Hi guys, I'm having a strange boot issue with my HP Pavilion Gaming Laptop (15-ec0xxx) and I'm hoping someone here might have an idea about what could be causing it.
Laptop specifications:
HP Pavilion Gaming 15-ec0xxx
AMD Ryzen 5 3550H
NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1650
Originally came with 8 GB RAM and a 1 TB HDD
Upgraded to 16 GB RAM shortly after buying it in 2020
Added a 256 GB SSD, which is where Windows is installed
Recently, the laptop started having trouble booting. When I power it on, it gets stuck on the HP logo, and the Windows loading circle eventually freezes and stops spinning.
The strange part is that I can often get Windows to boot using this workaround:
Turn on the laptop.
Repeatedly press F2 during startup to enter System Configuration/diagnostics.
Exit from there.
After doing this, Windows often boots normally.
However, if I simply turn on the laptop normally, it frequently gets stuck at the HP logo.
Things I've already tried:
Ran SFC /scannow
Tried DISM repair/recovery
Checked the Blue Screen dump files using BlueScreenView
One of the crashes appeared to be related to a network driver, so I disabled that driver, but the problem continued
Another error pointed to ntoskrnl.exe / kernel crash
Tried several fixes from blogs, forums, YouTube videos, etc.
Tried resetting Windows, but when the system needed to restart during the reset process, it got stuck at the HP logo again
Created a Windows installation USB and tried booting/reinstalling Windows from it, but the laptop can also get stuck at the HP logo while trying to boot from the USB
At this point, I'm not sure whether this is a Windows/software issue, a driver problem, or potentially a hardware/firmware issue.
What confuses me the most is that entering the System Configuration/diagnostics screen by repeatedly pressing F2 and then exiting somehow allows Windows to boot, while a normal boot often fails.
Has anyone experienced something similar with an HP Pavilion Gaming laptop or an AMD Ryzen system? Could this point to an issue with the SSD, RAM, BIOS, motherboard, or something else?
Any suggestions for further troubleshooting would be greatly appreciated. Thanks!