Windows 8 Hangs/Freezes Splash Screen

Hi guys!

I am having trouble installing windows 8 on my PC. I would say I am quite experienced with installing windows operating systems and I have done so many times successfully but this time I need help and advice!

So I slow burnt the ISO as I always do, and verified the contents. Now I always do a clean install never an upgrade. When I boot from DVD I get to the windows 8 logo and my DVD drive and hard drive seem to be loading files (although this edition has no load progress bar like the previous windows which is annoying) after several seconds i get the animation of the dots twisting but there's no activity? The disc stops reading the hdd does nothing and the splash screen continuously mocks me it just doesn't get past that screen. After several attempts I thought I could try an upgrade from desktop instead. After a successful upgrade my pc reboots and gets stuck on that same splash screen it just doesn't want to get past that screen. I have looked all over the forums and googled various keywords to find others with this problem and have had no luck. It is noteworthy to mention that windows 7 runs perfectly with no problem on my PC and I am attempting to install the 32bit version I have tried widows 8 an windows 8 pro with no luck

My specs are as follows
HP Compact Presario SR1719UK
-AMD Athlon 64 3400+ 2.20ghz
-1GB DDR RAM
-ATI RADEON XPRESS 200 Series (Approx total memory is 287MB)
-PHEONIX - AWARD BIOS v6.00
-DirectX 11 with WDDM 1.0 driver

If there is any thing else you need to know please ask. This is driving me up the wall so any comments, advice and help will be very appreciated.

Thank you - Jay

So I take it no one at all has any solutions

I have the same issue, buy have found no solutions here

It's very frustrating. I have still found nothing

I am having the same exact issue. I have tried installing the Windows 8 Pro upgrade from the desktop as well as booting from DVD. When I install from the desktop, it runs through the installation process, gets to the point where it must reboot, and upon rebooting, all I see is the black screen with the teal windows logo. I have waited up to an hour and it appears there is no HD activity whatsoever. When I attempt to boot from DVD, I'm just immediately taken to the same black screen and teal logo with no activity.

I have tried a clean install with the same disappointing results.

Jay2O said:

My specs are as follows
HP Compact Presario SR1719UK
-AMD Athlon 64 3400+ 2.20ghz
-1GB DDR RAM
-ATI RADEON XPRESS 200 Series (Approx total memory is 287MB)
-PHEONIX - AWARD BIOS v6.00
-DirectX 11 with WDDM 1.0 driver

Click to expand...

It seems we have something in common: We both have the Phoenix Award BIOS v 6.00. I've heard speculation on other sites that this problem is caused by having older 64 bit cpu's. However I have read posts from people who have Intel i5's and i7's and have been experiencing it.

My specs:

- AMD Athlon 64 X2 Dual Core Processor 4400+ 2.21 GHz
- 4GB Ram
- Phoenix Award BIOS v6.00
- Windows 7 Home Premium 64bit

Hi thanks for the reply

Upon my searches for answers it appears that one cause may be the SD card reader which is built in, do you have one of these in your system? See if removing it / disconnecting the internal cable for it works for you. Unfortunately for me this did not work and I am still experiencing this same splash freeze problem!

No problem, we are definitely in the same boat here.

I don't have a SD card reader. I also did some searching around and someone suggested going into your BIOS and turning off Legacy USB support. I have no idea how that would affect anything, but I tried it anyway, with no result.

What motherboard do you have? I have an ASUS A8N-SLI. I ran through the Upgrade Assistant and it didn't give me any notification that my hardware is incompatible so I really don't believe this is a hardware issue. I'm hoping Microsoft fixes it in one of their updates.

Ah yes, I have attempted to disable USB legacy from bios with no result or change.

My motherboard is: AmethystM-GL6E

When I run upgrade Assistant it reports that
- my screen resolution Is not compatible with snap
-secure boot is not compatible

However I'm quite sure these two features are not necessary requirements to run the OS. I also read somewhere that using a CRT display jus for the install might help. Don't have one to test with though!

