Computer wont boot. Colored line glitches on boot logo. Logo stays forever. If it boots then Blue Screen after booting. Post boot freeze up.

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Plainman

Limp Gawd
Joined
Aug 7, 2017
Messages
171
*Processor -Intel Core i3 -6100 (6th Gen) (Skylake Dual Core) @ 3.7 Ghz. Socket LGA-1151. 3 MB Cache. Inbuilt Intel HD530 graphics, 4K supported (3 Monitor Support). Power 51w TDP. RAM Type DDR4-1866/2133, Max 64GB RAM (dual channel).
*Motherboard -Gigabyte, GA-B250M-DS3H, LGA-1151, Motherboard, 3 Monitor Support, 4x DDR4 RAM Slots, HDMI+DVI-D+VGA Ports, Supports Intel 6th & 7th Gen Processors.
*RAM -4 Sticks x 16GB, Kingston FURY, Black, DDR4, 3200mhz, CL16 (Model -KF432C16BB1~16).
*Graphics Card -Nil. Using processor IGPU Intel HD530.
*OS Drive -Western Digital WD SN550 Blue 250GB NVMe SSD (WDS250G2B0C).
*Projects Drive -Crucial MX500 1TB Sata3 SSD (CT1000MX500SSD1).
*Media Drive -Seagate 2TB (ST2000DM001), SATA3, 7200rpm.
*Render Drive -Seagate 500GB (ST500DM002), SATA3, 7200rpm.
*Backup Drive -Seagate 4TB (ST4000DM004), SATA3, 256MB Cache, 5400rpm.
*PSU -Corsair CV650, 80 Plus Bronze Certified, 650w Continuous Rating.
*CMOS Batt replaced on 28-Jun-2021.


This computer is only used for some graphics work and since its build has run maybe only 300 days in its life time of 5 years, as i switch it on only for specific work.So most components are pretty newish. Its been reliable so far. Suddenly last 5 days its just not booting, doesnt let me get to BIOS screen. BIOS was updated to the last available update about 2 years ago and theres been no updater released after that. Removed 4 sticks RAM and tried different combinations. Certain combinations boot and post. And once i get into the desktop, work on photoshop, then shut down results in Blue Screen error after which again system wont boot. Also half the times when the BIOS boot screen appears with the GIGABYTE logo its fully glitched and with multicolored artifacts (monitor is fine, checked with other PC and its perfect, no problems). Then it wont boot and says hit any key to choose the correct boot disk etc. Whats probably going on ? Ive tried over 5 days and am unable to do my work. Any help will be appreciated. Thanks.
 
Do you have a discrete video card you could check with? A small slot powered card would be ideal. Have you checked the other outputs on the board to see if they exhibit the same problem?
 
Its now booted, continuous attempts at different BIOS settings, so much that i dont even know what set things right. Its on just 1 RAM stick of 16gb. All my graphics apps are working as intended. The remaining 3 slots should now be populated in any particular order ?

Because thats what seems to be causing some problems. Theres 2 Black and 2 Grey DIMM Slots arranged in BG BG alternate colors. Does the 2 black constitute a CHANNEL or is it BG is one channel and the next BG colors are another channel ?
 
Channel A is 2 and 4, channel B is 1 and 3:


Screenshot_2024-03-24-09-35-01-69_e2d5b3f32b79de1d45acd1fad96fbb0f.jpg
 
Thank you very much.

The ram was causing the BIOS to go into a certain finicky state that it couldnt boot. This is all my simplistic brain could assimilate. It was related to the RAM however. Also we should be willing to reboot several times even if it throws errors is what it seems like, because after 4-5 reboots each one showing different results (bluescreen / bios freeze / black screen), it finally ironed itself out. The 3rd stick was again causing issues. So as ive now added upto 2 RAM sticks, i put in the 2 remaining sticks in one go and it booted again correctly. Now i was able to fire up my graphic design programs and work on them for awhile and test thoroughly and it seems stable now. After i had photo editing software open and pressed hibernate it would crash. But now it has hibernated with those apps open and came out of hibernate successfully too landing with the open apps as they were.

