this post was submitted on 21 Mar 2026
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Windows refuses to boot. Cannot boot from USB. Rare fresh install screen but no USB input. PNP Driver Watchdog error BSOD (infosec.pub)
submitted 1 week ago by dotCody@lemmy.world to c/techsupport@lemmy.world
29 comments fedilink hide all child comments
 

I reset the BIOS. I reset the CMOS. I replaced the CMOS. No IDE option in my bios. Thing gets stuck on automatic repair - ill leave it on for hours and nothing.

I removed all additional HDDs and SSDs. I pulled the C drive and backed up the important data. Pulled the GPU and checked it real good. All of the ram as well.

I had gotten a BSOD with the "PNP Driver Watchdog" error. Google is unhelpful as anyone with this BSOD never received nor confirmed a working remedy or solution.

Now, after days of trying I am very rarely able to get to the Windows Install window from my USB. But none of my mice or keyboards work. They'll work briefly for a few seconds and then stop. Nothing works to get them going again forcing me to shut down yet again.

Only thing I can think of is an unplanned and unannounced power shut off while I was out. Less than a week later my PC is pulling this shit. Refusing to boot.

Im ready to take it to a stupid pc repair shop... which im very hesitant on doing as I built this thing. Not to mention I dont like the thought of transporting this huge and heavy thing.

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[–] NaibofTabr 14 points 1 week ago

But none of my mice or keyboards work. They'll work briefly for a few seconds and then stop. Nothing works to get them going again forcing me to shut down yet again.

This sounds like there's a hardware problem with either the motherboard or CPU, or possibly the power supply. What motherboard model do you have? Is it one of the Asus models with a backup UEFI/BIOS storage? Does it have one of those 2-digit error code displays?

Is the failure with USB peripherals true for both the fixed USB ports on the back and front USB ports connected via one of the headers? Is it true for both USB 2 and 3 ports?

It's possible that a bad component is shorting a signal on your board.

To troubleshoot:

  1. Strip everything from the motherboard except for the CPU and the PSU connection. Yes even the RAM. Disconnect all external cables.
  2. Connect your monitor to one of the motherboard video outputs (not the GPU, that should be removed).
  3. Connect a keyboard to a USB 2 port on the back of the motherboard.
  4. Power on the motherboard. Does it POST? Can you interact with the UEFI interface?
  5. If not, don't panic yet - some boards will POST without RAM and some won't. If yours did not, then insert one RAM stick in the first slot and try powering it on again. We want to define what the bare-minimum startup configuration is.
  6. Is it behaving any differently? Does the keyboard continue to work, or does it stop working after awhile like before?
  7. If everything seems OK at this point, reinstall your OS hard drive and test again.
  8. Continue re-adding components one at a time and testing between each until failure happens.

The goal is to isolate the source of potential problems. You have to do it systematically. Rushing will make the troubleshooting worthless. Take notes.

When you have a moment, a list of the system hardware would be helpful. Also if you have the paper manual for the motherboard get it out.

[–] Speculater@lemmy.world 12 points 1 week ago

If you have two sticks of RAM in there, take one out and try running with only one, then the other. Make sure you have the single stick in the correct slot for running on a single stick.

This also looks like a failing SSD/HDD. Corrupted boot sector or maybe total disk failure.

Worst case is the mobo is failing.

[–] Rai@lemmy.dbzer0.com 8 points 1 week ago

I was all excited to help at first cuz I had a VERY SIMILAR ISSUE recently and it was the CMOS battery. I’ve never even had to THINK about a CMOS battery in all my years of computer work, and a machine of mine went from working normally to freezing on POST. No BIOS, no boot select, just froze. Tested the voltage of the battery, 1.4v! I put in a 15+ year old battery I had in another old machine and it booted up perfectly.

I’m sorry that’s not your issue. D: Best luck!

[–] scrubbles@poptalk.scrubbles.tech 7 points 1 week ago (2 children)

Unplanned crash like all this tells me RAM. I would say disk, but if you can't get to even a boot disk (which loads to ram) then I say ram. Watchdog too to me says ram because it sounds like it tried to write and failed. Run memtest and see what happens

[–] dotCody@lemmy.world 1 points 1 week ago (2 children)

How do I perform a memtest when the pc will not boot?

[–] teft@piefed.social 4 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago) (1 children)

Download memtest86+ to a thumbdrive, boot from the thumbdrive and run the tests.

