Windows 10 Installation Interrupted, PC won't boot from anything now

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admiralrevan

admiralrevan

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Apr 13, 2017
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I put together a PC for a friend with the following parts:

  • CPU - AMD Ryzen 5 1600
    Motherboard - ASRock AB350M Pro4 microATX
    RAM - 2x4gb GeIL EVO Potenza
    GPU - MSI GeForce GTX 1060 6GB OCV1
    HDD - WD Black Series 2tb
Everything went well initially, it posted and everything so I went ahead and put in the Windows 10 disc and everything started a-okay. It got partway through the second step of installation when the monitor went black and turned off. The CD drive wasn't spinning anymore, and I waited about twenty minutes to make sure it wasn't doing anything before I decided to reboot the machine. Then I did the same thing I did before, I tried booting off the disc to install windows. The windows logo would pop up, it would start the loading dot circle and freeze for about thirty seconds to a minute before rebooting. I tried a few more times, but nothing changed.

I've tried everything I can think of, I've reseated the RAM, the GPU, I've tried putting a different GPU in, I wiped the hard drive, I tried booting off of a USB stick with and without the HDD or CD drive plugged in, I tried booting off the Windows disc with and without the HDD plugged in, I've updated the motherboard's UEFI. It always does the same thing, windows logo pops up, loading circle starts, it freezes, it reboots. Sometime's it gives a BSOD with a different error code each time. I can access the motherboard's UEFI just fine, it just refuses to boot windows in any capacity. I have literally no idea what could be causing this. Is there anything else to try or is it time to send the motherboard back to the manufacturer and try again fresh that way?

On a side note, I didn't know where to post this since it's more of a general issue, apologies if this is the incorrect category.
 
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RealBeast

RealBeast

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The HDD probably needs a complete wipe, assuming some other part didn't fail just when the W10 install failed.

Can you boot the motherboard, memory, etc. from a USB stick with a Linux Live OS like Mint 32 (you can make that easily using THIS tool. If it will boot to Mint you can either clean the drive using GParted or can boot from a Windows install disk/stick into a command prompt and then clean the drive using a few diskpart command in a command prompt window.
 
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admiralrevan

admiralrevan

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Apr 13, 2017
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I've tried both Mint and Ubuntu just now, neither worked on my friends PC but booted fine on my PC. The same with the Windows install disc and my USB stick with Windows.

Ubuntu spat out an error saying "Kernel panic - not syncing: Fatal exception in interrupt" at the end of a screen-full of text. On UNetbootin whenever I select any of the Mint options on it's little boot menu it just sort of blinks the screen, and if I select Default it gives a number of errors concerning reading sectors, along with a nice "Invalid or corrupt kernel image" message.

If you need more information just let me know, and thanks for answering.
 
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RealBeast

RealBeast

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Just to be clear, you are attempting to boot directly from the Live Linux stick and not install Linux to a drive when you get this error? (Mint can be a little picky, I usually use a 32 bit version 17 build -- but Ubuntu Live is also fine)

With that additional information, I would check the memory with a tool that only uses the motherboard, CPU and memory -- download and boot from the free Memtest86 and let it run a couple of passes. Any errors indicate memory problems.
 
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admiralrevan

admiralrevan

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I was attempting to boot off of the stick itself, yes. I retried again with the version of Mint you suggested, I tried both 17.1 and 17.2 previously but I was using the 64 bit versions. It gave me an error and a screenfull of text as well unfortunately. I only tried Ubuntu because I wanted to make sure it wasn't just Mint, and I've made a bootable Ubuntu stick before. Linux stuff is a little over my head on the whole haha

I've let Memtest86 run a couple passes, it's still running behind me. Over its two passes it has found no errors unfortunately. I really appreciate you helping me out here by the way, I wish I had more information to offer.
 
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RealBeast

RealBeast

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Two passes without errors indicates that your memory, CPU, and motherboard are all okay although it actually only tests the memory. But it does tell you there are no real significant problems with the other components mentioned.

Can you attach the problem drive to another computer and see if it will mount and can be uninitialized and reinitialized through either disk management or diskpart commands with that system?
 
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smorizio

smorizio

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Jan 22, 2010
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make sure you have the newest bios on amd mb the updated bios updates ageas on the mb to 1.0.0.0.6b
from amd web page download the newest chipset drivers that just drop for the 350b chipset. unzip them and put them on the usb stick. use windows 10 media creation tool make the newest windows iso. after it made put the updated amd chipset drivers on a folder. when windows starts use f6 custom install to install updated amd drivers.
 
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admiralrevan

admiralrevan

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I have attached the drive to my system, I was able to uninitialize it, clean it, reinitialize it, format it, and I wrote a couple files to the drive just to make sure. I'm not sure if I mentioned previously, but the PC will not boot into an OS with or without the drive connected. Unless I'm mistaken (it wouldn't be the first time), something else has to have failed.



I have already updated the motherboard to the latest UEFI, as downloaded from ASRock's website. I have also already attempted to use the Windows 10 media creation tool to make an installation stick. Regardless, I have tried it again and had no luck, it freezes before it finishes showing the complete loading circle. Unless I am missing something obvious, I don't believe I have any way of installing the chipset drivers in the PC's current state.
 
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admiralrevan

admiralrevan

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The power supply is an EVGA 500 BQ, 80+ BRONZE 500W.

The command rate was set to default, so to be sure I tried both 1T and 2T. The system still reacted in a similar way, but setting it to 1T seemed to make it act differently than before but it's probably just my imagination.
 
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Onus

Onus

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I'm sorry that 2T didn't help. I've had unusual stability problems that were fixed by that change, even if the RAM was supposedly good for 1T. Another thing you might try is increasing the RAM voltage, but not by any more than 0.03, which should compensate for any possible vdroop issue.
 
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admiralrevan

admiralrevan

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Apr 13, 2017
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A final update, today we broke down and just bought a new motherboard and now everything works a-okay. Turns out something on the motherboard was definitely screwy, whatever it was
 
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R

redrocky54

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Hello, a final final update from the owner of the PC in question here. Apparently one of the sticks of RAM wasn't properly plugged in all the way when we got it working. After some testing, it would seem that any time that a specific one of the two sticks was plugged into the motherboard, the computer would refuse to boot. With the working stick plugged in alone it would work fine, and with non-working stick plugged in either alongside the other or by itself the computer would freeze on the windows loading screen as it had been doing previously. I replaced it with a single 8gb stick and everything works fine now. It seems like it was just the RAM the whole time.
 
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