CPU Overclock causes boot failure since Windows 10 upgrade

After upgrading from 7 to 10 a few days ago I went back into my BIOS settings today to put my clock speeds back up, and as soon as I did this the PC failed to boot.

I have an i7 2600K on a Gigabyte Z68X-UD4-B3 motherboard and for years have had a moderate overclock somewhere between 3.8 and 4.2Ghz with no problems. The upgrade to Windows 10 seems to have caused some conflict where ANY change to the stock frequency causes a boot failure.

The PC enters a boot loop, it stops just after "Loading Operating System...." and then hangs on "Boot from CD-Rom:" the restarts again. Eventually on the post screen (or when entering seting using del) I get a message about an unstable overclock from the BIOS. From past experience when this happens my BIOS loads optimized defaults and resets the frequencies to stock, allowing the PC to boot normally.

There are quite a few other threads about from other users who have had OC problems following the Windows 10 upgrade, but most of them are from last year on much earlier builds than mine, and NONE so far using the same hardware as I am using.

What can I do to fix this? I have no idea where to start

Thanks all!

A couple of things I would try. 1) Reset your CMOS 2) check your boot order and make sure your OS is the 1st boot device.

Boot it up and see what happens. If it boots apply your OC settings and try it out.

I would definitely get your OS lined out before any overclocking. Then holler back.

gulliwog said:

Thank you for the reply... I did speak to someone else yesterday who suggested that overclock problems were common after the update and often simply retrying would be enough.

Sadly however I have been hit with a slew of other problems since updating. This morning I turned on my PC to discover that ALL my TCP/IP DNS and internet protocols had been completely wiped and I could not connect to the internet. I also had additional boot failures for no reason (as I haven't been near the BIOS since the other day). And then this afternoon games and apps started crashing every time I tried to use them (they were working yesterday)... so basically I gave up on Windows 10 and rolled back to Windows 7 a couple of hours ago.

The only positive thing that I can say about the whole Windows 10 experience so far is that at least the roll back was smooth and painless and worked perfectly. Other than that the whole upgrade was a total disaster.

EDIT: Turns out I lied!! The rollback wasn't painless and without problems... Little known fact, rolling back from Windows 10 to Windows 7 will completely break a number of Scheduled Tasks which are a real pain to fix manually. Microsoft it seems have not addressed this issue, haven't released any kind of fix for it, and in their apparent obsession to push Windows 10 on the entire world and claim it as the savior of OS's don't seem to care in the slightest about lying to, deceiving and corrupting the systems of their customers. Poor show, Microsoft, very poor show!

Did you try the suggestion of "resetting your CMOS"?