PC Boot Lottery can occasionally work perfectly, but often it throws unexpected issues.
PC Boot Lottery can occasionally work perfectly, but often it throws unexpected issues.
Hello everyone, I already posted a few months ago about this, but the situation changed, and I still need your help. Well, I built my Sister a PC about a year ago and it's been running smoothly, ever up until about December or something like that. When she starts the PC, there is about a 50/50 chance that it will either just work normally, completely fine and she can play games and everything, or boot up in this weird state: The desktop and start menu work fine, but wallpaper engine and Discord can't start. Steam pops up with an error Message. Task manager loads, but freezes instantly. Pressing ctrl+alt+del brings up another weird error: "Failure to display security and shut down options. The logon process was unable to display security and logon options when CTRL+ALT+DELETE was pressed. If the operating system does not respond, press ESC or restart the computer by using the power switch.". And most importantly, you could neither shut down nor restart the PC through the start menu. Clicking the button does nothing. My sisters fix is literally, wait for PC to start, wait for wallpaper to change because of wallpaper engine. If it loads, great, start playing video games, if it doesn't, hold power button and try again. I have tried updating all of the drivers in the ASUS software and the Chipset and GPU Drivers with the AMD Tool. Surprisingly, my Sister said it worked! Great!! Until it didn't... After about a week of the Issue being "fixed". I was back to square one. She could have just been very lucky on the Startups for all I know. I tried updating the drivers (and OS) once again, this time I didn't use the auto detection AMD utility. Went on the site and selected the CPU from the list. It installed a program called "AMD Ryzen Master" (Never heard of it before), and after double clicking it it promptly threw another error message: "Ryzen Master unable to initialize, Kindly reinstall the program." Is this issue unrelated? I honestly don't know?? Anyways it didn't work an the issue is still happening. Running Windows 11 Home, Everything up-to-date. Ryzen 5 5600 RX 6800 ASUS TUF Gaming B550M-Plus WIFI II 650W PSU 16 GB RAM And like I said, there is a 50% Chance the PC boots up and works completely fine. Well and that's about it.. I have been a PC gamer for about 5 Years now and have never EVER come across an issue this specific. So any troubleshooting suggestions would be much appreciated. Thanks in advance. (And I'm sorry about this long, poorly written Text)
The issue remains consistent across your PC, yet you successfully enabled Ryzen Master for CPU overclocking.
Hmm, that sounds a bit tricky. For me, a complete reinstall would be the last option since this isn't my computer. If I had it, I'd have done that already. But for my sister, suggesting a backup and then a fresh install is just setting up for complications. If nothing else helps, I'll try something different first—other than just updating drivers—before starting over.
Have you completely removed and added the drivers again? Consider using memtest86 to verify there are no memory problems.
I once worked with an extremely old system that had previously functioned as a network video recorder. The only method to get it running was to remove the CMOS battery, pause for ten seconds, reinsert it, wait again, and then hope. It sometimes started immediately, other times it took an extended period.
You might start with a Win install media and run a Repair to check for fixes. Examine the Windows Update log to identify any recent updates that could be causing problems—it's common for issues to appear at specific times. Knowing the precise date the problem began would assist in determining if an update is responsible.
Verify the RAM status. Any inconsistencies suggest instability. Also, look in the Event Viewer for any issues.