OS Became Unresponsive, BSOD, then PXE Screen

Software & Operating Systems Windows
1

Hello there. I haven't posted anything in these forums for a while now, and was hoping to get some help. I posted this issue on several forums on the internet, and received no help or response whatsoever... So I was hoping someone here could help me out. And also, frankly, I have no clue where to post this. I decided to post it here, because I thought it pertained to my OS. I apologize if this is in the wrong place!

So, today, I was browsing the internet for some mods, and suddenly, my OS (Windows 8.1 OEM) became unresponsive. I was able to move the mouse around, but couldn't click on anything. Suddenly, I got a Blue Screen. Then, after about 1-2 seconds of the Blue Screen (didn't have time to read the error code, unfortunately as it was gone as soon as it appeared...) A PXE screen came up. After 20 seconds of that, it prompted me to "Reboot and select proper boot device, or insert boot media in selected boot device". I restarted my PC, and it booted up normally, and Windows 8.1 started up as it usually does. Windows seems to be working just fine so far after restarting it.

This also happened to me a few weeks back while I was playing Deus Ex: Human Revolution, except there was no BSOD.

If anyone can help me out, or tell me why this happened to me, it would be greatly appreciated!

And now, I believe my specifications will be important. (It's a modified version of the HP Pavilion P6616F)

CPU: AMD Phenom II X4 820 at 2.8GHZ

GPU: Gigabyte Nvidia GeForce GTX 750 1GB

RAM: 6GB DDR3

HDD: Western Digital 1TB HDD (Model WDBSLA0010HNC-NRSN)

2

Check your Windows event log. Run WhoCrashed to get the BSOD details. Check your disk for SMART errors. Run memtest for a few hours to see if your RAM is bad.

3

Thanks for the reply! I checked my Windows Event Log, and found 6 critical errors, all "Kernel-Power related". Only two of these were related to the crashing. The rest, I don't know. Probably from turning the PC off when an update refused to finish, and I had to shut the PC off with the button, rather than within the OS. Anyways, I believe that the RAM may be overheating. I opened up the side panel to reseat the SATA Data and SATA Power cable, and I found that the PSU (Non-Modular) had all of it's unneeded cables crowded around the RAM. With nowhere else to put these cables, I was forced to leave them there. My PSU (EVGA 100-W1-0500-KR 500W) has enormous cable length, but this is due to me being an imbecile and buying a full ATX PSU for a UATX Board and OEM case...

I also noticed that when attempting to reseat the SATA Data and power cables, the SATA Data cable slipped right out without much resistance, so I think that this may factor into this issue.

Although, I still don't have any ideas about the PXE Screen. It's still a mystery to me...

4

PXE is booting over network. It is usually at the bottom of the boot order. Go into bios and remove it from the boot list.

It probably went into pxe boot because your cables were loose and the mobo couldn't recognize the os disk.

5

Thanks for the reply. So, what happens to cause the BIOS not to recognize my boot drive only when it crashes? When I turn it on normally, it just boots to Windows as it usually does. (I like your name by the way)

6

Don't know if this will help but try blue screen view http://www.nirsoft.net/utils/blue_screen_view.html

If it doesn't show any crashes, ensure paging is enabled because windows 8 will not create a mini dump if its disabled.

7

Thanks :blush:

Since you can boot normally i will rule out anything about the disk. That leaves the mobo or the power supply.

Try these in order

_Reset bios settings to defualt
_Turn off the pc and remove the bios battery and wait a few minutes before reinstalling it, if you can't access it removing the ram while windows is running gives the same effect.
_Update your bios
_Connect the disk to a different sata port and a different power cable

8

I doubt that it's my PSU. It hasn't given me any problems before. The motherboard on the other hand, has. I ran the memtest program, and it said my RAM was fine. If my RAM isn't the culprit, then it must be the motherboard. It's a cheap one that the computer came with, so it would make sense that it would be doing something like this. I was looking to replace it soon anyways with something better. I wonder if I'd be better off salvaging some parts, and throwing this one in the trash and building a new one, instead of having to deal with this damn problem computer. The case is too small, and every time I fix a problem, another one arises within that same week.

9

Thanks for the reply. I ran WhoCrashed, mentioned above, last night, and it couldn't find anything, even with paging enabled. Strange. But after playing some video games last night, no crashes occurred, and no PXE screens occurred.

10

So yeah, I found the problem... (I think). I opened up my computer and dealt with the mass of cables (by cable tying the excess cables to the side of the optical drive holder thingy). After doing so, I found that the 24 pin motherboard connector somehow wiggled loose. I pushed it back in, and tightened the 4 pin CPU connector (as it was a bit loose as well) and the problem hasn't come up again. I assume that it was either a RAM overheating issue (as the cables from the PSU were surrounding it, preventing cool air from getting to it), or the 24 pin motherboard connector and/or 4 pin CPU connector were slipping out and connecting again, making Windows think it was a power surge or something. I'll just wait and see what tomorrow holds.