I will observe the behavior tomorrow morning and report back here if things go sideways.
 
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This morning i opened After Effects....i hit render and it blue screen crashes. But the same hardware used to run these apps flawlessly for 2 to 3 years till date. I repeat...flawlessly. Not even one crash until last week, when this problem started. Ok maybe one crash in a year or 2 is what ive experienced.
 
Create a bootable flash drive with memtest on it here. Enter bios select usb flash drive as first boot device and run it overnight with 2 memory modules at a time to narrow down the faulting modules. Once the faulting pair is found run one at a time to find the faulty module. The process of elimination "should" lead to a single faulty module. Should the testing find no fault then it's likely a memory controller issue with the cpu if the hard drives are proven to be reliable as well. My advice regarding hibernation of your pc is don't do it period the hassle of these sort of issues isn't worth the minute or so boot time saved.
 
Hi Thanks. The reason why i use hibernate overnight is so that i know which media goes where etc ....as im working it evolves and we set things on the table a certain way to remind us that this goes here and that goes into the project etc. All those folders will close up and i will lose my mind map (if that makes sense). Ill try if there's any app that can restore last opened windows in their same positions as they were left. Ill try MEMTEST now and see if i can find if the RAM has gone bad. Can i run MEMTEST after boot also....bec now im able to boot perfectly and it lands on windows desktop just as it used to do before. Snappy and works well. Only if i hibernate with After Effects open, then it blue screens out. Hibernating with Premiere Pro open involving larger video files loaded on the timeline etc doesnt cause any crash. It quickly hibernates and quick restores. Can i run MEMTEST within windows environment ? Only AE is creating an issue now. Maybe its software to hardware based like its trying to access memory a certain way etc and since i changed the RTC Battery etc, some problem ? Maybe a reinstall of AE should also be tried ?
 
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Plainman said:
Hi Thanks. The reason why i use hibernate overnight is so that i know which media goes where etc ....as im working it evolves and we set things on the table a certain way to remind us that this goes here and that goes into the project etc. All those folders will close up and i will lose my mind map (if that makes sense). Ill try if there's any app that can restore last opened windows in their same positions as they were left. Ill try MEMTEST now and see if i can find if the RAM has gone bad. Can i run MEMTEST after boot also....bec now im able to boot perfectly and it lands on windows desktop just as it used to do before. Snappy and works well. Only if i hibernate with After Effects open, then it blue screens out. Hibernating with Premiere Pro open involving larger video files loaded on the timeline etc doesnt cause any crash. It quickly hibernates and quick restores. Can i run MEMTEST within windows environment ? Only AE is creating an issue now. Maybe its software to hardware based like its trying to access memory a certain way etc and since i changed the RTC Battery etc, some problem ? Maybe a reinstall of AE should also be tried ?
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If you're going to persist with hibernation you might want to replace your CPU and RAM on a schedule which means motherboards too. Human brains are more malleable than computers unless you ring the bell too hard or if it doesn't grow correctly.
 
Something to consider after you determine whether or not your RAM is faulty as suggested above. If you're resuming with moderate frequency and there's not a good chance of power loss why not try a sleep mode instead of hibernation?
 
Hibernate doesn't damage ram or cpu any more than sleep -- in fact, because ram is unpowered during hibernation, it's likely to last longer.

Hibernate does increase wear on your HDD/SSD storage (the disk holding swap, specifically), because the contents of ram must be copied to long term storage every time you go into hibernation, and must be copied back to ram when you come out (unless you use hybrid sleep, which copies from ram to disk, but doesn't hibernate unless power is lost, so data is kept in ram as well).

Hibernate is likely to fail if your swap disk is failing, whereas sleep is likely to fail if your ram is failing or unstable.
 
Plainman said:
Hi Thanks. The reason why i use hibernate overnight is so that i know which media goes where etc ..
Click to expand...

Why not just leave the whole thing on overnight?

Nobu said:
Hibernate is likely to fail if your swap disk is failing, whereas sleep is likely to fail if your ram is failing or unstable.
Click to expand...

It's definitely at least worth checking SMART and doing a (long) self-test, although some firmware is going to lie. On an active disk, it's hard to do a full test, but maybe there's something that will write a few gigs and see what happens.
 
