Windows 10 or Hardware?

[McLaughg]

Greetings Computer Wizards,

Unfortunately I'm back from a previous thread. The fix that was provided to me did indeed aid me in correcting the ability to get my machine working. However, after a few more issues, I did eventually relent to a total windows 10 reinstall. (mostly after having the same issues again)

I followed the steps here again, got everything fully patched up and thought I was good to go the other night. However, two nights ago after getting home and starting a download on curse voice, the install... froze? I then performed a reinstall of windows 10 OS.

After getting Windows 10 all set back up, I installed a few things once the updates from windows update had completely stopped churning out. Typical things like GPU drivers, internet brower (firefox) Steam for some games (Dead by Daylight and Empire: Total War). Eventually, I was able to sit down and reinstall curse. It worked. However, when I tried to boot E:TW, it just hung on the setup functions. Eventually I was able to fix it by cycling the machine SEVERAL times and having to just bear through some tens of failed restarts (the screen would go to "restarting" with the roller coaster dots and just sit there, for up to an hour and a half) and failed boots (my machine would flash with the MoBo logo (Gigabyte) and then hang on a black screen with a whirling circle.

Additionally, last night I attempted some of the steps below which gave a temporary fix, but now tonight, Day 3, I'm back to experiencing issues. For example, last night I played E:TW with no issues. However, tonight steam won't even launch the game. I click play, it says running and in task manager the exe is there, but nothing is happening. Additionally, when I try to see if there are driver updates for certain things (my microphone which is a hunk of junk, lets be serious) it will just infinitely search for device drivers online, then if I cancel it.. it just sits there.

This is the system build here.

Things I have tried:

Correcting Windows Update service as in the first link above.
Reinstalling Windows 10 completely thrice!
Removing parts such as GPU/RAM prior to bootup to have the issue occur.
Disabling services in msconfig and only leaving windows services enabled
Changed the prefetch in regedit under local system parameters to 0 instead of the default of 3
Cleared cache, temp files, blah blah blah (the stuff microsoft support would ask you to do)
There are other steps that I'll try to recall, but it seems like everything has led to a dead end.

It's somewhat gotten to the point that I'm starting to rethink the fact I may have something going on that is above Windows 10 in some kind of hardware sense? However, I'd like to not jump to those conclusions without good reason as I am quite near to some of my return windows on parts.

Reading some online in other forums and sites, I may be experiencing issues with my Seagate Hard drive. The interesting aspect of my predicament is that I built two of these computers, to the exact letter. One for me and one for my wife. Unfortunately, hers works like a charm. Have not had any of these issues yet.

Help me Tom's Hardware Wizards, you're my only hope!

Thanks for the previous help through the site and I appreciate any help you may be able to provide in this current endeavor!

If there are things you'd like me to further elaborate on, please ask! I very, very, very much appreciate any and all help! I'll try just about anything!

 

[Paul NZ]

If you want to disable services do it in services, not in msconfig. Disable the logo in the BIOS so you can see what it's doing

If you reboot and it hangs on the post screen (and if it's longer than the normal 5-10 secs), it means its having probs reading / detecting something. It can also mean the hdd is the prob and it maybe faulty

If there's any USB flash drives in the USB ports, or dvds in the dvd remove them.

Also make sure the hdd is the bootdisk in the BIOS. Having it on something else can add an extra 30 secs to the boot time

 

[McLaughg]

If you want to disable services do it in services, not in msconfig. Disable the logo in the BIOS so you can see whats it doing

If you reboot and it hangs on the post screen (and if it's longer than the normal 5-10 secs), it means its having probs reading / detecting something. It can also mean the hdd is the prob and it maybe faulty

Paul,

Would that also be causing some issues when trying to restart the machine as well then? I figure that's the case due to the fact that restarting causes a boot. Ha!

When I did try to disable the services in the actual services area, for some reason they wouldn't stick during the hard resets I was pushing. For some reason, when I did it in msconfig, they did. I'm not sure if that's helpful information or not though.

I'll try to disable the logo in BIOS and see what it's saying.

 

[Paul NZ]

Does it hang on the post screen tho??

Once you disable the logo you'll see what it's doing and if it's hanging, you'll see what it's trying to detect

If it takes forever to shutdown / restart, it maybe hdd related. I would also check event viewer under system. See what errors are coming up

 

[McLaughg]

If you want to disable services do it in services, not in msconfig. Disable the logo in the BIOS so you can see what it's doing

If you reboot and it hangs on the post screen (and if it's longer than the normal 5-10 secs), it means its having probs reading / detecting something. It can also mean the hdd is the prob and it maybe faulty

If there's any USB flash drives in the USB ports, or dvds in the dvd remove them.

Also make sure the hdd is the bootdisk in the BIOS. Having it on something else can add an extra 30 secs to the boot time

Paul,

After disabling the BIOS logo, it didn't really change much. All the screen gave me was another logo and a different option to enter the setup.

As of right now, the computer will not fully shut down (fast boot is disabled) and will not restart. The computer will simply hang. The only way to turn the machine off is to hard reset it by holding the power button. If the machine is in the process of restarting, I also found that the reset button will reset and reboot the machine. However, it's almost as if the PC did not actually restart, it just kind of.. starts it back up.