Hi guys,
I'm stuck in the same situation! Searching Internet yields only accolades about Windows 8 and seems no one has issues at all. Before I decided to install new OS I checked with Windows 8 Assistant just to make sure it will work and since I had Windows XP SP3 installed I chose not to keep personal data and start fresh.
If there are issues with the hardware, shouldn't installation detect these prior to wrecking my previous OS?! Well, this is just venting....
I am wondering if there is a solution at all to this, please let me know if either of you managed to figure out the issue...I'll do the same if I succeed.

Thanks for participating in this post Bosi. I have spent hours upon hours troubleshooting and searching the Internet for solutions.

Can you please tell us what your specs are as this may help build a better picture of what components/hardware is causing this issue.

When I purchased my PC it was preinstalled with windows xp sp2. So yes it's pretty old I think the machine was built between 2005-2006. Whether this is the prime reason or not I don't know.

What will be helpful is if we all list everything we have attempted to do that didn't work. I will list a few below

This is a list of things I have tried to solve this issue. Try these things for your selves however none of them have worked for me

- disabling USB legacy in BIOS
- updating all drivers and BIOS
- setting defaults in BIOS
- verifying the ISO and burning it at least 3 times and verifying that the burn was successful
- trying both 32bit and 64bit versions
- trying widows 8 and windows 8 pro
- trying windows 8 release preview
- internally disconnecting cables for devices such as built in SD card readers
- setting hard drive as the first device in boot priority
- uninstalling device drivers prior to install/boot from disc
- disabling device drivers
- disabling all USB ports in device manager
- lowering the display resolution
- leaving PC on over night in hopes that there is just a long delay between showin splash screen and bringing up install dialogue (I left it on for 7hours and the windows logo was still showing with no advancement

I think that's ALL the things I've tried so far.. Lol. I never give up though

Hi Jay,

well, at this point I don't even know my architecture (I'll try to find some utility that boots and runs from USB or CD so I can find out) as I did not dotted it down prior to installation. Maybe I'll have to open it and figure out each component. Never the less, friends installed it on dirty 5 yrs. old laptop with no issues. My specs as far as I can recall:

Motherboard ASUS
AMD 64-bit dual core CPU - 2+ GHz speed
2 Gb RAM
4 USB 2.0 ports

*** I had a dual boot on it to boot Ubuntu

basically I took for granted Microsoft's Assistant to verify my hardware (I'll never learn). I have not had a chance to play with BIOS settings and such, this all happened late night and I'll continue tonight again.
There is something about "Secure" boot up that seems suspicious. However, if my hardware does not support secure boot up then boot it up un-secured and I will deal with it, lol. My disks came out of the retail Box so this was not an upgrade.
I think I will call Microsoft support tonight and discuss this with them since there is no way back for me and they better do some damage control, lol....I'll post an update later tonight.

**** Here is the latest I found:

if you properly made the bootable usb stick with at least 4gb free space either by using the windows 8 upgrade assistant ot the windows 7 usb tool, then boot from usb drive.

this must be enabled in your bios by pressing some keys (the function key F10 in my case)
you can choose to boot from UEFI USB Drive or from plain USB Drive, depenmding on your bios manufaturer.

wait for the windows 8 setup to load.

in my case, it took longer especially if UEFI is enabled as the setup will try to create two hidden partitions.
(windows 8 pro burned unto dvd-r takes shorter time in my case)

if prompted, you can choose to do UPGRADE INSTALLATION or you can choose CUSTOM INSTALLATION on the second partition of your hdd.
after the first phase of windows 8 installation, there will be a 10-second countdown to restart the computer.
at this time, you can remove your usb stick. If you change boot priority from the bios, change it back to boot again first from hdd rather than usb drive.
windows 8 installation will then continue.

Thank you for sharing that information Bosi

I have not yet attempted to install from USB as I do not actually have a usb device to use for this. I may be able to borrow one from a friend and try it out though! I always burn ISO's straight to a DVD and have never had a problem like this, whether it's with windows XP or windows vista or windows 7 and they all work fine on my system with no trouble at all, apart from the fact my graphics is not very good so I disable aero themes.