Nobu said:
Hibernate doesn't damage ram or cpu any more than sleep -- in fact, because ram is unpowered during hibernation, it's likely to last longer.

Hibernate does increase wear on your HDD/SSD storage (the disk holding swap, specifically), because the contents of ram must be copied to long term storage every time you go into hibernation, and must be copied back to ram when you come out (unless you use hybrid sleep, which copies from ram to disk, but doesn't hibernate unless power is lost, so data is kept in ram as well).

Hibernate is likely to fail if your swap disk is failing, whereas sleep is likely to fail if your ram is failing or unstable.
Click to expand...

You are right but i use Hibernate only once a day at the end of the work day. If i shut down, all my windows positions of my edit applications will rearrange for that project. And its not feasible to save that workspace even as i keep on changing it as the project evolves. Just because someone clown in some corner of the globe doesnt want to use hibernate doesnt mean thats applicable to everyone and people have practical uses for it, rather than idle time pass computer users who probably game etc. These media applications and working with them is different. Once we open windows and arrange them with media etc the system working layout becomes complex. Thats why im using a triple monitor setup.
 
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Plainman said:
You are right but i use Hibernate only once a day at the end of the work day. If i shut down, all my windows positions of my edit applications will rearrange for that project. And its not feasible to save that workspace even as i keep on changing it as the project evolves. Just because someone in some corner of the globe doesnt want to use hibernate doesnt mean thats applicable to everyone and people have practical uses for it, rather than idle computer users who probably game etc. These media applications and working with them is different. Once we open windows and arrange them with media etc the system working layout becomes complex. Thats why im using a triple monitor setup.
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I wasn't arguing for or against using it, just stating facts. You're unlikely to do much more wear than the average user by hibernating instead, but if your disk is failing it likely won't work well. Sleep won't hurt anything, but you'll want a battery backup if you disable hybrid sleep.
 
Wade88 said:
If you're going to persist with hibernation you might want to replace your CPU and RAM on a schedule which means motherboards too. Human brains are more malleable than computers unless you ring the bell too hard or if it doesn't grow correctly.
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How often would you suggest i change the entire computer to avoid this problem. What's a ball park window of time you would suggest ?
 
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Prince Valiant said:
How did memory testing go? Are all the sticks good?
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It wont boot again.....getting to BIOS itself a huge hit and miss. I keep getting black screens, and sometime black with an error saying it doesnt know which drive to boot from and to press a key to boot from the correct HDD. Im just not able to get in to do anything. I tried MEMTEST on the usb stick and fired up and it just was only black screens with a slight glow on the screen. So unable to test. Dont know what to do. As i keep shiffling RAM sticks it suddenly on 1 of 20 boots shows the BIOS SPLASH screen and stays there forever.

The colored stripes and boot glitched screen has not showed up ever. After shuffling the 4 ram sticks around etc it did boot up a few times and when inside Win10 all my graphics apps worked smooth again. Then when hibernating with After Effects ALONE it throws a blue screen. And after that now it again refuses to boot. Is the BIOS screen supposed to show up even if i boot with ZERO RAM sticks ?
 
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A bit of a long shot here, but try removing the CPU and replacing it. This sounds a bit like a bad contact somewhere. Since you've had the RAM sticks in and out, it's probably not on the memory contacts, although it wouldn't hurt to pull them one more time and gently take a (clean!!) pencil eraser to the contacts. If it's an oxidized CPU pin contact, maybe just removing and replacing will do the job.

If that doesn't work, and you've already replaced the CMOS battery, I would suspect a bad solder joint somewhere on the motherboard that has corroded over time, and there's probably nothing you can do other than replace the motherboard. Which implies the CPU too, unless you find a replacement mobo for almost nothing.
 
Prince Valiant said:
Have you checked if you can get into the BIOS without any HDDs or SSDs connected?
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Hi, i just tried as you suggested. Unplugged all 4 satas from the mobo. No response. Its just at no display. No signal is displayed on the monitor. Even the mobo speaker didnt beep as it usually does once everytime it boots successfully.

