Hold onto your butts, this is going to be a long one.
I've had my PC for over a year now, almost two, after building it. I run Windows 8.1 on it, almost since it's been running. However, months after building it, it began running into some issues on startup -- the dreaded automatic repair loop, obscenely long restart times for updates, etc. Eventually, my PC failed to boot at all and just got stuck on the blue Automatic Repair screen. And, instead of fixing it immediately, I just left it alone. Stopped using the computer.
These past few weeks I decided to revisit it because I had put a considerable amount of money into the project and it seemed wasteful to let it sit there broken. I decided to make a different USB Bootable Drive to reinstall Windows 8.1, this time on a Windows laptop borrowed from a friend. I did this because the first bootable drive I made was on a Mac laptop, and I figured that may have caused some problems (my computer tower does not have a CD drive, so this is my only option to reinstall the operating system). Thus, I re-downloaded the Windows 8.1 ISO from Microsoft, made a bootable drive using Rufus, stuck it into my PC and reinstalled completely.
Things got a little better, but... Not really. Once I reinstalled, I tried re-downloading some drivers and such but my PC seemed to be having trouble installing them. I downloaded the genie for my wifi adapter and, for some reason, the installer didn't create a shortcut or application for it anywhere. I learned that certain drivers cannot be installed completely if Windows is not completely up to date. So, I went to Windows Update to check, and I ran into problems there. Windows Update repeatedly got stuck checking for updates and never came to a conclusion. So, now I have a brand spankin' new install of Windows, can't download and install drivers correctly, and still cannot restart the PC correctly without taking obscenely long (upwards of an hour or more).
Just a lot of strange things happening with downloading applications and drivers. Why?
What is going on here? I feel like all of these issues are coming from a single source, I've missed something during installation, something. I have even considered that maybe this is a hardware incompatibility problem (this may not be the case as I am no computer wiz), so I have posted my specs down below. Anything would be helpful. Will confirm answer when a solution arises.
Thank you for reading. If anything is unclear or if this was posted inconsiderately, let me know. I'll be sure to provide any extra information.
PC Specs:
CPU: AMD Athlon X4 760k
Motherboard: MSI A78M-E35
GPU: Sapphire Radeon R7 260X
RAM: 8GB Corsair Vengeance
Hard Drive: 1TB Western Digital Black
Power Supply: 430W Corsair CX430
I've had my PC for over a year now, almost two, after building it. I run Windows 8.1 on it, almost since it's been running. However, months after building it, it began running into some issues on startup -- the dreaded automatic repair loop, obscenely long restart times for updates, etc. Eventually, my PC failed to boot at all and just got stuck on the blue Automatic Repair screen. And, instead of fixing it immediately, I just left it alone. Stopped using the computer.
These past few weeks I decided to revisit it because I had put a considerable amount of money into the project and it seemed wasteful to let it sit there broken. I decided to make a different USB Bootable Drive to reinstall Windows 8.1, this time on a Windows laptop borrowed from a friend. I did this because the first bootable drive I made was on a Mac laptop, and I figured that may have caused some problems (my computer tower does not have a CD drive, so this is my only option to reinstall the operating system). Thus, I re-downloaded the Windows 8.1 ISO from Microsoft, made a bootable drive using Rufus, stuck it into my PC and reinstalled completely.
Things got a little better, but... Not really. Once I reinstalled, I tried re-downloading some drivers and such but my PC seemed to be having trouble installing them. I downloaded the genie for my wifi adapter and, for some reason, the installer didn't create a shortcut or application for it anywhere. I learned that certain drivers cannot be installed completely if Windows is not completely up to date. So, I went to Windows Update to check, and I ran into problems there. Windows Update repeatedly got stuck checking for updates and never came to a conclusion. So, now I have a brand spankin' new install of Windows, can't download and install drivers correctly, and still cannot restart the PC correctly without taking obscenely long (upwards of an hour or more).
Just a lot of strange things happening with downloading applications and drivers. Why?
What is going on here? I feel like all of these issues are coming from a single source, I've missed something during installation, something. I have even considered that maybe this is a hardware incompatibility problem (this may not be the case as I am no computer wiz), so I have posted my specs down below. Anything would be helpful. Will confirm answer when a solution arises.
Thank you for reading. If anything is unclear or if this was posted inconsiderately, let me know. I'll be sure to provide any extra information.
PC Specs:
CPU: AMD Athlon X4 760k
Motherboard: MSI A78M-E35
GPU: Sapphire Radeon R7 260X
RAM: 8GB Corsair Vengeance
Hard Drive: 1TB Western Digital Black
Power Supply: 430W Corsair CX430
My Computer
System One
-
- OS
- Windows 8.1 Pro
- Computer type
- PC/Desktop
- CPU
- AMD Athlon X4 760k
- Motherboard
- MSI A78M-E35
- Memory
- Corsair VENGEANCE 8GB
- Graphics Card(s)
- Sapphire Radeon R7 260X
- Hard Drives
- 1TB Western Digital Black
- PSU
- 430W Corsair CX430
- Case
- Corsair SPEC-01
