Stuck In Boot Loop

[TIMELESS]

So last night I went to bed and left my PC going so it could download overnight. This morning I turned it on to find it in the Windows 7 partition. This means at some point in the night it's actually restarted, since it boots into Windows 7 not 10 by default.

 

So I restarted (by the reset button IIRC if that makes any difference) and it wouldn't go past the bios. Once it hits bios it restarts and continues to do this unless I enter bios or turn it off.

 

So far I've removed the cmos battery and moved the jumpers, tried each stick of ram on their own, disconnected the reset button (you never know..) and removed the GPU. The only difference I've seen so far is when I removed the GPU, using the onboard graphics the signal is there but after bios it's just a blank screen. I have no idea what it's doing then.

 

Specs: Intel i5 Haswell, GTX970, 8GB DDR3 ram, Superflower Golden Green HX 450W PSU (how the bloody hell does that power everything?!)

[Camel]

Could well be the PSU. I know it's a silly name but they're pretty good iirc. How old is it?

 

Just had a look and the PSU supplies 37amps on the single 12v rail and the GPU requires *upto* 28. On top of most of the other components in the PSU. When gaming you've probably been stressing it quite a bit and then leaving it on for a long time might just have been too much.

 

Might be worth trying to see if you can borrow another working PSU and seeing if the PC works with that.

[TIMELESS]

The whole build turns 1 year old next week :( Well that's good to know, overclockers should probably make some adjustments to their configurator :fp: Probably pushed it over the edge since I got a USB hub and have a few things connected.

 

Unfortunately I don't have any other PSUs to grab so I'll have to buy a new one :hmmm: Could you recommend something that would do the job and hopefully not require organ selling to afford

[Camel]

Well your GPU needs 28A and I personally like to have an extra 15-20 or so amps to supply power to everything else that runs on 12V. This includes fans with LEDs(can draw as much as 0.5A per LED fan) which soon adds up if you have 5 or 6, hard drives, motherboard and CPU.

 

To get from amps to watts you should multiply the amps by 12volts which is 576watts to be on the safe side. But make sure it's a known good brand.

 

USB shouldn't affect it as USB runs on 5V.

[Andreas¹]

It's a good model but a very old one. 450W should be enough for the system but there's not a lot of margin and leaving it all night as Mells said might have pushed it too hard.

 

I'm not too good at doing currency conversions in my head but a good new gold certified (which I think your system deserves as it contains quite expensive hardware) unit will probably set you back around £70 or £80.

[TIMELESS]

Okies thanks a lot Mells. I'll go hunting soon.

 

Edit: Andai I hope you're really bad at currency conversion. :eek:

[Andreas¹]

Cooler Master V-series, EVGA G2, Fractal Design Edison M and Corsair RMx are good units to name a few.

[TIMELESS]

So thankfully I've got a 3 year warranty on the whole build on top of the individual parts warranties and I'm currently getting it replaced. I'm having difficulty explaining why sending me the same 450W PSU makes no sense though :lol:

[Eudemon]

Makes sense they will try to replace like-for-like so you may find it a bit of an issue requesting something more powerful. Unless they allow you to pay the difference or something? Unless they are confident that PSU is adequate enough for what your system requires and it was just a failing unit you got originally.

[Andreas¹]

Okies thanks a lot Mells. I'll go hunting soon.

 

Edit: Andai I hope you're really bad at currency conversion. :eek:

Pretty bang on actually. :p

EVGA 650 W GQ Series ATX Modular Power Supply with Active PFC: Amazon.co.uk: Computers Accessories

EVGA SuperNova G2 550 W Gold Fully Modular Power Supply Unit: Amazon.co.uk: Computers Accessories

Fractal Design 550 W Edison M Power Supply Unit - Black: Amazon.co.uk: Computers Accessories

Corsair CP-9020090-UK RM550X 550 W ATX/EPS Fully Modular Power Supply Unit: Amazon.co.uk: Computers Accessories

I'm having difficulty explaining why sending me the same 450W PSU makes no sense though :lol:

1) If it is faulty then what's to stop a replacement from doing the same thing? If it is to blame it's obviously having trouble powering your system

2) The design is over 5 years old, it probably has diffciculty dealing with Intel's new powersaving CPU's

3) A quality replacement could last longer than the rest of the PC and power a replacement computer in a few years to come

[TIMELESS]

They're telling me my system uses 350W so a 450W PSU should have sufficient power and headroom. The PSU supplies 33A on the 12V rail and if the GPU is using 28A... :hmmm:

[Andreas¹]

Then by all means go for another one. :p

[TIMELESS]

PSU was fine :fp: Got the replacement connected and I was still stuck in a boot loop. Connected an old hard drive and now we're going. Ugh, hopefully my data is recoverable.

