Question PC won’t get past boot

Sep 19, 2020
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Sooo I recently rebuilt my gaming computer. I will describe the guts of my computer:

MSI z390 Pro A Mothetboard
EVGA 1080 FTW2 GPU
i5-9600k CPU
2 sticks of 8GB ripjaws 3600mz
1 500GB SSD EVO Samsung (this is the only original piece from a previous build, its 5 years old. This is where my OS is)
1 M2 500GB (this is just my D: drive with spare game installs.)
Sooo I get all my parts in and slap it together.. about 2 weeks into the build the computer wont boot anymore. After some help with tech support theyre saying it could be a dead mobo.. so I sent it back for a new one.. get it back and now the computer doesnt get past the boot screen. I can get into BIoS and it detects everything, but it doesnt get past the boot icon (motherboard icon). I dont get the spinning circle at all. Just sits there.
things I have tried..
one ram stick at a time in RAM slot 2 (2 away from CPU) to see if its faulty ram.
used several cables on SSD drive thinking it could just be the wiring.
removed GPU and put cable into motherboard slot.
tried rebooting with no USBs plugged in.
made sure boot order is correct in bios
Could this just be a corrupt SSD that cant get to windows? I have exhausted all personal knowledge on this and its beginning to be frustrsting. My previous build was an Asus Rog Maximus Hero mobo, same GPU, i5 6700k cpu with the same SSD and had no issues for 5 years. Now when I switch to the msi motherboard it seems ive had nothing but issues. Please halp!
 
Sep 19, 2020
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Can you boot from USB stick at all? Like Windows installation or some Linux distribution? Could be your OS is not booting for one reason or another and BIOS just doesn't throw the startup to OS because it can't find it.
I’ve not tried to boot from anything else. When I unplug my SSD and keep my m2 in there it says please use a bootable drive..
so you’re saying just use a 8gb thumb drive with windows installation on it and try to boot from it?
 

OsaX Nymloth

Community Contributor
I’ve not tried to boot from anything else. When I unplug my SSD and keep my m2 in there it says please use a bootable drive..
so you’re saying just use a 8gb thumb drive with windows installation on it and try to boot from it?
for now just try any bootable USB drive and see if it boots. If it works, then the problem is with your OS that. There's a good chance you can fix this problem during installation selecting the repair option.

For example (minus the whole partition thing, I don't recommend doing that at all):

These command lines (except partitioning that I mentioned, don't do that just yet) won't destroy anything on your SSD/OS. Chance is even selecting startup repair in the Windows 10 option screen may do the trick.

And since your SSD with OS is the only thing that remains, be vary of one thing: drivers. Your OS remembers your old hardware and is probably confused why none of these is there anymore. So you will have to do a lot of cleaning old drivers and installing new ones.
Alternatively just perform fresh clean installation of Win10 (backup your data first!), so you don't have to do anything of the aforementioned.
 
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Sep 19, 2020
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Ok i am gonna be honest here.. i have no idea how to tell if a USB drive is bootable.. are most??

I have some blank USB drives that are 8GB ones.. are those bootable??

Sorry for the silly question its just ive never had to do anythin outside of what storage i've currently had in the PC this whole time..
 

OsaX Nymloth

Community Contributor
Any USB drive can be bootable. But to boot from such drive there need to be specific files on it.
For example USB drive with Windows 10 installation is bootable - because it has the required files on it.
Same with Linux distributions, even the ones for testing - they are prepared in such a way you can boot whole PC with just USB drive and not even actual SSD/HDD.
 
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Sep 19, 2020
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ok
Any USB drive can be bootable. But to boot from such drive there need to be specific files on it.
For example USB drive with Windows 10 installation is bootable - because it has the required files on it.
Same with Linux distributions, even the ones for testing - they are prepared in such a way you can boot whole PC with just USB drive and not even actual SSD/HDD.
Ahh okay that's what i thought..

Right now i am downloaded ISO files that microsoft sent me to try to just do a fresh installation of windows and then maybe get it to boot that way like you said..

As i mentioned before, i still have an M2 500GB installed (brand new) with some games installed on it.. should i keep it installed when i am putting the thumb drive in or does it really matter.
 
Sep 19, 2020
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No I didn’t. When I upgraded all I did was just plug it all together. At first everything worked great. Flawlessly! But then one night my computer was acting really sluggish.. tried to reboot and it wouldn’t turn back on. And that’s when I just started returning items..
 
