Stuck in a loop of misery, HELP!

[Caddac]

On Monday I purchased my build:

PCPartPicker part list: http://ca.pcpartpicker.com/p/Y8mW6h
Price breakdown by merchant: http://ca.pcpartpicker.com/p/Y8mW6h/by_merchant/

CPU: Intel Core i7-4790K 4.0GHz Quad-Core Processor
CPU Cooler: Corsair H100i 77.0 CFM Liquid CPU Cooler
Motherboard: Asus MAXIMUS VII FORMULA ATX LGA1150 Motherboard
Memory: Kingston Fury White Series 16GB (2 x 8GB) DDR3-1866 Memory
Storage: Samsung 840 EVO 250GB 2.5" Solid State Drive
Storage: Western Digital BLACK SERIES 1TB 3.5" 7200RPM Internal Hard Drive
Video Card: Gigabyte GeForce GTX 970 4GB WINDFORCE Video Card
Case: Corsair 780T ATX Full Tower Case
Power Supply: EVGA 850W 80+ Gold Certified Fully-Modular ATX Power Supply
Case Fan: Corsair Air Series White 2 pack 52.2 CFM 120mm Fan
Case Fan: Corsair Air Series White 2 pack 52.2 CFM 120mm Fan
Case Fan: Corsair Air Series White 2 pack 52.2 CFM 120mm Fan
Case Accessory: NZXT Hue LED Controller



Last night, I put it all together, and it started up with no problems. I was able to install 8.1 on my SSD, and got it running. Did a few updates, and it restarted to complete them no problem. I installed my GPU and liquid cooling drivers and then shut it down and packed it up. I had put it together at a friend's who lived about 5 mins away. I slid the case with everything in it back into the box with the styrofoam, and carefully packed it into my car for the short drive. I get home, start it up, and windows is taking longer than normal to start, especially considering it was installed on the SSD. I then get a blue screen that only stays up for a second, not even long enough to read it, and it restarts into "preparing automatic repair" which then goes to a black screen and stays that way. I checked all of my connections, and nothing was loosened or damaged from the short drive. I've tried reinstalling windows 8.1 but the installer freezes at 'starting setup'. I tried booting into safe-mode but the computer cuts power to the keyboard right after the BIOS finishes loading and therefore I can't get the shortcut to work. I also tried installing windows 7, but it gets stuck at the same part as the windows 8. Any ideas about what I can do or what may be wrong? The board shows no error as the code is A0.

[Norcus]

nealosis wrote:
Funny the RAM is only faulty if you use an NVidia driver newer than V344.91, otherwise the system functions perfectly fine. Sounds a bit suspect to me.

Just try it. You might be surprised. Windows has a high tolerance for RAM errors so it is not always apparent until one piece of software adresses memory so that the error cant be ignored.

[nealosis]

Norcus wrote:
Just try it. You might be surprised. Windows has a high tolerance for RAM errors so it is not always apparent until one piece of software adresses memory so that the error cant be ignored.

I would try it if there was even a slight possibility that it could work, but it won't work because my Asus Radeon HD 7870 OC runs like a champ in the same machine, using the same monitors, using the same connections, and the same everything else. The GTX 970 runs like a champ so long as I use the Gigabyte provided drivers. Using any driver from GeForce Experience or GeForce.com results in an infinite windows reboot loop.

If absolutely everything works flawlessly except the drivers originating from NVidia's web site then clearly the driver is faulty; not the hardware.

*Update*

Out of desperation I spent all day yesterday experimenting by pulling all but one RAM chip, I switch from DisplayPort to DVI and then HDMI, etc, etc and same results everytime. The vendor provided driver works fine but any driver provided by GeForce.com causing an infinite Windows reboot loop.

[nealosis]

nealosis wrote:
Out of desperation I spent all day yesterday experimenting by pulling all but one RAM chip, I switch from DisplayPort to DVI and then HDMI, etc, etc and same results everytime. The vendor provided driver works fine but any driver provided by GeForce.com causing an infinite Windows reboot loop.

If anyone is interested here are some of the technical details:
https://forums.geforce.com/default/topic/805801/geforce-900-series/windows-failed-to-start-loop-afte...

I had some time last week to do a deeper dive and was able to isolate the issue to the driver by installing the newest drivers, getting into the reboot error loop, finding the related error in the Windows Event Log (from safe mode) and then analyzing the associated memory minidump. No question about it, the NVidia driver is faulting. The new question becomes, what is conflicting with the NVidia driver which is triggering the kernel panic. If I could execute a diff to isolate what changed between the working older drivers and the non-working newer drivers then I might be able to finally come to a resolution on this.

In any event, from my link above.. I have posted the minidump analysis and event log entries on the geforce.com forums so even as it seems nothing is going to be done to assist me, at least there is a record of the issue for people searching google (whom are suffering from the same problem)

[nealosis]

nealosis wrote:
If anyone is interested here are some of the technical details:
https://forums.geforce.com/default/topic/805801/geforce-900-series/windows-failed-to-start-loop-afte...

I had some time last week to do a deeper dive and was able to isolate the issue to the driver by installing the newest drivers, getting into the reboot error loop, finding the related error in the Windows Event Log (from safe mode) and then analyzing the associated memory minidump. No question about it, the NVidia driver is faulting. The new question becomes, what is conflicting with the NVidia driver which is triggering the kernel panic. If I could execute a diff to isolate what changed between the working older drivers and the non-working newer drivers then I might be able to finally come to a resolution on this.

In any event, from my link above.. I have posted the minidump analysis and event log entries on the geforce.com forums so even as it seems nothing is going to be done to assist me, at least there is a record of the issue for people searching google (whom are suffering from the same problem)

I do apologize to the original poster for hijacking his/her thread 😞

I did finally get a resolution for my issue (which perhaps is the same as OP)?

After several days of troubleshooting the BSOD memory dumps, the event logs, and Windows stack traces I was able to isolate the problem to the Intel HD4000 integrated graphics chip embedded on my motherboard. This chip was conflicting in some of its memory pointer references with the latest NVidia GTX970 drivers. When the Intel HD4000 service faulted on startup (due to the conflict), it caused the NVidia driver to fault and triggered the reboot. This cycle continued on every restart until Windows forced safe mode.

By setting the Intel Display service startup from 'Automatic' to 'Manual' and then scrubbing every trace of the Intel HD4000 driver stack from the workstation I was able to install the latest drivers from NVidia and reboot consistently without faults.

Issue is finally resolved.

Whew.. now if only I could get these last few weeks of my life back!

cheers!

[Ice-Age]

Hello,
I had a similar issue in the past and it was the ram. Try setting the bios to failsafe, and maybe try to lower Ram frequency.
That did the trick for me, hope it will help you as well.