Then i juggled RAM sticks to different slots. In different combos and even in single 1 RAM only testing. FINAL VERDICT....theres no pattern or rhyme or reason.....it suddenly works with one RAM stick, then ad one more and boot loops forever, tried jumping slots...each ram one at a time....you name the pattern of testing ive tried it. It just doesnt replicate the same result. When slot 1 with RAM one works....after some test trial the same RAM 1 with slot 1 doesnt work. Im thinking its not even the RAM now. This is with everything unplugged except the PSU sata power plugs to the SATA drives are connected but the SATA data cables are all unplugged from the mobo. The mobo is essentially running solo with just the processor. And it wont enter BIOS consistently. Its accepting RAM 1 n 2 then fails with the same RAM exclusively, so cant say the RAM sticks have failed either. Then on attempt when it did accept the RAM i put in the NVMe and it booted into windows and was like normal in performance, then now it dosnt recognize the NVMe at all on some 10-15 tries of removing and refitting.
 
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pitingres said:
A bit of a long shot here, but try removing the CPU and replacing it. This sounds a bit like a bad contact somewhere. Since you've had the RAM sticks in and out, it's probably not on the memory contacts, although it wouldn't hurt to pull them one more time and gently take a (clean!!) pencil eraser to the contacts. If it's an oxidized CPU pin contact, maybe just removing and replacing will do the job.

If that doesn't work, and you've already replaced the CMOS battery, I would suspect a bad solder joint somewhere on the motherboard that has corroded over time, and there's probably nothing you can do other than replace the motherboard. Which implies the CPU too, unless you find a replacement mobo for almost nothing.
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I did the entire eraser thing, cleaned all the contacts though they were glittering newish to look at....but i did it anyway.
 
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So its like dead ram or dead motherboard ?....processor dead is not likely right ?

I have another corei3 system here but the dimm slot is DDR3 i think bec these RAM sticks dont match the Dimm slot Notch point. Else i would have tested these sticks on that system and run memtest from that.

Could the mobo / ram be dead even though out of 15-20 tries it boots and then functions excellent with heavy softwares like PrPro with 4K footage etc ? It worked smooth and very well with even AE. This is during one of those times i was able to boot into the OS on the NVMe. I just dont want to throw away any working parts like 64gb of RAM, by the way the RAM (16gb x 4 sticks) were bought about 7 months back only, can i claim warranty ?.

Bec of this problem, Im ordering a new AM4 mobo and Ryzen 5700g (graphics cards need me a bank loan), can i pop these 64gb of sticks into the new mobo without any risk to the mobo, and if they work i can use them else i can then order new ram ?

Im thinking if this processor and mobo is working then maybe i can demote it as my general use home pc for browsing and normal use, since it worked so well editing 4K footage and all im sure it would be put to good reuse as a normal home computer. Will the gigabyte service centre be able to check and at least tell if the mobo has failed or is it the processor/ram ?
 
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I was guessing dead motherboard, hard to say without spare parts to test if you can't troubleshoot any other way. Seems like you have unplugged all usb and other cables from the PC and it still acts up so...
 
HeavensCloud said:
I was guessing dead motherboard, hard to say without spare parts to test if you can't troubleshoot any other way. Seems like you have unplugged all usb and other cables from the PC and it still acts up so...
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Hi, yes.....all testing since yesterday morning is only mobo+processor+ram, everything else unplugged. among these 3 mostly its rare that the processor will conk right ? That too the system has seen very sparing useage, maybe 500 days of use since it was built brand new, thats being overly liberal in my estimation. I used to switch it on only when i have a specific graphics job to do.
 
