PC no longer launches Windows with NVidia GPU

Whopper75

Whopper75

Whopper75

Associate
Joined
7 Sep 2015
Posts
12
Location
Cork, Ireland
My PC automatically restarted today during a game.

It went to post and began loading Windows as normal, but did not load windows instead it began restarting again. After several times it reported that Windows failed to start and displayed a number of options including safe mode.

No option would load any form of windows. I decided to begin removing components to see if any were preventing windows from loading. I removed the GPU, and attached monitor to the Motherboard's display port.

The PC restarted fine first time and performed several reboots to test. I then reinstalled the GPU, but again windows failed to start.

Is the GPU itself certainly the issue or could there be another factor that I should examine?

Thank you
 
Intel Core i7-6700K 4.0GHz
Asus ROG Maximus VIII Hero
MSI Geforce GTX 980Ti Gaming 6GB
Corsair Vengeance 16GB [4x4GB] DDR4 PC4-24000C15 3000MHz
Samsung SM951 256GB M.2 PCI-e 3.0 x4 NVMe
Samsung 850 EVO 250GB
EVGA SuperNova P2 850W ’80 Plus Platinum’ Modular PSU
Corsair Hydro H90 CPU Cooler
Corsair Obsidian 750D Full Tower ATX – Airflow Edition
 
Take out the GPU again, reboot into Windows. Uninstall the Nvidia software and drivers. reboot. Sutdown, put the 980 back and try again, if you can get into Windows download the latest Nvidia software. Possibly try a different PCIe slot if - check the manual for the best one to use.
Andi.
 
could be either the GPU, motherboard or even the psu.

looking at your specs it doesnt look like its an old build.

do you have another system you could try the GPU in?
or even try another GPU in your system


out of interest. what OS are you running? as above could also be just a case of bad driver but with it running fine before hand its strange.
 
PC just restarted now again, this time without the GPU in at all so I guess it's not the main issue after all. [and all Nvidia drivers are uninstalled again, tried that earlier before posting]

Not gaming at the time just browsing internet. Running Win 10 64bit

It restarted automatically twice without getting to windows, booted to windows on third attempt and is working again for now.

Now guessing PSU or Motherboard as well.
 
Yeah, everything on the list was only purchased in September.

I have an old 500W PSU that I can install to see if that makes a difference. I doubt it's enough to power the GPU so I'll leave that out for now, but as the PC has issues without the GPU and it's drivers I'm certain that's not the issue anymore.
 
If you've got a spare PSU knocking around then this would certainly be my first port of call. At least you can then rule the PSU out of the equation.

Are you overclocking at all? And have you run memtest to rule out any memory issues?
 
I ran the Windows Memory Diagnostic earlier even before removing the GPU originally, but I know Memtest is far more reliable and will run that later this evening when I swap the PSU.

I was overclocking by 12%, but using the boards presets, nothing manual. The first thing I did was switch everything back to default to begin eliminating causes.

One thing I noticed was that the PC restarts the same way if I open multiple Firefox browser tabs but MS Edge tabs seem to work OK. This doesn't explain the first couple of times it crashed during a game yesterday as no browser windows were open, nor does it account for the PC not coming back on as normal but it does identify a quick way I can recreate the condition that causes the PC to crash.
 
Have you tried removing the RAM one stick at a time to rule that out? No matter how much of a long shot it's always good to go with the simple and free options first! Then as others have said definitely try your spare PSU to see if that fixes it, if neither of those help I'd say the motherboard is probably faulty.
 
I would point either at the PSU starting to die,, or a faulty stick of ram , mind you with faulty ram there is usually no set patern to pc failures , as in the pc just fails while doing different things.

BTW make sure you dont have any new usb peripherals plugged in , incase they are to blame.
 
I had a similar issue to you, thought it was the GFX card. Turned out to be a faulty stick of RAM.

At this point however I had RMA'd the gfx card which was fine and was sent back, swapped the PSU (had to buy a new one at great expense). I had done a mem test but with both sticks in and it passed no problem. when I finally decided to do one stick at a time, Memtest failed immediately! :D
 
If swapping out the RAM doesn't work I'll run Memtest to do a proper check.

Joe: Only USB devices plugged in are Keyboard and Mouse.

Andi: CPU temp never seemed to go above 65C under a full load [MGS Phantom Pain @ 4K] and there was no crashing. Idle overclocked was 25C-ish. Temp was insignificant yesterday during web browsing when it started crashing.

Oaksmoked: I will perform Memtest on individual sticks - thanks for the tip.
 
Last edited:
Memtest came back with all sticks flying colours. Tested each individual stick too. All good.

Swapped out EVGA 850W PSU for old Seasonic 500W PSU and PC came on as normal. No issues, nor was I able to recreate issue. Left it on for a while to heat up a bit but no restarts or problems, no matter what I did. Manually restarted several time without issue.

Swapped back in the 850W PSU to be sure and PC would not load windows at all, just kept restarting in an endless cycle, so I guess that's the culprit.

Thanks for all the assists, tips and suggestions.
 
Glad to hear you've found the problem, even better that it was the EVGA PSU (supposedly brilliant customer care) and not the ASUS (bloody awful customer care!) motherboard :)
 
OJ46 said:
Glad to hear you've found the problem, even better that it was the EVGA PSU (supposedly brilliant customer care) and not the ASUS (bloody awful customer care!) motherboard :)
Click to expand...


yea EVGA are meant to be one of the best for customer care ive never dealt with them though.

are Asus that bad? My mate sent a motherboard back to them and says he never had a problem
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top Bottom