Disconnected Power for Install Of CPU Contact Frame, Windows 11 Won't Boot

[dece870717]

Didn't know where to post this as I don't have a ROG motherboard but I do have an Asus PRIME Z790-P Wifi motherboard.

Built my PC back on September 4th 2023, and with all the stuff I've done, I've never had such an issue. Basically, this morning I disconnected my PC completely from everything plugged into it (well besides my mouse and keyboard wireless dongles on top of front of the computer case). Opened the side panel and the only things I did were taking off the cpu heatsink, took out the cpu to clean the thermal paste, and to remove the motherboards cpu latching/contact mechanism, and replace it with Thermalrights cpu contact frame. I then proceeded to install my newly bought Thermal Grizzly KryoSheet and put the heatsink back on, closed it up, and plugged everything back in.

When I turned it on it gave me the expected something changed press F1 to goto setup. I immediately went to the asus profile section thinking I needed to reload it, started plugging in a couple different external hardrives and a USB flash device to see where I had it saved, but then realized all my bios settings were exactly the same, nothing was reset. I selected save and reset, pc reboots and then am immediately greetes with the startup repair with the words "attempting to repair Pc" , then I see diagnosing you Pc, it then fails. I try various options from that screen besides resetting the pc. I noticed something strange when I attempted the system restore point method, when I first goto it, it gives me an error of not being able to find whatever, in the list of restore points 3 options pop up, if I select one and click changes in programs and etc, gives error that it can't find the restore point, yet it'll let me select it and move on to the next page which has the list of drives to be selected to be restored, the only option have ever had it turned on for was my System drive, BUT, for some reason instead of my System drive being C: it's now F: and another sata ssd drive I use for various things is now C:, so after some frustration trying to figure out what to do I disable my sata connected drives which I have 3 of, and the only ones detected are the Samsung 980, 990, and an old pcie ssd I still use. Now when I go back to System restore option, System shows rightly as C: but same errors occur.

My thoughts are that the MBR, boot sector or something related got changed, and might explain why it shows system restore points but then gives error on finding them.

I didn't have enough time to try more because I had to leave to work but has anything like this happened to anyone. When able should I try to disable every drive in BIOS besides the System drive? I suppose I'll also attempt a command prompt repair using DSIM and such, but either way why or how the heck did this happen? For all intents and purposes all I did was have the PC unplugged and cpu removed and reinstalled.

Note: I have had the latest bios installed since it was released. And I used my PC yesterday 5/22 early morning for a couple hours with absolutely no issues, shut it down, and then didn't turn it on again until this morning AFTER installing my new cpu contact frame and KryoSheet.

[Silent_Scone]

Hi @dece870717 
Couple of things to note;

If contact pressure is insufficient or too great using the frame it may cause issues with memory stability or device detection. As this is the only change I would implore you to recheck the CPU mount. It may also impact memory overclocking stability if incorrectly installed, so clear the CMOS and attempt to see if the behaviour is the same.

[dece870717]

I did attempt a load system defaults in bios and then just changed the boot manager drive to the correct one but that didn't do anything.

As far as I can see, all my drives are being detected and are explorable when in bios via the bios update utility. I can select any  drives and view any folders within them. So I would think detection is not the issue. It almost appears as though Windows essentially doesn't try to boot, there's no BSOD screen, it goes from asus logo screen with press del or F2 for bio setup, straight to start up repair attempt.Try booting to safe mode through the repair uefi screen and again straight to start up repair.

[Silent_Scone]

Perhaps attempt a new install, however, the catalyst for it happening in the first place is unknown - and the only thing to go on is that you've replaced the CPU retention mechanism

[dece870717]

Yeah a new/clean install is something I dread, hopefully I can do a repair using DSIM or repair through a recovery method using the Windows 11 iso file. Either way thanks for the input, when I do resolve it, I'll make sure to post my fix incase someone else ever comes across this issue.

[dece870717 · Accepted solution]

Sucess!!!!! I came so freakin close to having to do a total clean install, nothing would work sfc, dism, reset pc and keep files or delete everything. But I was somewhat just convinced it had to do something with the boot partition, sure enough, it was! For whatever strange absolutely unexpected reason, that whole cpu stuff I did or whatever other thing involved, caused a boot partition problem. I ended up having issues using bootrec command but this website helped me out, ahttps://www.partitionwizard.com/clone-disk/bootrec-fixboot-access-is-denied.html?amp as I was getting that access denied error. But going through that whole process and then running every other bootrec command after like /rebuildbcd fixed it! The relief made me scream out, the prospect of reinstalling all my programs and changing settings was depressing. I need to make image backups, cause system restore frankly might not always help as it did in the past.

[JohnAb]

Great job, yes, take regular OS backups - it will save such a huge amount of work if you get an issue like that again. It takes me a whole solid day to reinstall Windows. The OS is easy, but reinstalling drivers and software takes so long. I keep my data on separate drives, that's a helpful thing to do as well. 

[dece870717]

Yes, the setting up of everything is so tedious. I do have multiple drives (5 internal and 2 external to be exact) so not everything or anything very important would have been lost. It was all the thoughts of setting up everything that was so difficult to deal with and motivating me to find absolutely any solution.

[JohnAb]

Totally agree, we have the same experience, lol