Windows 7 boot loop not sure caused by driver or Hardware

[WaffleGuy]

Hi,

This is the story, I am currently on my laptop:
About 3 days ago the game I was playing on had an update( the problem started happening after that, not necessarily blaming the update). After that,my game froze, my Nvidia driver had a message that says "nvidia driver has recovered from an error", then forced a reboot on my computer. It then goes into a boot loop, and sometimes it would display on the bootup screen a "CPU over temperature error!".

At this point I am not sure if it's the game causing that, because it has NEVER happened before(not since that update). I waited about 20 minutes later, and my computer boots up fine, but sometimes when i boot up my screen would look weird(after getting into windows), like some windows appearing is random rectangles, or something weird like that. I uninstalled/installed the latest version of the nvidia gaming driver at this point. Later that night, i ran the game and it ran fine.

The next day I ran the game again, it was fine for a while...than random lines, feeling like a rendering error in the game graphics, and the same thing happened again.

I decided to take my computer apart and clean some dust off. i had some difficulty but when I am finished, i did manage to put the four legs of the heat sink in properly, so that it's not loose. I took off the gpu so i can better when putting the heat sink back in.

When I booted up the computer, it brought me to BIOS, something about detected a new CPU. I didn't change anything and just said save changes and quit. Then, it just starts boot looping, but this time it feels like the generic boot loop. It loads up the Windows loading screen, with the four spheres as the windows logo. It would freeze and goes into reboot there, with the "windows did not shut off properly >Safe mode > boot as normal etc" screen. On the screen it does say press F2 or DEL to enter setup, but I have a USB keyboard, and would not be active until after that screen. I can't enter BIOS this way.

I had some theories:
- I didn't put on the heat sink properly, or the other hardware? Would that affect it? It was able to go into safe mode so I assume that shouldn't be a problem.
- faulty driver? But i can't even enter windows

Other notes:
- I AM able to enter safe mode and with networking.
- The game is path of exile, if it's something relevant.
my specs:
Asus Z-87A motherboard
MSI GTX 770
a I5 4670 I believe
2x 4g ram Corsair
a EVGA 550W power supply.

does anyone have some insight to this?

Thanks

 

[RaDiKaL_]

"had some difficulty but when I am finished, i did manage to put the four legs of the heat sink in properly, so that it's not loose."

Did you reapply new thermal paste? once you separate the heatsink from the CPU whatever thermal paste you had won't do anymore. You need to properly clean both the heatsink and the CPU to apply new thermal paste.


I'd say that there was already an overheating issue, managing to run OK at night since ambient temps were lower, next day you had higher temps leading again to those issues.


All in all the first step is to apply new thermal paste and see from there if there's something else causing conflicts.

 

[WaffleGuy]

"had some difficulty but when I am finished, i did manage to put the four legs of the heat sink in properly, so that it's not loose."

Did you reapply new thermal paste? once you separate the heatsink from the CPU whatever thermal paste you had won't do anymore. You need to properly clean both the heatsink and the CPU to apply new thermal paste.


I'd say that there was already an overheating issue, managing to run OK at night since ambient temps were lower, next day you had higher temps leading again to those issues.


All in all the first step is to apply new thermal paste and see from there if there's something else causing conflicts.

What i meant by had some difficulties is that i spent some time matching the legs to the holes, and made sure that all four clicked when they are put in tight, not quite easy to do for me.

Although I will try it, but I don't think it would resolve the issue fully, as my computer can go into safe mode, unless I am not understanding some other important knowledge there.

can newly installed bad drivers cause problems such as boot loops? My computer now just keeps going into windows, and restarts. At this point I am not sure if it's even a hardware or software issue.
The freeze first ocurred at night, around 8-9ish PM.

 

[RaDiKaL_]

If you had to match the legs to the holes then the heatsink was already separated from the CPU so yes, time to reapply thermal paste. After that check temps and stability and we'll see what to do next.

 

[WaffleGuy]

If you had to match the legs to the holes then the heatsink was already separated from the CPU so yes, time to reapply thermal paste. After that check temps and stability and we'll see what to do next.

The temperature is around 40C, as before. What do you mean exactly by stability? Right now it won't even boot into windows, I turn machine on, loads normally, comes up to the windows loading screem with the windows logo, screen turns black, and doesn't even reboot.

