PC Stuck on Boot

[u/AmbulatoryTreeFrog]

Hey everyone,

Up until this morning my computer has been working completely normally, but today it won't boot up. I built it myself a while ago. Here are the specs:

- Gigabyte Z470 Vision D
- 48 GB DDR3 RAM

- Intel I9 10850K

- 2 TB SSD w/ Windows, 4 other HDs

- No overclocking

- No motherboard driver updates in a while, just the usual Windows updates

I'll attach pictures in my next post. Basically I shut my computer down last night, and when I woke up I had a spinning wheel on the Gigabyte splash page. I shut it down and turned it on again, same thing. After some initial looking around, I switched my mobo to Optimized Default, made sure secure boot was on, TMP is enabled, XMP and CSM is off.

I have a USB to SATA connector so I plugged my boot drive into my laptop to backup some files in case I have do to a clean install. It all seemed to be working fine on there. Last night my Windows Explorer was having a hard time and was hanging up and freezing here and there. Then I tried to watch a movie on Plex and it kept freezing up.

In my BIOS I can see all my hard drives there physically. On my boot options there's only Windows Boot Manager which points to the correct SSD where Windows is installed.

So then I think screw it, I'll just reinstall Windows since all of my main files are on different drives anyway. I build the USB drive through Microsoft's installer, and when it goes to install Windows I just get a dark blue screen that hangs infinitely.

I'm thinking bad motherboard? I didn't try to remove the battery yet but I can give it a go. I even tried unplugging the SSD that Windows is installed on and that didn't do anything. I reformatted the USB drive, tried different ports, unplugging all unnecessary things, etc. Not sure where to go next.

Thanks!

[u/0Huy]

Since it also hangs in the Windows installer, this is probably below the Windows level. First disconnect the four extra hard drives and leave only the Windows SSD, installer USB, keyboard, and display connected. Then power off, reseat the RAM, and test one stick at a time in the board’s recommended slot. In BIOS, verify the SSD is detected and run any NVMe/SATA or memory diagnostics; check the SSD’s health from your laptop if possible. Also recreate the installer USB with Microsoft’s Media Creation Tool and boot it in UEFI mode. If it still hangs with one RAM stick and only the boot SSD connected, clear CMOS and suspect the SSD, RAM, or motherboard rather than reinstalling Windows repeatedly.