Little brother updated bios after getting a new gpu to take advantage of smart access memory and other amd incremental upgrades.
then it was hard to get back into windows, bios rolled back a few times, ultimately we got into windows
then windows deactvated and nothing worked, so he formated the c drive hopeing that would solve the issue
then he found out his windows boot thing was on a hdd and not an nvme, but it would boot from nvme, so he then re installed windows 8 times in various ways, and its now all off nvme
and now his data drives are corrupt/the files are corrupt and running chkdsk may have caused a bluescreen.
I have near exhausted all of my knowledge with dealing with issues like these helping him, any ideas, or things we can just rule out as causes? everything wAS working fine about 4 days ago before he did the bios update.
-----an edit for clerification and update
win 10 is installed and booting entirely from the nvme now
the hdds are largely game storage, going to steam and trying to launch a game results in the game refusing to launch, and trying to verify results in ‘infinite’ hang. i’m not 100% on this as my little brother has almost 0 patience, but i’m taking his word because I don’t want to hover over the situation for a half hour or so while it tries to verify.
when he wakes up he will likely start a memtest and we will figure out if the ram is not working at current xmp, if thats the case we will down clock it a bit and see if it works rinse repeat till it does.
It sounds like you are dealing with multiple complex issues at the same time, so I’m not sure anyone will be able to walk you through a step-by-step fix. But I’ll give you my thoughts as to what I think is happening and how I’d go about troubleshooting.
Generally BIOS updates are pretty painless and don’t cause issues. But after an update if Windows hangs on boot or you start getting blue screens, it is usually related to memory compatibility. Sometimes the updates contain memory tweaks that don’t work well with some XMP memory profiles. Try disabling XMP for troubleshooting or roll back to a known good version. It is important you resolve whatever BIOS instability issues you have prior reinstalling Windows.
Windows Activation - I’ve seen this happen after a BIOS update as Windows thinks you’ve changed motherboards. This is usually temporary and Windows should reactivate on it’s own. (You can force re-activation by running: slmgr /ato)
UEFI Boot Partition - This is a long standing issue in both Windows 10 and 11. When performing a clean install of Windows it sometimes installs the UEFI boot partition on a non-OS drive. If later you format the non-OS drive then the system will fail to boot. The best way to avoid this is to remove/disconnect all your non OS drives prior to installation.
So to answer your original question: yes, the bios update likely contributed to the data corruption. But I’m guessing it was the blue screens and boot hangs that actually corrupted it.
My advice would be to resolve your BIOS issues first, clear CMOS, and then do a clean install of Windows with only the OS drive installed/connected. If you don’t need any data off the drive I would perform a diskpart wipe before proceeding with the Windows install. When you get to the first Windows Setup screen press Shift + F10 on your keyboard. Then follow steps in the " To manually wipe a drive and convert it to GPT" section of the guide below.
The bios problem is largely dealt with at the moment, but yea, ill probably have him stress test memory to make sure it works while he is asleep.
There is another problem that cropped up but is minor compared to hardware ones, he had youtube up and running while trying to diagnose/fix his computer, and chrome was crashing telling him he ran out of memory, he has 32gb and sub 16gb was used, could this be caused by memory ‘failing’, in my case when I tried xmp on my computer it would just bsod, but im wondering if its possible its soft failing and some of the other issues may be memory and not the hdd causing the issues, on a chkdsk /f /r apparently he bsod’d, when one of my hdds had so many bad sectors any fail safe was failing at the last 500gb it would lock up my system for the better part of 5-10 minutes, but it never bsod’d
if the bios update worked then it shouldnt have had any effect on your data as the bios is written to a chip not the hdd/ssd/nvme.
most likey the boot order was reset when you updated the bios which led you to thinking the drive was corrupt.
… anyway
for the install. your using a bootable usb?.
if not i recommend you get a copy of rufus and make a fresh image.
unplug all your hdd’s/ssd leave your nvme plugged in.
boot your system into bios.
find load system defaults. load them in.
now find the setting for eufi/bios and switch it to eufi…
it may be labelled legacy bios support. disable it.
check your drive order you want your nvme set as first.
check your ram is set to default 2133
save your eufi setup
before you leave eufi/bios
select
boot off the usb. the system should restart and boot of it.
from there select fresh install.
when your asked where, delete any partitions that are listed (there should be 3, 1 reserved, 1 recovery, and 1 primary partition.
delete em all and making the drive raw. (no partitions, if there is delete them 2)
now make 1 partition for the whole drive.
select it as the destination for the install and then hit ok.
select as you would for language and options, choose offline (sign in later).
this all done should take about 20 mins on a single nvme.
once done install your drivers for your chipset, gfx and audio. Optional to stabilise the system for gaming download directx 10 june and dx11 updates. (add dx9 if you play old games)
then add all the vcredist libraries from 2005 to 2019.
…
it sounds like your ram may just be writing bad data to the disk while your installing.
so leaving it at the working default for the install should solve that problem.
once your installed then set your xmp profile to the rams rated speed.
then do some ram testing.
Yes, the ‘out of memory’ error could be related to either failed RAM or the memory compatibility issues I mentioned earlier. I’d test the memory before doing any further troubleshooting.
Could one of the ram sticks have accidentally been partially knocked out of it’s slot? In just enough to register, but not fully?
Might be worth having a quick check all the dims are firmly in place, next time the computer is off
I’ve red through everything, comments included, but this line still worries me and it’s kinda obscure:
Did you check if the BIOS update stuck or if the version reverted for some reason or the motherboard is loading a secondary BIOS?
I’m leaning more towards the “booting off of secondary BIOS”, if there’s one on your motherboard. I don’t see how all of these issues can arise after a BIOS update. Maybe the secondary BIOS is really old and has crappy memory support, especially if it’s a Ryzen system.
Another thing: have you checked if the BIOS is reported on the internet as problematic by other users?
bios is the correct one and its the newer one, the issues we ran into were seemingly all from memory, kind of shcoked how well windows 10 handles memory errors honestly,
the hdd issues cleared up when we removed xmp,
the crashing stopped too.
going to have fun going into bios and setting ram manually to not toss errors sometime soonish, right now he is just playing games again and thankful the problem is resolved for now.