Question Sudden Long Boot Times, ATA/SCSI Hang on HwINFO

yksi

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Jan 22, 2015
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Hello, around 18 hours ago my computer suddenly randomly degraded significantly in general. I'll try to explain all the specifics of what happened. I'm leaning towards a graphics card or software issue at the moment but this is so general/random that I figured I'd post here. I'll also note that I was previously experiencing WHEA-Logger 18 errors on my CPU, and posted about CPU troubles here before, but that was a long time ago, and it had been running totally fine for months now without issue. However, this opens the possibility that an insidious CPU problem was hanging around or something... I guess just because the issues stopped happening for a bit doesn't mean they disappeared.

Right off the bat, specs are:
  • Mobo: MSI MAG X570S Tomahawk WiFi
  • CPU: AMD Ryzen 9 5900X
  • GPU: AMD Radeon 5700 XT
Anyway, I tried to play League of Legends and was unable to boot the game. I force closed it and my entire computer seemed to freeze ONLY graphically (music still played, still could talk/hear in Discord, etc). So I hard rebooted, and the POST appeared to fail on the GPU, as I had a white light. However, I did wait a bit, and after about a full minute or so I think, the POST succeeded and the computer began booting. All in all, it took about 3 whole minutes from pressing the power button to loading into Windows, and from then on, most things worked totally fine.

I started attempting to do diagnostics, with HwINFO 64, but I simply cannot get it to boot anymore. It always hopelessly hangs on the "Detecting ATA/SCSI Drives" step. I tried Googling this and found that it was usually an ASMedia drivers issue, but I don't have any ASMedia drivers installed so I seem unable to do the fix needed.

I also downloaded AMD Adrenalin to try to do driver updates, but the installer seems to be eternally stuck on "Checking your PC's hardware for driver and software compatibility..."

I'm wondering if all these signs point to a CPU failure, or a GPU/software failure.

One interesting thing is that I saw that the CurseForge software experienced a breach, where bad actors could push malware under the guise of "updates" to game addons published there. I DID download updates before learning about this, and not long before this all started happening, however, malware scans return no issues. Is it possible that my BIOS could have been tampered with in some way too?
 

yksi

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Jan 22, 2015
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check ssd health?
Oh you're right. I should have noted I have a Samsung 990 Pro, which are apparently prone to catastrophic health issues.

I'm getting an 84% health rating from CrystalDiskInfo (which I think is not great), however, SAMSUNG Magician also hangs when I try to install it for more dedicated support. This is brutal, and yeah it most likely is due to this. I guess I waited too long to update its firmware and now I'm stuck... guess I'll have to back it up and RMA.
 

yksi

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Jan 22, 2015
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BIOS reports 29C CPU, no malware from the scan.

I'm beginning to think it's a mobo issue... few more symptoms:
  • Computer will not recognize anything freshly plugged into USB while it's running - it will ONLY do so when they are plugged in for the boot.
  • Anything that tries to interact with hardware in any way seems to fail. Driver updating software, hardware monitoring software, all of those sorts of things just get stuck forever.
  • I tried to System Restore to a point before I first noticed this - it also took forever. I waited for 2 hours and it never made it past "Preparing to restore your system"
  • I clean installed Windows 11 on a different NVME to try to narrow the problem down and hopefully play with drivers. During the install process, every restart did the same thing as what has been happening: boot takes forever, white POST light stays on for a minute before disappearing, the mobo/BIOS "splash" screen takes awhile to disappear.
  • I am trying DDU. Again, it gets stuck trying to create a system restore point.
  • Upon Restarting Windows, it consistently does the following: spins for about 3 minutes, then gives a DRIVER_POWER_STATE_FAILURE BSoD.
  • Upon Sleeping Windows, it simply shuts down completely.
All of these combined really make me think it's the mobo or drivers. The main problem is I cannot seem to do anything software-wise to fix drivers to eliminate those as issues, even on my fresh new install. I don't really know what to do... I appear to be "stuck" with whatever bad drivers could perhaps be causing this. Are there BIOS settings I can play with to try to diagnose mobo issues? Is there any other way I can test the mobo? Do I simply need to try waiting, like, half a day to see if any driver software can work?
 
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