I get a bluescreen about missing system files. It's an MSI BIOS that has been recently updated.

 

[Colif]

start up repair is pretty useless
ntoskrnl - windows kernel. Without it windows can't do anything
what are specs of the PC?

something odd. shouldn't get same error twice.
why did you force the shutdown?

shouldn't need to go into bios to avoid errors unless its an old driver
humor me, turn this off and see if it changes need to go into bios - https://www.tenforums.com/tutorials/4189-turn-off-fast-startup-windows-10-a.html

 

[Crazyb2000]

Didn't seem to make a difference. My own personal theory is that the SSD and the Windows install are fine, it is a clean install after all, but something's going wrong with the drive it picks. I had assumed based on the messages that it was, for some reason, booting into the wrong drive hence the "missing" part of the error. When I plug in a boot USB, it will prioritize that despite the priority being the hard disk.

I forced the shutdown when the PC wouldn't shut down normally. It was simply stuck on the blue shutdown screen and I had left it for quite some time and it got to the point where I needed to turn it off. I had imagined that, that had corrupted the old Windows install but, as stated, this still happens with a new and clean Windows install. Not to mention I can still boot into Windows so long as I open the BIOS settings first.

Relevant specs are:

OS - Windows 10 Home 64bit
Mobo - MSI B450 Tomohawk Max
OS SSD - Samsung 860 EVO 1TB
CPU - AMD Ryzen 5 3600X
Ram - 32.0 GB

I do have other harddrives in my system but they aren't top priority in the BIOS.