I will try to get hold of a USB stick ASAP and attempt another install for what seems to be the 100th time lol. I will report back with the results.

I look forward to hearing what support Microsoft tech team will offer. Until then Goodluck guys!!!

Welcome to the not-so-fun party Bosi!

Just an update for you Jay:

I went through and tried the same steps/attempts at solving the issue as you have Jay, including changing boot priorities, updating drivers, etc. Most of my hardware does not have recent drivers to begin with.

I am honestly starting to wonder if the SecureBoot has something to do with our problem. The Upgrade Assistant warns me that my machine is incompatible with SecureBoot. It seems all three of us have older CPUs. The Microsoft help guide says the upgrade assistant should warn us if the CPU is incompatible -- Windows 8 system requirements - Microsoft Windows -- What is PAE, NX, and SSE2 and why does my PC need to support them to run Windows 8?

" If your PC doesn't support PAE, NX, and SSE2 you won’t be able to install Windows 8. Upgrade Assistant will provide you with an error message if your processor doesn't support PAE and SSE2. You'll also see a notice if the processor might not support NX or if NX is turned off in the PC BIOS. Windows 8 Setup will attempt to turn on NX during installation and, if it isn't able to, will return your PC to the current operating system."

I haven't received any error message from the Upgrade Assistant regarding PAE or SSE2. Likewise no notice regarding NX. I don't see any option for NX in my BIOS.

Re NX, try this gadget, worked for me.

https://www.grc.com/securable.htm

Regards

Robin
p.s. Why this isn't built in to the upgrade assistant only MS Knows.....

Hi guys

@needhelp likewise all my drivers the most recent ones are from around 2006-2007. Maybe secure boot is the reason but Microsoft says its not crucial to run windows 8 so I don't know what to think!!

@madhorseman thank you for your post, I have run the app and the results i got are

64maximum bit length
Yes hardware d.e.p
No hardware virtualisation

What does this mean in relation to windows 8?

I installed Windows 8 on a separate drive and for me to get it to boot I need to change to IDE in the bios. If I want to go back to Windows 7 I need to go to msconfig and change my default OS to Win7 before I leave Win8 and restart. I then need to enter BIOS and change back to AHCI.

While running Win7 in the Registry Editor under System/CurrentControlSet/services I have a
amdide
amdsata
msahci


While running Win8 in the Registry Editor under System/CurrentControlSet/services I have a
amdsata

and not the other two.


Would this Mr fixit do it? Microsoft Fix it 50470
Error message occurs after you change the SATA mode of the boot drive

Hi techimnot

I believe you may have posted on the wrong thread. This one is specifically about windows 8 freezing at the boot logo. Post your question as a new thread an hopefully someone can help you with it

Well Jay, maybe not.
I too had the hanging at the splash screen. Depending on when it hangs the info in my post may help you. When I did my install of Win8, it went through the entire menu and then rebooted to the splash and hung there. While it was hanging I used my laptop and found a reference involving the bios settings for ide and ahci.
I went back to desktop, powered down, and entered setup, changed to ide and lo and behold windows 8 loaded and was operational. Now I messed with this for hours, and right now I am running 7, if I want to boot into 8 i need to run msconfig, change windows 8 to default, reboot, enter setup, change to ide.
I am not saying this is the ultimate solution, but it may give some of you who are much more technically savvy than me an idea or two.

techimnot said:

I installed Windows 8 on a separate drive and for me to get it to boot I need to change to IDE in the bios. If I want to go back to Windows 7 I need to go to msconfig and change my default OS to Win7 before I leave Win8 and restart. I then need to enter BIOS and change back to AHCI.

While running Win7 in the Registry Editor under System/CurrentControlSet/services I have a
amdide
amdsata
msahci


While running Win8 in the Registry Editor under System/CurrentControlSet/services I have a
amdsata

and not the other two.


Would this Mr fixit do it? Microsoft Fix it 50470
Error message occurs after you change the SATA mode of the boot drive

Click to expand...

Will work on Windows 7 & Vista.


Why did you change the BIOS setting, as Windows 8 work in AHCI mode.