I'm building a new PC for my friend using mostly new parts, but we kept his old SSD to retain all his storage. Everything seemed to be going great until I started downloading drivers. I tried to install AMD's Adrenalin edition driver, but it wouldn't download due to a Windows update running in the background. After waiting for the updates to finish, I decided to uninstall the Nvidia app before rebooting the PC to prepare for the new GPU drivers.
However, after restarting, the PC won't boot—no BIOS screen, nothing. Just dead. To troubleshoot, I moved the GPU and SSD back to his old PC, and everything booted up fine there. I even managed to download the Adrenalin edition driver on the old setup. Now, even after switching back, the new PC refuses to boot. It's a:
- Ryzen 9 9950x3d
- MSI MPG X870E Edge TI WiFi
- 32GB DDR5
- 9070XT GPU
The old setup is completely different:
- i5-12600KF
- MSI LGA1700 DDR4 motherboard
- 32GB DDR4 RAM
- 3070 Ti GPU
Can anyone help me figure out what's going wrong?
2 Answers
I would also recommend checking for any diagnostic lights on the motherboard when you try to power it on. If there are DRAM lights or other indicators, that could help pinpoint the problem. It's also worth mentioning that moving from such different hardware (like from Intel to AMD) without a clean install could lead to issues because of driver remnants. If all else fails, it may be necessary to wipe the SSD and start fresh with just the new setup.
It sounds like the uninstallation of the Nvidia drivers might have messed things up a bit. Before trying anything else, check if your CPU has integrated graphics and use that to boot up the PC instead of the GPU. This will allow you to at least see if you can get into the BIOS or Windows. Also, it's a good idea to let Windows finish any pending updates—interrupting them can lead to system issues. If it still doesn't boot, you might want to consider doing a clean install of Windows on the SSD to eliminate any driver conflicts.
Using integrated graphics is a solid first step! And if you're up for it, a clean install might be the way to go since it would clear out any potential software issues from the driver uninstalls.
I noticed there were no diagnostic lights when I powered on, just some DRAM ones. I've already tried removing the RAM sticks down to one, and the light disappeared. Cleaning the drive seems like a last resort, but if I can't boot at all, I may have to try that. Thanks for the advice!