I've been dealing with a weird issue for the past day where my PC shows a grey screen with a static underscore on boot. It usually takes about 10 seconds to boot, but now it takes around 5 minutes. I started noticing this problem after experiencing sudden hard crashes while playing Battlefield 1, which prompted me to update Windows. Here's what I've tried so far: clearing the CMOS and swapping the battery, reseating RAM, drives, and GPU, performing an in-place upgrade and a clean install, moving the DP cable to the motherboard, using DDU to update GPU and chipset drivers, rolling back Windows updates, resetting the BIOS, unplugging the GPU, and replugging every cable. I'm considering doing a fresh install of Windows on a spare drive, even though CrystalDiskInfo shows my main drive at 95% health. The boot issues still persisted during the reinstall process. Any advice?
4 Answers
From your specs, it seems like everything should be running smoothly. If you recently upgraded and started experiencing issues, something could have gone wrong during the update. Have you checked if the motherboard's connections are all secure?
It sounds like your boot drive might be failing. You could check the EZ Debug LED when you power up, but based on what you’ve described, it’s likely an issue with the boot drive.
Just wanted to share my experience: I had a similar issue, and after testing with another boot drive and still facing the problem, I figured the motherboard could be the culprit. Good luck with that!
I have some good news! I finally managed to fix my boot issue. After checking everything, I discovered that a USB 3 connector on my motherboard had some bent pins. I carefully straightened them out, and now my system boots in 10 seconds again. Not sure if the front USB ports will work anymore, but I'm just happy it’s stable now! If anyone else runs into this, definitely check the motherboard connections.
I see no debug lights at all, just the grey screen. I'm planning to try booting from a spare SSD to narrow it down. If that doesn't work, it might just be the motherboard.