Question PC is failing to load Windows after turning on TPM ?

[JFMacOl]

PC is failing to load Windows after turning on TPM. Repair mode and USB boot drive are unresponsive.

Earlier today I tried turning on TPM on a B550 A Pro MSI motherboard to prepare to update to Windows 11. However after turning on TPM and rebooting, my PC failed to load Windows and after waiting for an hour to see if it was related to any type of process related to the change in BIOS settings I restarted the machine.

Afterwards I noticed that no matter what I did, disabling tpm or resetting the BIOS to factory settings, this issue remained. Simply hanging on the motherboard logo with the loading animation running on loop.
So far I have tried removing everything but the boot drive and a single stick of RAM
And trying to boot from a USB boot drive.

The real problem is that in both recovery mode and from the boot drive I invariably get to a screen with nothing in it but my cursor.

In the case of Recovery mode, the Black screen of death is all that greets me. Systems seems fine, but I cannot interact with anything and no key combinations work.

Similarly, with the USB boot drive, I can boot it (I have an older win 10 one and one with the most recent version available for download) and in both cases I get to a screen with the blue/purple background and my cursor but nothing else.

Are there any suggestions?

Prior to this pc was working perfectly with no issues.

Update 1:
Small update, it seems that there is *something* loading from the boot usb.

Problem is, It is just what appears to be a purple square. Seems that the GUI is failing to appear as I can in fact hit alt+f4 to close that screen, whatever it is. I honestly don't even know what to do.

After flashing BIOS (which I realized I hadn't done before posting) TPM and secure boot were turned on properly. But problem persists. Am I missing some rather self evident issue fixable by BIOS settings or is this issue OS related?

Update 2:
Managed to open a command prompt while booting from a bootable win10 usb.

I am currently looking up which commands will help me the most.

One thing to note is that the header doesn't point towards the system folder, rather it reads:

"X: \ Sources>"

Once again, any and all advice will be greatly appreciated.

 

[Lutfij]

Welcome to the forums, newcomer!

" After flashing BIOS (which I realized I hadn't done before posting) TPM and secure boot were turned on properly. But problem persists. Am I missing some rather self evident issue fixable by BIOS settings or is this issue OS related? "

Just to double check, what BIOS version are you on for your motherboard? Following that, did you clear the CMOS after verifying that the BIOS was successfully flashed to the latest version? Speaking of BIOS, does your primary boot drive show up to be the SSD/OS drive, as in Windows Boot Manager(insert drive's make and model)?

 

[JFMacOl]

After flashing the current version is "B550-A PRO (MS-7C56) V10.H" the latest version not in Beta. After doing so and experiencing the same issues, I did indeed clear the CMOS. I have also booted in a minimal config.

Speaking of BIOS, does your primary boot drive show up to be the SSD/OS drive, as in Windows Boot Manager(insert drive's make and model)?

Yes, BIOS shows 3 items in the boot options:
1 a Western Digital SSD from where I boot usually
2 an old ADATA drive that I formatted after transfering the windows install to a more reliable drive. Currently in use as a scratch disk for After effects
3 Boot USB drive. Kingston

Motherboard inspection in the BIOS also shows the rest of my drives correctly.

Currently I am trying to get to the repair options from the USB boot somewhat successfully. It is taking quite a while to load any and all menus and I find myself stuck with long waiting times. Most of what I've been able to find in the meantime indicate its possibly a boot loader error. I just haven't had the chance to see directly, or have avoided doing anything in fear of managing to FUBAR this even more.

 

[Ralston18]

This motherboard?

https://download.msi.com/archive/mnu_exe/mb/B550-APRO_EN.pdf

Verify that I found the applicable User Manual.

Review the entire manual to double check all connections and configuration settings are correct.

And pay close attention to the RAM configurations on regarding DIMM slots on Page 28.

Especially making sure that the first physically installed RAM is placed into DIMMA2.

Details matter.

 

[JFMacOl]

Yes that is the model of the motherboard.

 

[JFMacOl]

Update 3 (Hopefully final unless something else breaks)
This issue started after enabling TPM and SecureBoot in the BIOS settings for the MSI B550 A PRO motherboard. However the fix involved identyfing and removing a drive that was failing.

Drive in question was the ADATA drive mentioned in use as a scratch disk. It appears that even after formatting for its mentioned use system stll tried to boot from a drive that no longer contained any relevant windows files. However even after removal I had to run commands to repair master boot record in order to successfully load into Windows and verify the rest of the drives and hardware working properly.

I can post the commands I used or the link where I followed the instructions if requested and allowed to do so.

Thank you for your help. Fingers crossed that was the worst of it and I can diagnose other issues with less panic.