If you can't get that to boot then either the memory is fucked or your mobo is fucked.

Do you have a friend with a similar set up pc you could test parts in? That way you can narrow down what part is causing the issue.

Edit: also you say it won’t boot but that is the recovery screen in your screenshot. Have you tried just booting into safe mode using F8?

[–] Evil_Shrubbery@thelemmy.club 6 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago) (2 children)

We have been giving them this simple advice about memtest86 for 10 days now (they have several posts regarding this issue, you can look it up), they just disregard it.

(That and live-booting any OS from USB just for diagnostics, to see if the issues are there, maybe stress test it.)

It seems like an issue a bit complex to diagnose, but with some structure you can always rule out things until you get to the core issue, and then try to fix that or replace it.

[–] teft@piefed.social 5 points 1 week ago (2 children)

We can only lead a user to the water hole. We can’t make them drink.

[–] Evil_Shrubbery@thelemmy.club 3 points 1 week ago (1 children)

Zomg, they drank!!

[–] teft@piefed.social 3 points 1 week ago (1 children)

I will never understand people ignoring knowledgeable people that they specifically asked questions to but at least OP now has their answer.

Poor guy is now poor though if he has to replace ram.

[–] Evil_Shrubbery@thelemmy.club 3 points 1 week ago

Yeah.

Tho it's DDR4 & maybe only one of four sticks went to memory heaven (so they are left with 48GB).

[–] Evil_Shrubbery@thelemmy.club 1 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago)

Oh ... a water hole of a water cooled PC can leak & cause such symptoms, you are right!
... we prob should not make them drink it tho.

[–] dotCody@lemmy.world 0 points 1 week ago (1 children)

Yeah I just disregard it. Thanks so much.

[–] Evil_Shrubbery@thelemmy.club 4 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago)

Sorry, I should have said downvote, it's different to disregard :).

(I didn't mean anything that bad by it, just that we do try to help & don't really get feedback if it worked/what works & what not, which means we can't help further/move from that point forward. Opening additional posts instead of finishing with what's left in previous ones is more work for everyone, you included.)

[–] Otherbarry@lemmy.frozeninferno.xyz 4 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago)

If you're at the "Preparing Automatic Repair" screen that means it skipped booting from USB and is trying to boot from internal drive with the messed up Windows install. Maybe try booting without any internal drives connected to see what it does, most computers would boot normally then complain there's no boot device.

Also your earlier post mentions you are using an Asus ROG Crosshair Hero VIII Wifi motherboard so some other ideas..

  • According to the manual that motherboard should display a boot menu when you press F8 at the beginning of the boot process when the initial Asus logo appears, it probably won't work every time but when it works after the BIOS finishes scanning RAM and hard drives it will give you a boot menu listing your bootable SSDs as well as any bootable USB devices it found. (if your boot USB isn't displaying there then you've got a different issue, maybe you formatted it wrong, maybe you need to disable Secure Boot temporarily, etc.)
  • That motherboard has a Q-Code LED in the upper-right of the board, it's a little LED that displays alphanumeric digits. When the system hangs look at the board & see if it's displaying anything in particular, that could give you an idea on what the issue is. Cross reference with the manual all the Q-Codes are listed there (see https://rog.asus.com/us/motherboards/rog-crosshair/rog-crosshair-viii-hero-wi-fi-model/helpdesk_manual/)

Next time you're in the BIOS I'd suggest making sure Q-Code is enabled (it should be by default but just in case) and probably disable Quick Boot if there's an option, the boot process might be going too fast for you to catch a USB boot with F8.

Dunno if any of that helps but hopefully it does... good luck!

[–] dotCody@lemmy.world 6 points 1 week ago (2 children)

Memtest results for the disregarded.

[–] Otherbarry@lemmy.frozeninferno.xyz 8 points 1 week ago (1 children)

Well that's your answer, you usually won't get a normal Windows boot up with bad RAM. And if by some miracle Windows manages to make it to the desktop with bad RAM it's just going to crash out sooner or later.

You're not going to be able to do any Windows re-installs with bad RAM either.

The good news is that's very unlikely all your RAM is bad. You have 4 sticks - this will take a bit of time but what you can do is take out all RAM sticks. Then install one stick, do a memtest run, if it looks okay take the stick out and repeat with each of the other 3 RAM sticks. That should give you an idea on which RAM stick(s) are bad, the bad ones just keep them aside and don't re-install them.

