Computer won't boot (shuts off before booting)

I don’t know if this is the right category, but screw it:
Recently, I’ve been encountering an issue, where I would try to to boot my computer and it would post, but once it tries to boot the actual operating system (in this case Win10), the PC would shut off and restart. I’ve had a similar issue, where something like this would happen in the init phase on arch (on windows I obviously don’t know how far along the boot process is) but I just wrote that off as arch being weird. Oddly enough, my gentoo is completely unaffected.

I hope this isn’t a hardware issue, I think it isn’t as it has been running fine since I built it last year. However, it’s probably important to say, I’m running an AMD Ryzen 7 1700X with 16 GB RAM (3200MHz) on the Gigabyte GA-AX370-Gaming 5 on the latest BIOS (Version F10 on AGESA 1.0.7.2a). Does anyone know what the problem could be? My guess would be either a BIOS instability or some instability with Windows and Arch LInux (with all the unstable spectre patches lately, it wouldnt come as a surprise)

No real idea. Do a memtest perhaps? Are your OSes running on different disks?

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I’d run a memtest as @Azulath suggested. If it is happening on both Win10 and Arch on the same machine, it’s likely a hardware issue. Something like ultimate boot CD (or whatever bootable environment you want to use for troubleshooting) will help narrow this down with the memtest and a stress test for CPU and/or GPU.

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Are you overclocking?
Similar to what i get when pushing parts to hard.

Does it act like the OS is starting? How does it crash?

I’ll give ultimate boot cd a try (I saw it doesnt support uefi natively but that shouldnt matter. Also I would have thought it’s a hardware issue as well, except gentoo works perfectly

As for @Azulath’s question, yes they are. Win10 is on my nvme ssd while arch and gentoo are on an hdd

@SuperNeutral No I am not

@Cobra92fs Windows just seems to restart without a blue screen (and since it’s changing dynamically, I can’t even get Motherboard error code). Arch seems to boot and eventually everything just goes black (the fans also ramp up if I remember correctly, though I’ll have to retest that

Pull ram sticks not sure how many you have but try different Dimm combinations and if possible remove some of the sticks.
If you can get into bios, reset everything to defaults and insure your ram/CPU voltages timing and clocks look normal.
We’re you able to run memtest 86?
Do you have access to another power supply, that would be my second go to.
Can you check to see if there is any noticeable dmg or leakage from caps on the motherboard or within PSU.
Also just to be clear this worked previously and then suddenly won’t boot correct?

So, Memtest didnt find anything wrong. I’ll try resetting the bios.
Unfortunately I do not have a second psu to test.

I’ll take a look. I’m gonna guess I’ll see what you mean if there is a leak. The psu is what I expect (if its even a hardware failure at all) , although that’ll be a pain to replace…

Also, yes, everything has been running fine until now (its been about 3 months or so) . And it’s only on arch and windows, while Gentoo is running completely fine (as mentioned before)

Update: Arch Linux is no longer buggered! For some reason it finally boots again, making windows the only OS that still won’t boot… I might have to roll back from the newest update. At least now I can be sure it’s not a hardware failure

Glad you figured it out. I have a weird story about a PC rebooting after post over and over again. It might help someone in the future. I was afraid that it was some kind of serious hardware problem. In the end it turned out to be a damaged reset button on the case. So yeah, I actually had a case related hardware problem :smiley:

Update #2: Windows works as well now, after reverting to a previous version. So I guess it was just about the newer windows updates being utter shit…

Glad things are working again and didn’t require any replacement parts :slight_smile:

Well, I wouldn’t quite consider it “working”. It seems like Windows updated itself in the mean time or something, because I had to revert to the 5 day old system image AGAIN. But at least nothing wrong with the hardware

which version of windows ?

Windows 10 Pro 1709. The current build is 16299.192

If you go into settings, update and security, advanced options there is an option in there to pause updates.

Alright, I’ll try that, although I’m not even sure whether any updates were installed, simply because I didn’t think the few hours of usage after reverting were even enough for windows to auto-install updates

Its likely an elevated update so yeah it probably would.
Tick that Pause button and you will have 35 days of leeway, hopefully by then the issue will be sorted out.
I wonder if its a driver conflict elsewhere, id suggest checking for updates for all hardware drivers in the machine just be sure to do a system backup, can do one easily just using system restore within windows just in case those cause issues also.

Edit: May also want to check for HDD/SDD drive errors.

Interesting, my PC is still stuck on 16299.125 and doesn’t find any updates…

But I’m glad you fixed your issues.

Aaaaaand its back. I turned off automatic updates and suddenly it happened again. Then I went back to the old restoration point and now I can no longer turn off updates. Im now gonna update my system on purpose to see what happens