Plainman said:
I just dont want to throw away any working parts like 64gb of RAM, by the way the RAM (16gb x 4 sticks) were bought about 7 months back only, can i claim warranty ?.
Click to expand...
Interesting. Was under the impression all parts were the same age.
Can you put back in your old RAM that you used before and test?
 
learners permit said:
Create a bootable flash drive with memtest on it here. Enter bios select usb flash drive as first boot device and run it overnight with 2 memory modules at a time to narrow down the faulting modules. Once the faulting pair is found run one at a time to find the faulty module. The process of elimination "should" lead to a single faulty module. Should the testing find no fault then it's likely a memory controller issue with the cpu if the hard drives are proven to be reliable as well. My advice regarding hibernation of your pc is don't do it period the hassle of these sort of issues isn't worth the minute or so boot time saved.
Click to expand...
That didnt work. I tried. It wouldnt recognize the image, (plus the download doesnt give a proper ISO, it gives a IMG file which rufus and winsetupusb doesnt recognize. I tried other bootable thumb drives like win10 OS etc and they load perfectly.
 
funkydmunky said:
Interesting. Was under the impression all parts were the same age.
Can you put back in your old RAM that you used before and test?
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Hi Funky.....i wish,,,, i had the old 2 sticks of 8gb ram..... but it was stolen (had it on the table with some work going on at home and it vanished form my desk) :( about 1 month after i replaced it with these 4 sticks. My bad luck.....i dont have any spare ram to test with also.
 
Download HCI Memtest and test 1 stick of RAM at a time.

You will need to multiple copies to fill all the RAM as the free version doesn't allow a single copy to test all that much.

It is way quicker than letting memtest86+ run overnight or for days even to detect a bad stick of RAM.

Usually, if HCI goes through 1 entire pass without any errors, you can say your RAM is fine.

The errors you are seeing (from what I have seen on multiple laptops) sounds exactly like faulty RAM.

Aloe, I did not read too closely the previous posts but did see that someone suggested reseating the CPU. have you done that already?
 
cyclone3d said:
Download HCI Memtest and test 1 stick of RAM at a time.

You will need to multiple copies to fill all the RAM as the free version doesn't allow a single copy to test all that much.

It is way quicker than letting memtest86+ run overnight or for days even to detect a bad stick of RAM.

Usually, if HCI goes through 1 entire pass without any errors, you can say your RAM is fine.

The errors you are seeing (from what I have seen on multiple laptops) sounds exactly like faulty RAM.

Aloe, I did not read too closely the previous posts but did see that someone suggested reseating the CPU. have you done that already?
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Hi Cyclone, i havent reseated the CPU as i dont have thermal paste ready at hand. I will get some tmrw and try that out. Also if i buy a bigger quantity of thermal paste can i store it for few months or even years or its better to buy the small syringe things ?
 
Plainman said:
Hi Cyclone, i havent reseated the CPU as i dont have thermal paste ready at hand. I will get some tmrw and try that out. Also if i buy a bigger quantity of thermal paste can i store it for few months or even years or its better to buy the small syringe things ?
Click to expand...
Depends on what you buy. Personally, I would not bother with Arctic Silver 5 anymore as it actually has pretty poor thermal transfer compared to just about anything but the absolute trashiest compound available now days. It will also separate if stored for too long.

I do use Arctic Ceramiq 2 for stuff that doesn't really need all that much cooling.

I have a few others that I use for stuff that needs better thermal transfer.

If you can get Thermal Grizzly branded stuff locally or even better for you use case, the Thermal Grizzly pad that would be great.

I wouldn't mess with any of the generic trash. The gray stuff, such as what Dell uses will eventually separate and cause hot spots.

The white generic crap will dry out.

Good thermal compound can be stored for years.
 
cyclone3d said:
Depends on what you buy. Personally, I would not bother with Arctic Silver 5 anymore as it actually has pretty poor thermal transfer compared to just about anything but the absolute trashiest compound available now days. It will also separate if stored for too long.

I do use Arctic Ceramiq 2 for stuff that doesn't really need all that much cooling.

I have a few others that I use for stuff that needs better thermal transfer.

If you can get Thermal Grizzly branded stuff locally or even better for you use case, the Thermal Grizzly pad that would be great.

I wouldn't mess with any of the generic trash. The gray stuff, such as what Dell uses will eventually separate and cause hot spots.

The white generic crap will dry out.

Good thermal compound can be stored for years.
Click to expand...
CoolerMaster Master Gel Regular ? Can i get that ?
 
The file I pointed to doesn't require rufus to make bootable. I believe it simply requires that you extract it to a folder and click on the image usb and point it to the root of the desired flashdrive.
 
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