[Eudemon]

Always annoying when you think you have ruled out the cause only to find it isn't and then some other issue arises.

[TIMELESS]

Yup :( It's clearly Camel's fault :p

 

Well I'm trying to install Windows 10, on attempt 2 as during the first attempt windows decided to kill one of the DVI ports and I had no signal. Not sure why the installation stopped though.

[Andreas¹]

So it worked when you put in another hard drive? That's :oook: but when it comes to tech so many things can be... Boot loops can be caused by a number of things but it seemed like you had ruled everything else out. Jayztwocents recently uploaded a video of troubleshooting a boot looping PC and its issue turned out to be a corrupt BIOS.

[TIMELESS]

So it worked when you put in another hard drive? That's :oook: but when it comes to tech so many things can be... Boot loops can be caused by a number of things but it seemed like you had ruled everything else out. Jayztwocents recently uploaded a video of troubleshooting a boot looping PC and its issue turned out to be a corrupt BIOS.

 

I considered that one too, but it wasn't :( My theory is that the night I left it on to finish some downloads, Windows 10 has updated and for some reason it's corrupted the hard drive to the point that it's unable to boot. So after it updated it's restarted and went straight into the Windows 7 partition (oh god I'm going to have to do that again), then I restarted and got stuck in a boot loop. Man I've had real joy with computers over the past 5 years..

 

I could go moan to overclockers about getting a new hard drive, but since they've already sent me a free PSU for no good reason I'll maybe not bother. :p

[Andreas¹]

It must have absolutely chewed through your hard drive and spat out the scrap metal remains on to the motherboard for it to cause a boot loop, otherwise I'm pretty sure you'd get at least some kind of error message. :hmmm:

[TIMELESS]

Unless it corrupted the system partition or something like that? :hmmm:

[Andreas¹]

99% sure that would give you "no operating system found". Even if the whole hard drive was dead and effectively missing I think you'd get "no boot device found" so for it to cause a boot loop it must have been really bad. Or maybe I'm wrong and Mells can tell you all about it.

[Eudemon]

Have you considered Gremlins?

 

[Andreas¹]

Sometimes the only remaining explanation to be honest.

[nineo]

FYI. if your hardware not fault

:duck: ...

boot up PC use other HDD with working w7pro installed. (w7ultimate might work)

if partition can not found -> try patition-tools likes paragon or easeus to recovery partition.

when you find partition on problem HDD then -> take ownership of files or folders you wanted and copy to other partition.

only w7 can do, w8.1 can not in my case.

[ProDexorite]

450W PSU? :eek:

 

Well be damned! When I got a new GPU (GTX 970) to my otherwise 4-5 years old gaming rig I upgraded my PSU from 450W to 850W since I wasn't sure if the old one was capable of handling it or not.

[Ryzza5]

Invest the time and blank disk to make a live boot CD/DVD such as Hirens Recovery. Basically gives you a mini Windows XP that runs from CD (and RAM) and comes with many diagnostic and recovery tools. If it boots up just fine AND you can access your HDDs without issue then there's a good chance you're not looking at a complete hardware failure. Perhaps a bad HDD sector where a boot/system file was stored at worst.

 

In case of obvious partial mechanical HDD failure, it's better to attempt to recover files by taking a complete disk image rather than copy individual files. This keeps the additional wear rate low as the read is performed sequentially, not randomly.

 

If you don't have a recovery disk with you can try any bootable CD/DVD/Floppy as a last resort to see if the PC boots. i.e. use the Windows OS DVD/USB and try launching Startup repair. Likely you have a BIOS/UEFI setting adjusted to automatically reboot on error rather than pause at the error message. I had a boot SSD dye catastrophically with no warning when I manually rebooted after installing updates. Decided to just replace it and start from scratch. I only have Windows and a few programs/games on C:\ which means I basically lost nothing, besides time and $$$.