There was a rare occasion where I did manage to go in, but after it looked like a severe color problem, like if you are turning from a 24 color bmp to a 256 color bmp or something like that, logged into windows and bam, comes right back out.

Chances are right now I won't be able to go out and get some thermal paste now, but I will drop by the store tomorrow and see.
is this really just a thermal paste problem? It happened before I separated the heat sink from the CPU, not saying you are wrong.

 

[RaDiKaL_]

Well before going for thermal paste, get into BIOS and leave it there for 3-5min or so watching its temperature, if it stays below 40ºC then no need to go for new thermal paste.

If so, take out your GPU and try booting using your integrated graphics instead, once in windows uninstall your nvidia drivers, use DDU and then reinstall whichever drivers you know are stable in your pc (years using AMD, nvidia has its issues here and there with its drivers from what I've heard).

 

[WaffleGuy]

Well before going for thermal paste, get into BIOS and leave it there for 3-5min or so watching its temperature, if it stays below 40ºC then no need to go for new thermal paste.

If so, take out your GPU and try booting using your integrated graphics instead, once in windows uninstall your nvidia drivers, use DDU and then reinstall whichever drivers you know are stable in your pc (years using AMD, nvidia has its issues here and there with its drivers from what I've heard).

The problem here is that I am using a usb keyboard, it doesn't get enabled until after the message is gone. so there is no way for me to press DEL or F2 and get into BIOS. But chances are that if I do get in, it's going around 40 degrees, and would slowly go up. I am beginning to see how thermal paste might help here, at least everything is pointing towards that way. I was in safe mode with networking, and it auto triggered a restart as well.

Thanks for your help, I will update when I get some thermal paste tomorrow.

 

[WaffleGuy]

Well before going for thermal paste, get into BIOS and leave it there for 3-5min or so watching its temperature, if it stays below 40ºC then no need to go for new thermal paste.

If so, take out your GPU and try booting using your integrated graphics instead, once in windows uninstall your nvidia drivers, use DDU and then reinstall whichever drivers you know are stable in your pc (years using AMD, nvidia has its issues here and there with its drivers from what I've heard).

Turns out that without my graphics card everything runs perfectly. I had a program called realTemp to look at my cpu temperature while in windows, and it's decently under, or slightly under 40. So I assume something is wrong with my graphics card driver, or worse, my graphics card. Thanks for that piece of info.

 

[RaDiKaL_]

I see, go ahead with reinstalling its drivers and also reseat the GPU in your mobo, perhaps one of its PCI-E power connectors wasn't making good contact, hopefully its only something like that.

 

[WaffleGuy]

I see, go ahead with reinstalling its drivers and also reseat the GPU in your mobo, perhaps one of its PCI-E power connectors wasn't making good contact, hopefully its only something like that.

right now I am going to assume that the GPU has become physically faulty in some way, I already tried putting it back in two times. Perhaps it's a bad PCI-E cable. I have also reinstalled a few different Nvidia drivers, computer either ends up crashing or reboot looping when it reaches windows login.

BUUUUT, the problem has been narrowed down to the GPU, and not as much the CPU. While I still am picking up some thermal paste later, computer works perfectly fine without the GPU. Would you say it's a bad driver version causing the crash or more of a physically faulty GPU?

THanks for your help

 

[RaDiKaL_]

Since you've already tried different driver versions this seems to be a hardware problem.

Just in case, did you also reseat the 24 pin ATX power connector in your mobo? those last 4 pin power up the PCI-E port so try reseating it just to cover all possibilities.

It could also be your PSU, though only way to find out is to try your GPU with another quality PSU.

 

[WaffleGuy]

Since you've already tried different driver versions this seems to be a hardware problem.

Just in case, did you also reseat the 24 pin ATX power connector in your mobo? those last 4 pin power up the PCI-E port so try reseating it just to cover all possibilities.

It could also be your PSU, though only way to find out is to try your GPU with another quality PSU.

I reseated a lot of things, i basically pulled out all cables to the psu, and then on the other end, and put then back.
At times it seems like i didn't seat the GPU properly, but that shouldn't be likely, as the problem was there before I cleaned and reseated everything. I will try it anyways. I hate how the PCI-E cables to my GPU is a 6+2 pin, that could be why, the 2 other pins might not be in properly, but I made sure of that last time. I'll try again.

I have another PSU that I swapped out, seeing that it's making grinding noises, if it's absolutely necessary, i'll try that one again.