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Problem description: About two years ago, I put together a list of parts on PCPartpicker to build a new PC. I bought the parts as they went on sale over about 9 months. I put windows 8.1 pro on it and upgraded to windows 10 when that came around. That all went fine. One of the first parts I bought was the graphics card, so it was already out of warranty by the time i built the PC. The PC had an issue where if it went to sleep, you couldn't wake it back up without a hard reset. I came here for advice on that problem and the diagnosis was bad graphics card. I wasn't in a place to buy another one right away, so I lived with the issue, knowing that one day, I'd get around to replacing the graphics card. After a few months of running along, no issues other than the sleep lock up, it started taking forever to log into Windows. You could boot to the start screen very quickly but when you entered your userid and password, it would work for several minutes before bringing up your desktop. Then, the start menu wouldn't work. Pressing the windows key did nothing, clicking on the actual icon, nada. I googled that problem and tried the following fixes: Making a new windows account and then merging it with your current account. This did not work. I copied a powershell script that was supposed to fix windows account problems on windows 10, it wouldn't run. The last suggestion was to do a reset to factory defaults reinstall of windows 10. I tried that about 4 months ago, and the computer locked up during the reinstall of windows. It just sat there, working away, doing nothing. I left it alone after several hours, went to work an overnight shift, came home, still just puttering away at windows installation. I powered it down gave up until I could at least pick up a new graphics card and start from scratch known good equipment. So, this weekend I bought a GeForce GTX 1060 3GB and replaced the bad graphics card. I powered up the PC and the lights on the front came on for a few seconds, it sounded like it was trying to boot, and then the lights went completely off (like it had been unplugged) for a second, and then everything came back on again. During this entire time there was nothing displayed on the monitor. Nothing shows on the monitor, and the computer isn't behaving like it booted up without a screen as in, I can't get any windows sounds from mashing keys. Attempted fixes: I replaced a bad graphics card and tried account juggling, a powershell script, and a reinstall to fix the windows issues. This was the powershell script: Get-AppXPackage -AllUsers | Foreach {Add-AppxPackage -DisableDevelopmentMode -Register "$($_.InstallLocation)\AppXManifest.xml"} I was following the guide at http://home.bt.com/tech-gadgets/com...-11364000314532 Recent changes: Replaced the MSI Radeon with a GeForce GTX 1060 3GB -- Operating system:Windows 10 pro 64bit System specs: PCPartPicker part list / Price breakdown by merchant CPU: Intel - Core i5-4590 3.3GHz Quad-Core Processor Motherboard: MSI - H97M-G43 Micro ATX LGA1150 Motherboard Memory: Corsair - Vengeance 8GB (2 x 4GB) DDR3-1600 Memory (Purchased For $0.00) Storage: Samsung - 840 EVO 120GB 2.5" Solid State Drive (Purchased For $0.00) Storage: Western Digital - Caviar Blue 1TB 3.5" 7200RPM Internal Hard Drive (Purchased For $0.00) Geforce GTX 1060 Case: Cooler Master - N200 MicroATX Mini Tower Case (Purchased For $0.00) Power Supply: Corsair - CSM 550W 80+ Gold Certified Semi-Modular ATX Power Supply (Purchased For $0.00) Optical Drive: Samsung - SH-224DB/BEBE DVD/CD Writer (Purchased For $0.00) Wireless Network Adapter: Intel - 62205ANHMWDTX1 PCI-Express x1 802.11a/b/g/n Wi-Fi Adapter (Purchased For $0.00) Location: US I have Googled and read the FAQ: Yes I want to add that I'm trying to boot it with a windows installation media disk in the drive, intending to do a fresh install of windows on the SSD (all my data is on the HDD) I appreciate your time.
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# ? Sep 24, 2017 21:27 |
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# ? Apr 17, 2024 04:55 |
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Would removing the HDD and setting it aside, and then taking the SSD with the borked OS on it, putting it in another PC, reformating it, and then putting it back make the PC more receptive to reinstalling the OS?
