PC froze randomly, now freezing on boot

[mavsynchroid]

My pc froze while idle. Didn't realize until i came back. Restarted it but now it freezes while booting where it says "Arsenal Gaming" and "press del to run BIOS setup, or f11 to run boot menu. Freezes a second after this appears. After a couple of times i pushed del and entered the BIOS setup. It didn't freeze or anything. Finally when i left that menu, the pc rebooted and froze in the same spot. The only difference is now it says "Preparing Automatic Repair". I mean, this sounds like a HD failure but it was running perfectly fine until this just suddenly happened. Is there anything else I can try? I have a lot of stuff on this HD, and it's a brand new ssd. Just doesn't make sense for it to suddenly crash when it was running perfectly.


EDIT: I just realized. There is one thing I did that i don't normally do. I usually use my ps4 controller with my pc, so i always have the ps4 usb cable plugged into the front usb port. Have never taken it out since i plugged it in. However today i wanted to play ps4 for the first time in a while, so i unplugged the cable from the usb to use it. I hadn't used the pc since, but it was frozen when i came back. I know it sounds ridiculous, but i really think unplugging this cable for some reason caused my pc to fail and is also what is causing it to freeze on booting. Tried plugging it back in and rebooting but it didn't help.

 

[Jwpanz]

Have you tried resetting your CMOS yet?

 

[mavsynchroid]

Jwpanz, thank you for the response. How do i do that? Also, do i lose anything from doing it like my stuff on my hdd?

 

[Jwpanz]

You will lose no data from your HDD. Clearing your CMOS basically resets your BIOS to clear out any errors.

Turn off and unplug your PC. On your motherboard, locate the flat, round battery (it’s silver). Simply pop it out and let the PC sit for about a minute. Pop the battery back in and attempt to boot.

 

[mavsynchroid]

I found it, but for the life of my, i can't get the battery out. I can make it pop up a little by pushing that metal thing, but that's it

 

[Jwpanz]

The other way to do it is to short the CMOS pins on the motherboard by bridging the pins with a something metallic like a screwdriver head. The pins should be labeled with something like CMOS, CLEAR, CLEAR P W, or something like that. If you can’t find it then it should be in your motherboard’s manual. A quick Google search of your motherboard should help too.

 

[mavsynchroid]

Got the battery out and waited 5 minutes. Put it back in and rebooted. However it still freezes at the same spot. When it first shows the screen it freezes at, there's also a little loading dotted circle that spins to let you know it's loading. However ever since this all began, that loading circle freezes a second atter it appears every single time.

Here's the link of a screen shot.

https://imgur.com/a/dY0oU




Those two white dots above the text are actually the circle loading thingy, only frozen and not moving.. been letting it sit at this screen for a while now

 

[Jwpanz]

Ok, try removing any USB connected devices from your PC. This includes the controller and anything else besides a mouse and keyboard. Try to boot that way.

If it fails, try booting without your drive connected and attempt to enter the BIOS. See what temperatures your PC is running at and verify that your hardware is being detected properly (CPU, RAM, graphics card, etc.).

Also, just a side not here, but the reason you’re seeing “Starting Automatic Repair” is because Windows 10 will do that when the boot process is interrupted three consecutive times.

 

[mavsynchroid]

Ok, try removing any USB connected devices from your PC. This includes the controller and anything else besides a mouse and keyboard. Try to boot that way.

If it fails, try booting without your drive connected and attempt to enter the BIOS. See what temperatures your PC is running at and verify that your hardware is being detected properly (CPU, RAM, graphics card, etc.).

Also, just a side not here, but the reason you’re seeing “Starting Automatic Repair” is because Windows 10 will do that when the boot process is interrupted three consecutive times.

Ok, so it's suddenly working now. I left the PC off for a good while and did some other things. When I came back and booted, it started no problem. It also didn't say anything about automatic repair. What should I do now to ensure it won't freeze again? I admit I've been lax in antivirus's. However half of the "Free" antivirus programs aren't free at all. They let you scan for "free", then when you click fix issues, it'll bring you to a site and try to charge you 50 bucks. Are there any legit completely FREE programs I can download to clean up my PC in case it was a virus that caused this?

Off topic, when I could get into my bios earlier, the pc temp seemed fine.

I still honestly think the USB cable has something to do with. I know that sounds ridiculous but it's the only change I made. The PC was built like 8 months ago and has been running like a dream since with no issues. Everything except the spare HDD I use for storing stuff is new.

 

[Jwpanz]

Avast, CCleaner and Malwarebytes are good free options for cleaning up your PC. It may have had something to do with your USB cable so I would advise going into device manager and updating the USB drivers just in case.