Hi,
Lately I have been experiencing an endless spinning wheel when I start Windows before I can see the desktop. For almost a year everything had been working pretty good considering I was able to coffee lake mod my Z270 Apex IX board to work with a 9700K cpu. Was able to play games and work with the machine without issues but one day a few months ago Windows failed to boot up. The wheel would spin endlessly after bios passed control to the boot loader. I might have experimented with memory overclocking at best but left the cpu running at stock voltages set at 1.30 volts. The actual bios I used was made by a modder known as Dsanke.
Anyhow so after the first time this happened I reinstalled Windows and was ok for a month. This time setting ram to XMP stock settings. Then it happened again. Even automatic repair failed to fix the problem but was able to recover by using the Windows install stick to ‘Repair my computer’. After it did its thing I saw that it said something like ‘Failed Windows update removed’ and was able to boot back into windows again. So I tried to turn off Windows update and did a 7 day pause after a couple updates sneaked by me. Thats the best Windows settings offers and was good for another week and it happened again the other day. This time the Windows install stick repair computer routine could not repair or even uninstall updates. Not even sure if updates were at fault but had to restore a backup to get it going again. Have a dual boot Macrium partition I installed the last time this happened just in case. Restoring a backup takes like two minutes.
Only thing is now my motherboard audio is making popping and crackling sounds randomly. Not sure if its related. Not sure what to do next. Ready to chalk it up to experience and fun while it lasted and get a real Z390 board maybe. The CPU is under extended two year warranty at Microcenter. Was an open box item. Thinking of maybe just going Z490 but would have to sell the 9700K. Luckily the Apex board was like $60 investment at the time.
Next thinking of Stress testing it. Got to get a better virus scanner maybe but not sure if its a virus or something else. Could be a bad Windows update or just data corruption occuring.
How can I tell?
Thanks
Specs
Asus Apex IX Z270 Dsanke mod running 9700K cpu
Gskill 2x16gb 3200 MHz ram
Msi 2080 Trio videocard
Killer AX1650 network WiFi card
WD Sn750 nvme drive
WD 750 U.2 / WD 750 pci-e soft raided together
Two Intel Sata SSD raided together MB Intel raid
WD black mechanical data drive
@davidm71 - BIOS is done loading and POST Complete (BIOS handed off to OS) before you see the windows spinning wheel, so this is a windows/driver/startup-app issue. As you observed, fixed by a clean windows install.
Since it keeps happening to you, sounds like something you install or use may be corrupting something in the OS, or your OC settings are not as stable as you thought possibly leading to something getting corrupted (confirm by no OC for a few months, or do more stability testing and tweak things better)
I’d start with heavy stability testing, even if you are not overclocking, just to be sure your memory even at stock is running 100% Stable.
So you don’t think the mod is at fault but instead something being corrupted by memory overclock? Though last time this happened I had returned memory to XMP stock settings but perhaps I don’t have enough SA or vccio volts for even 3200 MHz. Maybe I should go lower and drop ram speed lower. Thing is you would think you would have random lockup’s with a bad overclock but this issue is very specific. Happens to the startup of the OS. Perhaps after a Windows update. Next thing I have to do I guess is run the gamut on stability testing and find out where the weakness is coming from. Perhaps the modded bios isn’t applying voltages correctly. Thanks for your input in any case. Thanks.
Right, I doubt it has anything to do with the mod, but you could tag dsanke or PM him and ask if he’s seen others report this issue with his mod BIOS. Yes, you are thinking right about the memory now, sometimes XMP may not be all you need to set, you never know without stability testing first.
Bad overclock does not always mean you get random lockups or blue screens etc, sometimes it can just cause small random memory glitches and when that happens on a certain file or during a certain process it can then corrupt things.
This is why stability testing is a must, even at stock speeds for CPU and memory, because as you mention you still may need to tweak other voltages.
And yes, sometimes a windows update can break stuff too, but in those cases you’d see it each and every time you install that same update, so on a clean install once you updated it again you’d see same right then if it was due to an update.
Yes, check voltages from software readout too, sometimes mod BIOS, or use of mod BIOS in general means you may need to set a certain setting or certain voltages a certain way (Something like that, if specific to this mod, would have been mentioned where you found the mod usually)
Just to update this thread I wanted to report so far so good after down clocking the 9700k to 3600mhz and the 3200mhz ram down to 2600mhz. I also contacted Dsanke about this issue and he did not have any reports of Users having similar issues though he was able to help me update the bios to a newer version using fptw64 to just update the bios region. Required removing the Asus bios lock. Anyhow running with fixed frequency and c-states and speed step disabled. Didn’t realize I had secure boot enabled. Still running with IA DC AC load line set to 0.01 from when was in adaptive mode but going to set to Auto as I’m still getting low Vid values reported by Coretemp + HWInfo. Anyhow time will tell if this resolves. Took a month last time. Thanks.