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# ? Sep 25, 2017 16:10 |
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Progress update: I got home early this afternoon and popped the SSD into my decrepit old Vista running Dell. Upon booting windows, it diverted to a screen that said: One of your disks needs to be checked for consistency blah blah blah so then it ran CHKDSK on the SSD and is currently grinding through a list of things its doing so fast that it's very hard to read but it says something like deleting the the expressed cat of fiber setpoint in file x, where x is counting up now through 399999 and still increasing. Ah, it paused...Deleting extended attribute set due to the presence of reparse point in file x CHKDSK says it's now 27% complete I'll be back to edit in any more thrilling progress. Ok, it finished CHKDSK and then booted up and the drive is readable, it looks like all the files are there, but I'm a bit confused by that because it's a 64bit install and this vista box is 32bit, how can it even see it? I'm going to format it and stick it back in the new PC and see what happens. EDIT: holy poo poo we're now going on two hours to format a 120gb drive tactlessbastard fucked around with this message at 23:18 on Sep 25, 2017 |
# ? Sep 25, 2017 22:05 |
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Ok, with the newly formatted SSD back in the new PC, and a fresh windows 10 installation media in the optical drive, the PC is doing the same thing. You power it on, and the fans spin up, you can hear the drives spin up, but there's no output. After about 15 seconds, the PC resets itself and it goes through all the spin up again, but this time it will stay in that state, fans turning, optical drive ejectable, but nothing at all on the monitor. I tried removing the NVidia card and booting it up with the onboard graphics and no, same result. I'm at a bit of a loss. Have I hosed up my motherboard somehow? My power supply? This is getting disheartening.
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# ? Sep 25, 2017 23:49 |
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tactlessbastard posted:I'm at a bit of a loss. Have I hosed up my motherboard somehow? My power supply? This is getting disheartening. Unplug all non-essential peripherals (drives, network adapter and video card) and use only one stick of RAM. See if it POSTS then. If it still doesn't then I'd clear the CMOS via the jumper on the motherboard. If it still doesn't turn on then it's possible the motherboard/PSU is failing. tactlessbastard posted:...I'm a bit confused by that because it's a 64bit install and this vista box is 32bit, how can it even see it? That difference doesn't matter as it's just looking at the data on the drive and not trying to load the OS. tactlessbastard posted:Would removing the HDD and setting it aside, and then taking the SSD with the borked OS on it, putting it in another PC, reformating it, and then putting it back make the PC more receptive to reinstalling the OS? Shouldn't make a difference as the media in the optical drive should override a messed up install.
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# ? Sep 26, 2017 05:46 |
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Zogo posted:Unplug all non-essential peripherals (drives, network adapter and video card) and use only one stick of RAM. See if it POSTS then. If it still doesn't then I'd clear the CMOS via the jumper on the motherboard. Thanks, I'll try all that this evening. Does it matter which stick of RAM i leave behind?
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# ? Sep 26, 2017 14:56 |
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tactlessbastard posted:Thanks, I'll try all that this evening. Does it matter which stick of RAM i leave behind? Leave one in DIMM2 and if the computer doesn't POST then swap it with the other RAM stick.
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# ? Sep 26, 2017 22:39 |
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Zogo posted:Leave one in DIMM2 and if the computer doesn't POST then swap it with the other RAM stick. Fantastic! It went to bios. Going to plug back in the optical drive and see what happens! 'Preparing automatic repair'...hmm It says it can't be repaired and asks if I want to shut down or see advanced options. If you go to advanced options the choice is reset this pc (which didn't work) or system restore (no back up found, obviously), start up repair (doesn't work), command prompt, and change start up behaviour (add logging) Edit: the boot logging is being saved on a drive that doesn't exist. Also, I'm a bit confused why it is trying to 'repair' an install when I removed that drive and formatted it. tactlessbastard fucked around with this message at 01:06 on Sep 27, 2017 |
# ? Sep 26, 2017 22:51 |
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What disc are you using to try and fix the OS? It sounds like a clean install is in order.
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# ? Sep 27, 2017 05:57 |
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Zogo posted:What disc are you using to try and fix the OS? I downloaded a windows 10 installation .iso via the create windows 10 installation media link from Microsoft, on my work laptop. (Another 64bit windows 10 unit) A clean install is what I want, I'm just having a hard time getting it to do one. I had assumed formatting the drive with windows on it would make a fresh install my only option and was very surprised when it tried to repair my previous install. Which it shouldn't know about, because I deleted it. I've got the original 8.1 install disk laying around, should I try to do that and then upgrade to 10? tactlessbastard fucked around with this message at 16:50 on Sep 27, 2017 |
# ? Sep 27, 2017 13:28 |
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Did you go through the re-partitioning process?tactlessbastard posted:Going to plug back in the optical drive and see what happens! It says it's logging to "X" right? "X" is the drive letter the Windows kernel assigns itself when booting to the recovery environment or new installation prompt (either because there's no full version of Windows installed anywhere or your BIOS is set to load your optical media first, which is typical). Windows is not going to log to "X" because it's referencing your optical drive. I believe the kernel that gets loaded from the Media Creation Tool drive always has the "Repair My Computer" option by default. Anyway you should just be able to click "install" and you should see the option to re-partition your drive again if necessary before Windows installs itself. After that you need to take out the Windows media from your optical drive as your BIOS will likely try to load that before anything else.