I'm tempted to try a different HDD if I have one around, but I don't think I do. I'll have to check tomorrow on that aspect. Can you think of anything else that could be affecting this?

 

[Paul NZ]

Try another cable and / or sata port as well. I would also check and see what firmware is on the hdd. Some of them have buggy firmware

 

[McLaughg]

Try another cable and / or sata port as well. I would also check and see what firmware is on the hdd. Some of them have buggy firmware

Brand is Seagate 2TB 3.5" 7200RPM Hybrid Internal Hard Drive. I unfortunately have tried the cable and a different port on the motherboard previously. That was something I think I tried prior to the most recent windows install.

 

[McLaughg]

Does it hang on the post screen tho??

Once you disable the logo you'll see what it's doing and if it's hanging, you'll see what it's trying to detect

If it takes forever to shutdown / restart, it maybe hdd related. I would also check event viewer under system. See what errors are coming up

Hmm, not sure if I disabled the logo properly, or if maybe I'm not seeing what you mentioned. The boot time for using the hard reset or reset method actually boots rather quickly.

Regarding the event viewer.. I have several errors from the last few days. Mainly:

The system has rebooted without cleanly shutting down first. This error could be caused if the system stopped responding, crashed, or lost power unexpectedly.

The Windows Search service hung on starting.

The application-specific permission settings do not grant Local Activation permission for the COM Server application with CLSID
{8D8F4F83-3594-4F07-8369-FC3C3CAE4919}
and APPID
{F72671A9-012C-4725-9D2F-2A4D32D65169}
to the user NT AUTHORITY\SYSTEM SID (S-1-5-18) from address LocalHost (Using LRPC) running in the application container Unavailable SID (Unavailable). This security permission can be modified using the Component Services administrative tool.

Crash dump initialization failed!

Those bad boys are pretty much just cycling over and over. I assume after every time I have to try to reboot.

 

[Paul NZ]

If youre in Windows now, get drivedetect

It'll detect the serial and let you go to the site. And you'll see if there's a later firmware version for it

 

[McLaughg]

If youre in Windows now, get drivedetect

It'll detect the serial and let you go to the site. And you'll see if there's a later firmware version for it

Looks like the firmware is as current as it gets. D: That's a solid tool though, I'll have to keep that in the old think tank.

 

[Paul NZ]

This

The system has rebooted without cleanly shutting down first. This error could be caused if the system stopped responding, crashed, or lost power unexpectedly.

I would say, would appear if you pressed the reset button on the case

If it's freezing test the ram with memtest. It maybe a good idea if you've more than 1 stick, to test 1 at a time. Do it for a few passes or a few hrs. If there are any errors replace the ram

Is the BIOS up to date on this? Looks like that's up to F20

Another thing people had probs with (inc myself), after a clean install the disk or cpu usage went to 100% and it made the system crawl.

Some people managed to fix this by disabling all of the notifications (which is what I did / or had to do) to fix it

With any of these games did you get an error code 8016?? Because one of the BIOS updates fixes this error

 

[McLaughg]

This

The system has rebooted without cleanly shutting down first. This error could be caused if the system stopped responding, crashed, or lost power unexpectedly.

I would say, would appear if you pressed the reset button on the case

If it's freezing test the ram with memtest. It maybe a good idea if you've more than 1 stick, to test 1 at a time. Do it for a few passes or a few hrs. If there are any errors replace the ram

Is the BIOS up to date on this? Looks like that's up to F20

Another thing people had probs with (inc myself), after a clean install the disk or cpu usage went to 100% and it made the system crawl.

Some people managed to fix this by disabling all of the notifications (which is what I did / or had to do) to fix it

With any of these games did you get an error code 8016?? Because one of the BIOS updates fixes this error

Paul,

Thanks for the continued help! Unfortunately, I have not gotten the error code 8016 yet when playing or running the machine. I'll have to try to figure out if updating the BIOS is worth a shot, but that may be a good idea. I'm attempting to set a max paging file size right now on the partition to see if that will help, along with disabling the windows notifications. I did in fact have my disk usage at 100% nearly constantly, I thought that was particularly strange when just sitting on the desktop screen.

If anything, I'll also be trying my old HDD out tonight since I have a bit more time to troubleshoot this weekend. If anything, the newegg representative stated I can send the darn thing back and try again with another.

Aside from the steps you've already mentioned, is there anything else in that wizard brain of yours that you think could help? It just seems so bizarre that I'm having to go to such lengths when the twin machine my wife runs has literally had zero of these issues.

Thanks again!

 

[Paul NZ]

Soon find out if a BIOS update will fix one or all of these probs. I would do that now / first

Then see if the probs you were having still happen / or stop. Get the update extract it.

You'll have to read the manual on how to flash it. I've never built a GB system myself

But the manual says

To access the BIOS Setup program, press the <Delete> key during the POST when the power is turned on.

To upgrade the BIOS, use either the GIGABYTE Q-Flash or @BIOS utility. •

Q-Flash allows the user to quickly and easily upgrade or back up BIOS without entering the operating system.

• @BIOS is a Windows-based utility that searches and downloads the latest version of BIOS from the Internet and updates the BIOS. (I dont trust Windows based programs, that update the bios).

If its anything like the ASUS program, users used to download it then it froze the system. Then the person turned the PC off. Result bricked system