I'd follow @OsaX Nymloth 's suggestion of trying to see if the system will boot from a USB stick.

Assuming it does, I would perform a clean install of Windows on your OS drive. This means deleting all existing partitions. See:

NB, deleting partitions makes you lose what's on the drive. So if anything on it is vital, you'll want to recover it first if you didn't already back it up.

When changing the motherboard to something new, it's always wise to do a clean install since the chipset/drivers will be different and the Windows installation can have problems caused by the old stuff and new stuff conflicting.
 
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I'd follow @OsaX Nymloth 's suggestion of trying to see if the system will boot from a USB stick.

Assuming it does, I would perform a clean install of Windows on your OS drive. This means deleting all existing partitions. See:

NB, deleting partitions makes you lose what's on the drive. So if anything on it is vital, you'll want to recover it first if you didn't already back it up.

When changing the motherboard to something new, it's always wise to do a clean install since the chipset/drivers will be different and the Windows installation can have problems caused by the old stuff and new stuff conflicting.
Ok so the only question I have, is where is my OS gonna go.. should I leave my SSD unplugged and allow it to install to my M2 drive? Or should I just keep my SSD in and see if a fresh windows install will repair it?
I’m a noob when it comes to this fresh install stuff. I thought I could just plug everything in and be fine..

appreciate the help this far it’s been great
 
Put Windows on that then, since you'll always want your fastest drive to be the OS drive. :)

Assuming you can boot from the USB stick fine.

You'll want to delete all existing partitions during the install process, as per the guide I linked. This will mean redownloading games you have on there, unless you have a copy of the game files elsewhere.
 
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Put Windows on that then, since you'll always want your fastest drive to be the OS drive.

Assuming you can boot from the USB stick fine.

You'll want to delete all existing partitions during the install process, as per the guide I linked. This will mean redownloading games you have on there, unless you have a copy of the game files elsewhere.
i have an existing ticket with samsung to turn in the old SSD for repair.. hopefully with this process i will be able to fix the SSD and not have to go without 500GB..

i dont mind having to reinstall the games i figured this was the process anyways..

sooo question: if i am not able to boot from drive.. then what is the issue now? Mobo?
 
Sep 19, 2020
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**Update**
A fresh install from a bootable USB onto my M2 drive has worked successfully. Thanks a lot!
Now my old SSD sits beside me, unplugged. Will it do any harm by plugging it in and seeing If I can access old photos or should I just turn it into Samsun and let them wipe it and restore it back to glory. It’s got some photos on there I’d like to retrieve.
I know that if I do plug it in I triple check and make sure that’s not in the boot order.
 
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1) The ideal would be to clone the drive before you try to recover photos or any other files, and to try to recover the files off the clone. This way if something goes wrong and the data gets damaged, you only damaged the data on the clone. When trying you recover any data, try to avoid working with the only copy of that data.

You can use software like Macrium Reflect to image a drive. For instance if you have an external hard drive. Or it might even fit the image on your other SSD (since an image is usually smaller than the size of the drive)

2) In general you can plug in your old SSD, boot from the new SSD, and explore the old SSD as you would any secondary drive. The risk is less to your system and more to the data that's on the old drive.

3) Either way, if the photos are in a protected folder, however, you may not be able to access them. Because the user account that is allowed to access them is different to the new user account in your fresh install (unless you have been using a microsoft account, in which case I'm not sure how it will behave).

When usiing Macrium Reflect to browse an image of a drive, you can actually let it force entry into protected folders:

4) If you want to be ultra careful and are happy to take a little extra time over it, I'd suggest the following:

If you have a drive with enough room on it, create an image of the old SSD onto the drive with the free space, using Macrium Reflect. An image will usually require less space than a clone, so it might even fit onto your new SSD as long as you didn't start filling it with games yet.

Once done, disconnect the old drive from the system again. Mount the image using the Macrium Reflect software, browse through the folders and recover your files.

If you don't have enough a spare drive with enough space, there's an option. Create a Recovery Environment on a USB stick via Macrium Reflect (the HowToGeek article above explains how). This is a basic OS you can boot into off the USB stick. You could delete your new Windows install, freeing up room to image the old drive onto the new one in the recovery environment. And then explore the image in the recovery environment.

That might sound like a lot of effort but if these are photos you really don't want to lose then the effort to avoid working on your only copy of them is probably worth it.

5) In future, have a backup of photos e.g. to cloud storage or an external device if they are things you don't want to risk losing. For reasons which I guess have unfortunately become clear. :(
 
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