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# ? Sep 27, 2017 20:44 |
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LiterallyAnything posted:Did you go through the re-partitioning process? Partitioning never came up. Actually, it's trying to log to D:, which is the optical drive, so there's no data being written there. It does run itself out of X: Just plain 'Install Windows' is not an option. After failing to automatically repair (repair what the drive is empty ajsbvjnlsdjnksdg) every boot up, it gives you the choice of shut down, reset this PC (it will work for a minute, and say that can't be done and take you back to the beginning), Restore system from a previous point (I have no previous points saved) , start up repair (works for a minute, says it can't do that, takes you back to the beginning, go to a command prompt (which works!) or start startup logging (which has the save issue) It occurs to me that I initially installed windows 8.1 on this box via a USB stick and the BIOS may be booting USB - SSD - Optical in that order. I'll need to check that out when I get home later.
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# ? Sep 27, 2017 20:59 |
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tactlessbastard posted:It occurs to me that I initially installed windows 8.1 on this box via a USB stick and the BIOS may be booting USB - SSD - Optical in that order. I'll need to check that out when I get home later. Ok, the BIOS is booting in order SSD-Optical-USB, so that wasn't it. I bumped optical to first and tried again to the same results...then, removed the disk out of curiosity and rebooted again...and it's doing the same thing! Somehow, the SSD that I reformatted is telling it it used to have win10 on it and IT MUST BE REPAIRED OOOOOooooo Idk. Edit: I got to playing around in the command line: I can access C:, which is empty and the volume name is "System reserved" I can access D:, which is empty and the volume is named "OS" (which is what my SSD was originally named) I can access E:, which has no label but contains a text file named Recovery.txt, which is empty and I can pull up F:, which is the DVD and shows it contains one file (a 3.6 GB whopper named Windows.iso) tactlessbastard fucked around with this message at 22:09 on Sep 27, 2017 |
# ? Sep 27, 2017 21:58 |
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Get to the command line and run "DISKPART" and then, in order... "LIST DISK" - to see what drives the system recognizes and to identify your root disk by comparing the sizes of the volumes shown. "SELECT DISK 0" - or replace "0" with the number of your SSD. "DETAIL DISK" - to see what partitions there are on that disk and what letter they are assigned. That should help identify where to go next I think. Edit- Just read your edit. Go ahead and run the commands above. Seems like we might just need to manually format that drive and then try to run the Windows install again. Edit edit- Actually there's really no point to running those commands. If your sys reserved and root volumes are empty and it still shows the name of your root volume as it was before then the data was erased but the disk wasn't partitioned. Reformat and partition then run Media Creation Tool. Edit edit edit- Just FYI because this hosed me up in the past- if you're running commands from the CLI in a recovery environment know that the active system disk is not always the actual volume you're wanting to fix (this is one of those circumstances where it wouldn't be) but by default the commands will run the operations on the disk they are loaded from, so, depending on what utility you're running, be sure to specify the correct volume manually. LiterallyAnything fucked around with this message at 22:28 on Sep 27, 2017 |
# ? Sep 27, 2017 22:16 |
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LiterallyAnything posted:Edit edit- Actually there's really no point to running those commands. If your sys reserved and root volumes are empty and it still shows the name of your root volume as it was before then the data was erased but the disk wasn't partitioned. Reformat and partition then run Media Creation Tool. I can take the SSD out and put it in my old Vista box, but it has no internet connection. (The Vista box was what I reformatted it in) I'm posting here on my work laptop, which is what I'm using the media creation tool on to make an installation DVD, but I have no way of connecting the SSD to the laptop. EDIT: I'm using the CLI to reformat both volumes in situ and have extracted the .iso and burned all that to a disk and will try again with that once the reformatting is done. tactlessbastard fucked around with this message at 22:59 on Sep 27, 2017 |
# ? Sep 27, 2017 22:51 |
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Progress, of a sort. Now no matter what I boot with in the optical drive, be it the old windows 8.1 install media, the new windows 10 install media disk, or my manually extracted windows 10 iso burned onto a disk, it boots to code:
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# ? Sep 27, 2017 23:12 |
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From your BIOS are you able to manually select a device to boot from? Can you get the Media Creation Tool on a USB drive (to clarify, installed to a USB drive, not the .exe copied on to one).
