Question PC no longer boots/posts past bios

[momscooking]

So heres the tldr: pc started blue-screening and crashing like crazy the past few days. Everything pointed to a corrupt windows-beta installed, with some errors coming from graphics drivers. Decided to reinstall windows, froze during this process, no longer boots past motherboard logo on screen.

Heres what ive tried:
-Removed and moved around different ram sticks
-Removed/unplugged any/all devices connected except for a keyboard
-Re-flashed bios with newest version
-Cleared CMOS
-Switched to secondary on-board bios (Aorus Z390 Master Rev 1.0 has 2 bios chips)
-Reflashed secondary bios to 1 version before the current one
-Made 2 windows installation media devices with 2 different external hard-drives, one has windows 10 setup and the other windows 11
-Switched CSM both on and off, attempting to boot with both options
-Checked to make sure BIOS is UEFI as well as installation drive
-No mobo LEDs showing issues with hardware

I forget if theres anything else Ive tried, but Im at a loss here. I can sometimes get the windows installation logo to appear when CSM is enabled but that too freezes on that screen, much like the Aorus logo. See here: Frozen Screen. Im about to call it quits and purchase new hardware, I cant figure out if this is a motherboard issue or a CPU issue anymore. If anyone has any suggestions that would be much appreciated!!

Heres the full hardware:
-Intel i9-9900k
-Aorus Z390 Master Rev 1.0
-Corsair Vengeance RGB Pro 8GB x4 (CMW16GX4M2C3200C16W)
-ASUS TUFF RTX 3080
-Samsung 990 PRO NVME 2TB
-Samsung 970 EVO Plus NVME 500GB
-Samsung 850 SSD 500GB
-Seasonic 1300W Gold Power Supply

 

[zinkles]

since it froze during the reinstall, the installation is corrupt, and it has nothing to boot into. aka, no operating system.

Made 2 windows installation media devices with 2 different external hard-drives, one has windows 10 setup and the other windows 11

did you install windows through this or you left the installation media in the drive?

try putting the installation media on a USB device and plugging it in and then booting from it. if you have trouble booting like that, select the boot order from the bios and put more priority towards the USB. now you should be able to install windows to whatever drive you want. continue with the installation and then after it's done, windows is installed 👍

unplug the USB, then change the boot order so that the drive you have windows on (the one you installed just now) has more priority, aka, on top of the list.

reboot

Windows should load 🙂

 

[momscooking]

since it froze during the reinstall, the installation is corrupt, and it has nothing to boot into. aka, no operating system.


did you install windows through this or you left the installation media in the drive?

try putting the installation media on a USB device and plugging it in and then booting from it. if you have trouble booting like that, select the boot order from the bios and put more priority towards the USB. now you should be able to install windows to whatever drive you want. continue with the installation and then after it's done, windows is installed 👍

unplug the USB, then change the boot order so that the drive you have windows on (the one you installed just now) has more priority, aka, on top of the list.

reboot

Windows should load 🙂

I used the Windows Media Creation Tool and selected USB drive after formatting both of the external harddrives to FAT32. When either is plugged into the PC and I select the drive that now shows UEFI OS (drive name) as the primary boot drive, the PC automatically then shows the AORUS logo and freezes there. When I switched CSM on and just selected the drive itself (which only shows the drive name and not including the UEFI OS title), the windows logo appears and then it freezes on that screen

 

[zinkles]

I used the Windows Media Creation Tool and selected USB drive after formatting both of the external harddrives to FAT32.

where will you be installing windows onto? the external harddrive or somewhere else?
did you later use the usb to boot from and install to a harddrive?

also not if you're installing to the harddrive make sure it's not fat32, cause it will have its limitations. it should be NTFS formatted.

 

[momscooking]

where will you be installing windows onto? the external harddrive or somewhere else?
did you later use the usb to boot from and install to a harddrive?

also not if you're installing to the harddrive make sure it's not fat32, cause it will have its limitations. it should be NTFS formatted.

I am using the external hard drive as the installation tool only, I am installing to my 970 Evo Plus NVME SSD that had my previous windows installation on it. Earlier today I was able to get halway through the installation of windows on that particular drive, but I had to format the previous version of Windows I had installed. So I have no OS to boot on at all.

 

[zinkles]

how about using a usb as the installation media? sometimes there's trouble while doing it from the harddrive.

if you have a spare pc, you can get windows installed onto the ssd and then put it in this PC as a last resort.

 

[momscooking]

how about using a usb as the installation media? sometimes there's trouble while doing it from the harddrive.

if you have a spare pc, you can get windows installed onto the ssd and then put it in this PC as a last resort.

I dont have anything other than these external harddrives which Ive used plenty of times before as my installation tool. But also that was another option I was considering, although I only have a laptop and I dont believe it supports a full sized nvme ssd for me to open it up and install it there.

 

[zinkles]

so it seems every time you try the installation fails? does it give any error code or any text that could be used to troubleshoot?

 

[momscooking]

Earlier today I was able to get into the actual external drive and windows setup screen, but it was freezing on installation. After a few tries it simply no longer posts past the bios loading screen. There is no error code given, the motherboard status LEDs show nothing wrong, although at one point they did have the LED on for VGA, but it has since gone away.

 

[momscooking]

so it seems every time you try the installation fails? does it give any error code or any text that could be used to troubleshoot?

Update: motherboard code shows A0. This means “IDE Initialization has started”, this is the exact moment the computer freezes every time. Could this be a hardware issue?

 

[zinkles]

https://www.electronicshub.org/troubleshooting-ide-initialization-is-started-issue/

could be hardware issue, but also could be bios settings are configured incorrectly

 

[momscooking]

https://www.electronicshub.org/troubleshooting-ide-initialization-is-started-issue/

could be hardware issue, but also could be bios settings are configured incorrectly

Ive gone in and checked all my BIOS configuration settings in relation to your post, still having the same issue. I just now tried to create an ISO image and mounted via Rufus, still the exact same problem persists. I appreciate your help though! Any idea if this would be a CPU or motherboard related issue?