If the HDD did fail he would get past the BIOS start up and nothing would happen or he would get an error message to indicate that. But from what you originally posted it would seem that it's a BIOS error and resetting it would be a good place to start. But.. he needs to join and post for us to really help out.
Good point, we rather lost sight of the thread in the last few posts. Something else I forgot to mention but reading bro67 post reminded me of. The first time I noticed a problem with my own windows 10 installation was on the second day. Having tested out a good few programs etc. and believing that my system was stable I went into my BIOS and put my CPU overclock back. On my i7 2600K I have had a moderate stable OC between 3.8 - 4.2Ghz for years with no problem (generally running the higher clocks in the winter and lower in the summer). The moment I tried to reboot my system everything went crazy... for some reason Windows 10 conflicted with the OC and my machine wouldn't boot. It was stuck in a loop until my BIOS itself threw up a message about unstable overclock and the default parameters being reloaded (I think this is my Mobos way of dealing with bad OCs and is basically doing the same thing as jumping the Mobo) What is really weird for me is that despite resetting all my BIOS settings to how I had them before and rolling back to Windows 7 again this whole Win 10 conflict has permanently changed something in how my PC boots up and loads the OS, and I still can figure out what it changed, how it changed it and how significant the change is.
Anyway, concerning the Vinces friends problem, does he or did he have any overclocks in his BIOS when trying to run with Windows 10? You mentioned that he built his PC as a gaming system and gamers are probably the most common group of people who overclock their machines. Mine came from a CPU clock but maybe a RAM/SPD or other clock change could also be problematic. If he does then I think there is a very good chance that supports the theory of a Windows/BIOS conflict rather than anything to do with HDD corruption.
It would be nice if there were a little more info available about this subject. I always thought of the BIOS and the OS as two relatively separate things having little effect on one another, and so long as your BIOS settings are stable and correct for your hardware and system setup then the OS shouldn't have any problems with the specific settings. I realize of course that there is some crossover between BIOS and OS but I never expected Windows 10 to completely break my system when I try to OC it the same way as it was OC'd for years with Win 7.
I would be interested to know why these conflicts occur.
Bunny, I agree with you that he needs to join this forum, but he won't. He is taking the machine back to the shop that built it. Because the system was steadily getting worse for a few days, it looked like a failing hard drive. But since he can't reach the splash screen now, it sounds like the BIOS.
Although he personally selected all the parts, he is not a technician and he does not know much about restoring hardware.
This has the list of issues resolved and also they mentioned that there is issues with Ubuntu builds and Bash, not playing nice with 10. Announcing Windows 10 Insider Preview Build 14332 | Windows Experience Blog
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