After testing each RAM stick individually you can re-install all the good RAM sticks, do a final memtest run & verify it all works together (it should be fine at this point but sometimes you have to do multiple memtest runs to suss out bad RAM).

Once you remove all bad RAM your system should be able to boot into a Windows USB install and make it through the entire install normally. Or alternatively you can test if your current Windows 10 can fix itself once the RAM issue is resolved but there's a good chance it's pretty broken now.

[–] dotCody@lemmy.world 2 points 1 week ago (2 children)

Thank you for the assistance!

OK, now it looks like 1 out of the 4 ram sticks is no good. But now the thing is still refusing to boot. Doesn't matter if its 1 stick or 2.

I honestly think my mobo is fucked. The trouble codes on the mobo are erratic as well. I've gotten multiple for bad ram and now a bad GPU driver.

And it doesn't matter if Booting off of usb, trying to boot normally off of the c drive or trying to get into windows recovery. Everything is simply hanging on the loading screen!

I think I might have to bite the bullet and buy a replacement mobo... 🥲 id still like to see if a second opinion from a pc repair shop is worth it to confirm my suspicion before shelling out $400 on a used mobo from China express.

[–] Otherbarry@lemmy.frozeninferno.xyz 2 points 17 hours ago (1 children)

Curious what you ended up doing - I sort of suspect it might be an issue with your GPU and would attempt replacing that before writing off the entire motherboard. GPU errors keep coming up with your build (the Windows crash earlier seemed to refer to GPU, and now as you say the motherboard trouble code also mentions GPU) so there's a wild chance you had both bad RAM and a bad GPU. But I can't think of a good way to rule out GPU without actually plugging in a working one in there, not sure if other people would have better ideas.

[–] dotCody@lemmy.world 1 points 16 hours ago (1 children)

Hey thanks for checking in!!

I took the rig to a local pc repair shop. He did a load test on the psu and it failed, twice. So he recommended, especially after I told him about my power shutoff, that I first replace the PSU then the motherboard if its still giving issue.

So now.. I have:

A RAM stick on its way to Dumpland for RMA A new PSU in transit A used motherboard in transit Instructions from Seasonic to destroy and document evidence of said destruction of the PSU for their RMA

What a headache. And to think this may have all been caused because some jackass in my household whom didn't pay the fucking electricity bill. And this jackass let the electricity bill accrue insane interest and fees.

Guess its a good idea to fresh install windows if i ever get the hardware working again?

[–] Otherbarry@lemmy.frozeninferno.xyz 2 points 7 hours ago* (last edited 7 hours ago)

Seems like a good diagnosis, they probably have the setup and equipment to do a better PSU test vs anything you had on hand. Testing for load is a bit tricky, you'd normally see instability during runtime once you're in Windows or whatever, it's not that obvious if you can't even get into Windows.

The current Windows install is pretty beat up so you should prepare for a re-install - but once the hardware is stable you'll be able to properly test if Windows is able to fix itself and boot up correctly, could be by some miracle it all comes back up in the end.

[–] Speculater@lemmy.world 2 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago) (1 children)

Before you write off the mobo make sure you're using the correct slots for your RAM configuration. It'll be in the manual online. There are specific slots to use in 1, 2, and 3 stick configurations. If you went left to right, it's probably wrong.

[–] dotCody@lemmy.world 2 points 1 week ago

Yup, I remember that from the first build weekend lol but ty

[–] Evil_Shrubbery@thelemmy.club 6 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago)

See, it wasn't that hard to run the test (it didn't even take hours to find the errors). This could have saved you 10 days.

But good news, it's DDR4, you can actually kinda buy that.
(Or maybe even test individual sticks, maybe they aren't all faulty, and just run with what works.)

[–] bearboiblake@pawb.social 3 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago)

Edit: sorry, my bad, I didn't see at first you mentioned that USB peripherals weren't working at all, even in the installer. That's very strange, it sounds like maybe electrical shorting? Have you installed the IO shield properly?

Unplanned power off suggests to me that it is likely that you have disk corruption. Boot into a Windows installer and go into the recovery mode, choose command prompt, and use the following tools:

chkdsk /f /r

bootrec /fixboot

X:

sfc /scannow

One of those should probably fix it, if that's the case.

Consider installing a good operating system in the future :p and good luck!

[–] just_another_person@lemmy.world 1 points 1 week ago

Shutdown the machine. Hold F8, power the machine up. See what menu you get.