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# ? Sep 27, 2017 23:27 |
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LiterallyAnything posted:From your BIOS are you able to manually select a device to boot from? Yes. LiterallyAnything posted:Can you get the Media Creation Tool on a USB drive? The media creation tool was a little program that when ran, downloaded the data and created an .ISO or gave you the option to put an image on a USB. I don't have a USB drive big enough on hand so I used a DVD. I will try to get a bigger USB drive soon. Sorry if I'm a little scattered right now. I'm posting with my left hand and trying to feed a screaming 10mo with my right while keeping the other two kids from killing each other with my mind tactlessbastard fucked around with this message at 23:39 on Sep 27, 2017 |
# ? Sep 27, 2017 23:34 |
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Oh ok. Since you already used the Media Creation Tool to burn an image then that's just as well. Try selecting the optical drive from your BIOS to boot from and see if the Windows kernel comes up. Looking back... tactlessbastard posted:I can access C:, which is empty and the volume name is "System reserved" Volumes C and D are your SSD, E is your USB, and F is your optical right? Sounds like you ran recovery from the USB drive the first time around. If that's what you booted from, and it sounds like it must've been, then when attempting any actions via the CLI or recovery environment it would've automatically performed the actions on the volume it was loaded from. I would assume that's why it's empty with just a recovery.txt file now. The second time you got to the recovery environment it was via the optical I'm also assuming since you said your SSD was empty. There's often a feature in many BIOS' where it will load from USB first, regardless of your set boot order, if there's an image that it can boot to. quote:Sorry if I'm a little scattered right now. I'm posting with my left hand and trying to feed a screaming 10mo with my right while keeping the other two kids from killing each other with my mind No worries. I'm also taking care of my newborn while posting and trying to solve my own boot issue which is why I'm also a bit scattered in my responses, heh. LiterallyAnything fucked around with this message at 23:51 on Sep 27, 2017 |
# ? Sep 27, 2017 23:38 |
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E is a USB port, but there isn't anything plugged into it and hasn't been in a long time. I can make it boot with the optical drive , but it gives you the same 'no OS' message
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# ? Sep 27, 2017 23:51 |
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So, I dug up a thumbdrive and made an install media with it. It was pretty irritating to have to redownload all 3+ GB again, but what the hell. It booted straight to the install Windows 10 dialog, huzzah! I've spent the last hour picking through my microsoft.com account trying to find my flippin' product key. Edit: And for a brief moment I wondered why the graphics were so wonky and it was so slow until i looked over and saw my pile of graphics cards and RAM tactlessbastard fucked around with this message at 03:16 on Sep 28, 2017 |
# ? Sep 28, 2017 03:03 |
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We're back in business! I appreciate all the help, Zogo and LiterallyAnything.
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# ? Sep 28, 2017 04:04 |
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Glad to hear it! No problem.
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# ? Sep 28, 2017 20:00 |
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Everything is going well except Steam. Steam was installed on the SSD but all the games were being stored to the HDD. After the format and reinstall of windows, I had to reinstall steam, and it found all the stuff on the HDD just fine, but half the games don't work anymore. Is this just a level it all and start redownloading situation?
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# ? Oct 22, 2017 05:34 |
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tactlessbastard posted:Everything is going well except Steam. Steam was installed on the SSD but all the games were being stored to the HDD. After the format and reinstall of windows, I had to reinstall steam, and it found all the stuff on the HDD just fine, but half the games don't work anymore. Is this just a level it all and start redownloading situation? I haven't used Steam in many years but I do remember there being issues like this with steam games and the program being on separate HDs. I'd just try to redownload the games that aren't working.
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# ? Oct 23, 2017 03:07 |
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Could have to do with registry keys missing and/or files that are actually with the steam install (despite you installing the game to another HDD) that are now missing. I'd do what Zogo said, blow away the folders (except saved games/custom content you want to keep) and re-download.
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# ? Oct 23, 2017 18:20 |
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# ? Apr 17, 2024 04:55 |
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Thanks, dudes.
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# ? Oct 24, 2017 00:31 |