Stuck at Loading Operating System - Gigabyte H67N-USB3-B3, i5-2400, Samsung 2x4, GTX970

[novasix]

Hi all,

I currently have a little problem on my hand, would love to get some insight!

So here's my problem. I bought this board along with the CPU back in summer of 2013, it has been working perfectly, but the last confirmed working state was back in February, when I installed Hackintosh 10.12.3 on it and it worked perfectly. But now 4 month later when I tried to install Windows on it, it would not work.

It POSTs just fine and I can get into BIOS to change settings or reset to optimized settings. I tried all kinds of combinations of BIOS settings like ACHI/IDE and other miscellaneous stuff. I can see my Windows installation USB listed in the boot menu after pressing F12, but after I click enter the screen go to "Loading Operating System..." and then the flashing thing goes to the next line and keeps flashing there without any progress whatsoever.

Additionally when I plug in the keyboard and USB drive, sometimes the screen would say no keyboard detected and would work again when I unplug and switch to another USB port. But that particular USB port isn't broken because it would work on the next boot and the previous switched to USB port would stop working, so it's kinda random.

It currently has the F9 bios, which is the latest released by Gigabyte back in 2012, and I thought I could reflash it just in case it's not a corrupted BIOS problem, but after putting the .f9 file onto a FAT32 formatted 16GB USB drive, the drive shows up in boot options but when I try to access it in Q-Flash the motherboard says No Drive Found.

Now there is a little difference between the current setup and what it was 4 month ago, and that's the PSU. I was using the 450W PSU that came with the Fractal Design Node 202, but this time I switched to the Corsair SF600 just to test the PSU. Didn't think how PSU would cause this so I haven't tried switching back to the 450W, but do let me know if this could be the cause and I'll try switching back.

Thank you all in advanced for any help you can provide, I would love to get it working again!

Sincerely,
James

 

[mcnumpty23]

try a different flash drive

or use a different software to make the bootable flash drive

 

[novasix]

try a different flash drive

or use a different software to make the bootable flash drive

Thanks for the reply! I will try that but I forgot to mention, I also tried to boot directly to an empty hard drive connected via SATA. Normally when booting into an empty drive, shouldn't it say something like no operating system found, or insert startup media and such? Booting into the empty drive result in the exact same screen, flashing cursor after the "Loading Operating System" line.

Also the USB drive works on my other motherboard/CPU combos yesterday. So I am pretty sure that's not the problem.

 

[mcnumpty23]

been ages since i tried booting to a blank drive

but pretty sure it ends up with a flashing cursor at top left--it might or might not give messages before that

also if the flash drive is in a usb 3.0 port try a usb 2.0 port

 

[DRagor]

Looks like your motherboard has some kind of issue with USB ports. Have you tried putting that USB stick with OS in case (front) USB ports? Also, check all the USB-related settings in BIOS.

 

[novasix]

been ages since i tried booting to a blank drive

but pretty sure it ends up with a flashing cursor at top left--it might or might not give messages before that

also if the flash drive is in a usb 3.0 port try a usb 2.0 port

Looks like your motherboard has some kind of issue with USB ports. Have you tried putting that USB stick with OS in case (front) USB ports? Also, check all the USB-related settings in BIOS.

Thanks for the reply. The Node 202 only has USB3 headers so I haven't try front panel USB yet, that is a good point I'll try it on another case with USB 2.0 tonight. Thanks!

 

[mbarnes86]

hi

try booting up with no hard disk or dvd or usb disks connected

it should bootup & display error about no bootable device and possibly start looking for a pxe server to boot from

there is a difference in messages between booting from a broken hard disk, a new hard disk (no partitions & formating) or with a corrupted windows disk

with no disks connected you can be sure any messages come from the bios or uefi

regards
mike barnes

 

[novasix]

hi

try booting up with no hard disk or dvd or usb disks connected

it should bootup & display error about no bootable device and possibly start looking for a pxe server to boot from

there is a difference in messages between booting from a broken hard disk, a new hard disk (no partitions & formating) or with a corrupted windows disk

with no disks connected you can be sure any messages come from the bios or uefi

regards
mike barnes

So I tried booting without anything connected except the keyboard, now it shows

loading operating systems...
Disk boot failure, insert system disk and press enter

And when I insert the USB, and pressed enter, it goes to the flashing underscore with nothing else on the screen.

 

[mbarnes86]

Hi

did you bootup with USB disk in?
(if bios file has correct name then bios would recognise it and offer to flash bios)


or boot up
get message about no boot device
then insert USB?
not expecting anything to happen

have you tried reseting cmos?

there is usually a jumper to trigger this
should clear cmos settings and allow you to load bios defaults
SATA hard disk controller setting usually AHCI (except if old system and using Win XP)

read your motherboard user guide in case flashing bios requires FAT16 and upto 2GB usb memory stick not FAT 32

regards
Mike Barnes

 

[novasix]

Hi

did you bootup with USB disk in?
(if bios file has correct name then bios would recognise it and offer to flash bios)


or boot up
get message about no boot device
then insert USB?
not expecting anything to happen

have you tried reseting cmos?

there is usually a jumper to trigger this
should clear cmos settings and allow you to load bios defaults
SATA hard disk controller setting usually AHCI (except if old system and using Win XP)

read your motherboard user guide in case flashing bios requires FAT16 and upto 2GB usb memory stick not FAT 32

regards
Mike Barnes

I booted without the USB plugged in and waited for the boot failure message to appear after the "Loading OS...", after clicking enter it just goes back to blinking cursor.

Gigabyte Q-Flash says FAT32 is fine but I don't know, don't have a 2GB USB to test.

I took out the CMOS battery and unplugged power supply during lunch time, I'll try to use the CMOS jumper as well.