Win 8.1 stops at loading

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yossarian

Gawd
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Nov 2, 2004
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I installed a new GTX 780 video card in my PC to replace my AMD HD 7950. Uninstalled all the AMD drivers using Control Panel in Windows before physically removing the card. Installed the NVidia card and installed the drivers. Everything seemed fine. Today the PC hangs at the loading screen with the Windows logo and the circling dots. Powering down completely and restarting brings up an automatic repair message, but then the screen goes blank although it's still powered on - no message that the signal is gone. I tried booting off a Win 8 USB drive and the Win 8 CD, but it just spins without ever giving me any menu options.

I have 2 hard drives in the machine, the second drive has Win 7 still on it and I F8 boot into it sometimes. So I figure I'll just boot into Win 7 and see if it's working. Same problem; it stops at the Win 7 loading screen with a pulsing logo similar to the spinning dots in Win 8. So I figure I'll go into Win 7 safe mode. I boot up, select safe mode in Win 7 and as the drivers scroll down it stops and freezes at AtiPcie.sys.

I removed the Nvidia card, reinstall an AMD card, and Win 8 does the same thing. By the way, I also uninstalled the AMD drivers in Win 7 but I never installed the Nvidia drivers.

What in the world would cause both Win 8.1 and Win 7 to stop at the loading screen, and why won't Safe mode in Win 7 even start?
 
Sounds like an issue with one of your drives. Have you checked the SMART status recently?
 
Win 8 is on an Intel SSD, Win 7 is on a WD 640 Blue. So we're talking both drives failing? I also Ghosted the Win 7 install from a Seagate 500 GB drive a couple weeks ago, and if need be I can reinstall it and boot it up. But it still has AMD on it because that's what I had in it at the time. Both drives are backed up on my WHS, although I discovered that since the Nvidia install the backup never occurred. I'm assuming it's video card related, but baffled that reinstalling an AMD card doesn't work.
 
So I reinstalled the original AMD HD 7590 and reconnected the hard drive I removed a couple weeks ago with Win 7 on it, and it stops loading just like the other system drives. So it's sounding like it's not video card related. I removed the 2 memory sticks one at a time and nothing. I'm guessing it can only be hardware related, but what hardware failure would stop windows from loading at this point? Even in safe mode? Could it be the power supply? It's an Antec 650W.
 
Thats usually a symptom of the power supply.
How old is the Antec?
Have you checked the bios to see what voltages your lines are feeding? (even though I realize that may not be totally accurate)
 
Just happens I bought a brand new Corsair HX1050 W. I connected it up and...same result.

So to summarize I've swapped the power supply, swapped memory each stick at a time, three Windows OS on three drives on two SATA connections, three video cards including the original one with the original AMD card to eliminate any Nvidia driver effects. Tried booting Win 8 of DVD and USB stick, and each time Windows 8.1 and both 7s freeze at start. Also reset the CMOS to default (but set the drives back to AHCI as they originally were).

My daughter just told me the PC worked this morning until she went to open Word which didn't start, and email which blue screened which said it would restart to repair. That started the freezing at start.

About the only thing I can figure is something failing on the MB or processor since those are the only parts I haven't swapped out. I can try booting the hard drives on my computer to see if they start, but the different MB and processor (mine's Intel, the sick PC is AMD) might scramble Windows' brains.
 
yossarian said:
Just happens I bought a brand new Corsair HX1050 W. I connected it up and...same result.

So to summarize I've swapped the power supply, swapped memory each stick at a time, three Windows OS on three drives on two SATA connections, three video cards including the original one with the original AMD card to eliminate any Nvidia driver effects. Tried booting Win 8 of DVD and USB stick, and each time Windows 8.1 and both 7s freeze at start. Also reset the CMOS to default (but set the drives back to AHCI as they originally were).

My daughter just told me the PC worked this morning until she went to open Word which didn't start, and email which blue screened which said it would restart to repair. That started the freezing at start.

About the only thing I can figure is something failing on the MB or processor since those are the only parts I haven't swapped out. I can try booting the hard drives on my computer to see if they start, but the different MB and processor (mine's Intel, the sick PC is AMD) might scramble Windows' brains.
Click to expand...

Try CMOS reset and if it still won't even start up setup then likely you managed to give your motherboard some ESD goodness when swapping the graphics card.
 
Cleared CMOS and no dice. I figure it's the motherboard too since it's the only part left unswapped (and the cpu).
 
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