Windows 8.1 freeze at blue windows logo - weird screen behaviour

homepc

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May 8, 2015
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4,510
Hi. I've just built this PC:

1 x BitFenix Comrade Midi-Tower
1 x 24x LiteOn Internal DVD-RW Drive
1 x AMD (Piledriver) FX-6300 3.50GHz (4.10GHz Turbo) Socket AM3+ 6-Core Processor - Retail
1 x Sapphire Dual-X Radeon R9 270X OC 2GB GDDR5 Graphics Card with Boost
1 x 8GB (2x4GB) Crucial Ballistix Sport 1600MHz CL9 DDR3
1 x 8GB (2x4GB) Crucial Ballistix Sport 1600MHz CL9 DDR3
1 x Gigabyte GA-970A-UD3P AMD Socket AM3+ Motherboard
1 x EVGA 500W 80 Plus Power Supply (100-W1-0500-KR)
1 x 250GB Samsung 850 EVO 2.5" SATA 6Gbps 32 Layer 3D V-NAND Solid State Drive - MZ-75E250BW/EU

I'm having a couple of issues which may be related. The first is that sometimes after shutdown, when I startup it hangs at the Gigabyte splash screen. If I reset then it goes through ok.

The second problem is that I'm getting random freezes during Windows 8.1. The mouse/keyboard become unresponsive. What I have noticed is that if I disconnect the mouse and reconnect again, there is no light on the mouse. I'm not sure if that's relevant or not!

It's frustrating as I built a very similar PC for my son a few months back and his is absolutely fine. The only difference between the two is my SSD, an extra 8gb of RAM and I'm using rev 2.0 of the motherboard.

Update: Just started it up again.This time I got the hang on the Gigabyte splash screen and I could see some white artifacts on the black background, as if it hadn't painted the screen properly. Hit the restart button and then it gets past and into Windows.
 

homepc

Reputable
May 8, 2015
9
0
4,510
Ok here is some more information. After the machine has been shut down, when I power on it consistently gets stuck at the blue windows logo and then very small white artifacts start appearing on the black background (hopefully I can figure out how to attach a screenshot here). If I hit the restart button then it will boot ok.

Screenshot:
freeze.jpg
 

homepc

Reputable
May 8, 2015
9
0
4,510


Yes it is up-to-date. I think I have solved the cold boot problem. I ran the Samsung Magician utility and chose to optimise the O/S for SSD reliability. Since then I have suffered no hangs on startup. I had assumed that I didn't need to perform any specific configuration for the SSD to work properly but clearly I was wrong.