I've been struggling with my PC for a while now, and I'm really hoping someone can help me figure out what's going on. I'm using an Asus ROG Strix B550E Gaming motherboard with a Ryzen 9 5900x processor, 64GB of Patriot Viper Steel RAM, an Nvidia RTX 3070 FE GPU, and a Corsair MP600 NVMe SSD as my boot drive. I'm running Windows 11 (25H2). Recently, I encountered repeated issues booting up my PC—sometimes it gets stuck on the Asus logo screen with the spinning wheel just frozen. I usually have to power off and restart to get it running again, but lately, this hasn't worked, and I've had to try many times. I've attempted several fixes, including removing the CMOS battery, remounting the GPU, disabling secure boot and fast boot, and unplugging unnecessary peripherals, but nothing seems to work. I also tried to create a Windows USB boot drive to either repair or reinstall, but that got stuck as well. After 7 hours, it finally booted normally, but after a subsequent restart, I'm back to being locked out. From the signs, it seems like it could be a RAM issue, but how could it work fine for hours after? Any suggestions on what I can do next would be greatly appreciated!
2 Answers
It sounds like you've tried a lot of troubleshooting already. Have you run any tests on your hardware? The RAM and SSD could be the culprits here. You might want to run dedicated tests for each—it could reveal something not-so-obvious. Sometimes, issues like this can really confuse you, especially with intermittent failures like yours.
Honestly, I’d recommend trying a clean install on your SSD. The fact that your Windows installation USB also freezes is concerning. It's also worth testing each stick of RAM separately to see if one of them might be causing the problem. You might also want to double-check your CPU temperature; overheating can sometimes lead to these types of issues.
I attempted the clean install, but as I noted, the installation USB ended up freezing as well. I’ll surely try testing the RAM soon!
I did test the SSD in BIOS, and it passed without issue. I haven't been able to test the RAM yet, but I'll check that soon.