Windows 10 Loading Screen endlessly loading...

Hi, I've had a really frustrating day trying to get my computer back up and running but I have very little technical knowledge to help me.

I built the computer myself 4 years ago and it has been running fine in general; however, there have been times where it failed to initiate a boot when I pressed the main power button and I'd be forced to press the reset button to begin the boot sequence.

Over the passed couple of days I had been receiving an occasional red screen warning about unauthorized changes I believe, but the computer still started. I know I should have taken note of the particular warning but, beyond reading it and failing to derive and significant meaning out of it I just hit okay the few times it appeared and everything worked.

The computer has suddenly started taking a lot longer to boot up windows too, it went from maybe 40-45 seconds to close to two minutes on a couple of occasions in the past couple of days.

Today, it refused to complete a boot. Here's what's happening, as best I can describe it. I turn on the computer and the Asus loading screen appears. I can enter my BIOS menu no problem and everything seems to be fine in there, there are no obvious warning signs, fans are working, CPU temperature is consistent etc.

WHen it comes to loading my computer repeatedly comes to the windows loading screen, complete with little wheel turning, and stays there for 20 minutes or so. It then returns an error such as 'PNP watchdog error' (though there was another error brought up twice 'boot device not found'.

Windows tries to launch automatic repair mode, same thing happens, 20 minutes with nothing changing and then tries to boot again and fails again. At no time do I get to a landing page or the option to launch in safe mode etc. just an endless cycle of failed windows loading, failed auto repair, and back to failed loading until I manually power it down.

In trying to rectify the problem, my first hope was that it was my SSD boot drive. I removed it, cloned it on my laptop using AOMEI and tried the new SSD, unfortunately I got the exact same problem. I then settled to do a fresh install to fix the problem, made a flash drive from the laptop and then... it got stuck on the ASUS loading screen with the same little turning wheel underneath for 20 minutes before finally delivering a 'PNP watchdog error' back to me again.

I'm at my wit's end and I'm hoping someone more knowledgeable than me can even tell me what the most likely problem is so I can go about fixing it as I'm completely out of ideas. If it's not the CPU, not the motherboard, not the SSD, and not the windows installation, what can it be? Should I remove the graphics card?

Many many thanks to anyone who can shed any light at all for me.

Ev

Thanks for your reply, but as I mentioned in the post, I tried a completely fresh install and almost the exact same thing happened.

winxp said:

Then the issue could be the motherboard but I'm still curious about that red screen you say you saw.
Also you said you tried reinstalling but it didn't go. What do you mean?
Did you iuse a USB to install, a DVD or did you get a copy made from MS Media maker.
Please more details


I just wonder if the bios is failing and needs that new/refreshed update from manuf site.
Is it possible your Bios battery is weak?
Many thought for you but little to go on with what you say.
More details or pics of screens would help.

Yeah so the warning came up directly before the windows loading screen. It was a red box on the black screen immediately following the ASUS loading screen. It said something about unauthorized changes, I wish I had paid more heed.

I used a USB made from MS Media maker. I've never changed the battery on my motherboard, could that be causing the issue?

When I try to boot from the drive with the fresh install (the USB from Media Maker) it gets stuck endlessly loading on a new Asus screen that looks like it should be the precursor to the installation starting

Disconnect all externally attached devices and reset BIOS setting to factory default.

Thanks for the feedback guys, I tried again and got a much much faster failure notice saying failed to find boot device. I'm going to try and put back in the old SSD in case there was some issue with the clone I made. I'll keep you posted.

It's just come up Automatic Repair Couldn't Repair Your PC Log file: C:\WINDOWS\System32\Logfiles\Srt\SrtTrail.txt if that's any use to me?

If you open the log file, you’ll be shown details of all the tests performed by Startup Repair, with any errors discovered detailed. We can use this information to help diagnose and get to the root cause of the problem.



To open log file from the Windows Recovery Environment, click and open the Command Prompt. When the Command Prompt is open, type Notepad and press Enter key to open the Notepad application. The Startup Repair log file is located at:

Code:

C:\Windows\System32\Logfiles\Srt\SrtTrail.txt

You will need to navigate to the drive on which you have Windows installed (usually the C: drive) to see the SrtTrail.txt log file.

FreeBooter said:

If you open the log file, you’ll be shown details of all the tests performed by Startup Repair, with any errors discovered detailed. We can use this information to help diagnose and get to the root cause of the problem.



To open log file from the Windows Recovery Environment, click and open the Command Prompt. When the Command Prompt is open, type Notepad and press Enter key to open the Notepad application. The Startup Repair log file is located at:

Code:

C:\Windows\System32\Logfiles\Srt\SrtTrail.txt

You will need to navigate to the drive on which you have Windows installed (usually the C: drive) to see the SrtTrail.txt log file.

Thanks for the advice, I opened the notepad, navigated to the folder and... it wasn't there. Folder was empty. I have since tried a completely fresh install as I have everything backed up anyway so repair isn't important. Now I am costantly getting 0x80300002 as an error code for why WIndows couldn't use that particular disk.

The warning is as follows "We couldn't install windows in the location you chose. Please check your media drive. Here's more info about what happened: 0x80300002"

I'm guessing at this stage it's a motherboard issue? I've tried across multiple disks, formatted them externally, formatted them internally, tried SSD and HDD and I keep getting the same error code. It looks like my computer can't communicate with the harddrives properly despite knowing that they're there.