Windows & USB install neither booting (trying SFC & DISM)

Please bare with me to while I explain my unique situation. I bought my new MSI GL73 9SC-028 in May 2020, never had problems with it before. I even upgraded the memory with RAM I bought at same time (from 8 GB to 16 GB), never problems. Then I bought 64 GB RAM of the right kind, and after installing it, my laptop would only turn on for literally 1 second, only the keyboard backlight would illuminate, fans would not activate, then just goes off. I've tried everything from power-cycling to CMOS flushing to removing flex cables from ports in case a short is happening, nothing has worked, and let me to assume that the motherboard is now bad. I can't replace it until next stimulus comes, hopefully within a few weeks.

So but anyhow, I ended up buying a USB NVMe SSD USB enclosure for the MSI Windows drive so it would hopefully boot on my 2013 HP laptop that otherwise has no bootable drive. After a little BIOS tinkering, I got the NVMe to boot the HP into Windows, although it's USB so not quite as fast as it could be (and for some reason, only the slower USB port is recognizing the USB NVMe. So it did load Windows and everything was fine, but the few times I had to reboot to fix something, or to flush Windows cuz File Explorer wouldn't load, it had problems booting back up. Currently, the NVMe starts booting, the swirling thing appears, and goes to a blank screen or the swirl keeps going indefinitely, after like 30 seconds the drive just "idle reads" at blank screen and nothing ever happens. It doesn't actively read it fast like it initially does, fan dies down so I assume no activity. Even overnight it does nothing. However, it does allow me to access the Windows RE after 3 failed attempts though, but none of the options there are working for me, Startup Repair, Refresh PC (gets to like 50% complete and says undoing changes, then says not able to Refresh, not sure why.

I read so many things online, so I tried running SFC /scannow and other options, which says it found errors but couldn't fix them all. So I also tried DISM with the options but it's more finicky cuz it's not an "online image", and I tried the option /WinDir and /Image but I'm guessing it doesn't work cuz it's not technically an image (file?) but the Windows environment itself. I'm having trouble fully understanding DISM cuz it sounds like you can't service an offline non-image Windows installation. Is it true that you have to either be booted into the Windows environment that you want serviced or have a WIM image file (mounted or unmounted, both considered offline I'm assuming). You can't service an actual Windows installation with DISM unless it's online?? I'll start there on my DISM questioning, before typing the different options for it that I've tried using.

Then in the midst of that, I found a USB Windows 10 install flash-drive that I made last year when I had a problem, forgot I had it. It booted the HP to Windows install, but I made the mistake of choosing automatic repair (to hopefully repair the USB NVMe), then it restarted and the USB stick would no longer boot to installation. Not sure why that happened. I can boot into NVMe Windows RE though, and I can start setup from attached USB install, but then it says it doesn't support installing to external USB (NVMe). I've heard you have to be booted into the USB installer to work.

So within the NVMe Windows RE Command Prompt, I've tried bootrec /FixMbr (which says successfull), but /FixBoot says access denied, and the literature I've read on it didn't fix that for me, again I think I have to be on USB install boot on order to work. Also did /RebuildBCD but doesn't seem to work.

So then I tried bcdboot on the NVMe and seems to have copied files, but didn't make it work though. Then I tried bcdboot on the USB install stick, which also seemed to copy files to, but might've made it worse, I dunno. Question, Is using bcdboot only to repair an already-installed Windows environment, or would it also work to repair a USB Windows installation media that no longer boots? If not, how can I fix USB installation media without networking, only Command Prompt where I can access the media but just not boot with it ?

I could get into what I've tried with DISM, but I wanna start with those 2 questions first:

#1. Can you only use DISM to service an online Windows installation and not an offline one, and you can only service offline if it's in the form of an image file ?

#2. Is using bcdboot only to repair an already-installed Windows environment, or would it also work to repair a USB Windows installation media that no longer boots ?

If this posting is in wrong thread, feel free to move it to it's proper place. It was either this one is general support. Thanks in advance guys. I read this whole threading BTW:

How to properly use SFC and DISM to fix no boot?

So why did you do all these things you describe here? If you loaded up your PC with a full complement of ram (sounds like you did) and now it won't boot, why not pull out the ram, put the old back in and see it it boots? If it does than you have ram problems not Windows install problems.

This new 64GB of ram, is it of different timings than what you had that was working? I suspect that 64GB is max ram for this PC?

I would suggest that you at a minimum pull out 1 stick of ram and see if that will get it booted. Check to see which stick or sticks are recommended for a minimal install to boot. You might need to just reset the bios to defaults and get the machine to boot with the new ram.

DariusGalaxyz said:

I even upgraded the memory with RAM I bought at same time (from 8 GB to 16 GB), never problems. Then I bought 64 GB RAM of the right kind, and after installing it, my laptop would only turn on for literally 1 second, only the keyboard backlight would illuminate, fans would not activate, then just goes off. I've tried everything from power-cycling to CMOS flushing to removing flex cables from ports in case a short is happening, nothing has worked, and let me to assume that the motherboard is now bad. I can't replace it until next stimulus comes, hopefully within a few weeks

Well, let's think this through. No problems before RAM upgrade. Problems start after the RAM upgrade. I mean, to me.....it would seem like the next course of action would be to re-install the old RAM.

Railtech said:

So why did you do all these things you describe here? If you loaded up your PC with a full complement of ram (sounds like you did) and now it won't boot, why not pull out the ram, put the old back in and see it it boots? If it does than you have ram problems not Windows install problems.

This new 64GB of ram, is it of different timings than what you had that was working? I suspect that 64GB is max ram for this PC?

I would suggest that you at a minimum pull out 1 stick of ram and see if that will get it booted. Check to see which stick or sticks are recommended for a minimal install to boot. You might need to just reset the bios to defaults and get the machine to boot with the new ram.

I apologize, there were so many things I tried to remember when I was writing out everything. I long ago tried putting the original memory in and nothing changed, still wouldn't start. Perhaps the board got damaged somehow, even unseen static could do it.

What I think is that you fully loaded the board with ram going from 16 to 64GB and probably at the same time increase or changed timings significantly and as a result the board cannot detect what ram is installed so post fails which means the board cannot initialize all the hardware.

Reset the bios to factory default settings and then let the board restart. If the ram is the correct ram as you claim then the board should post and then boot Windows. If that proves not to work then I would suspect either wrong or faulty ram.

I think "S" stands for single channel & "D" for dual channel.

Right you are S is Single Rank or Channel and D is Dual

So Darius let me ask you, are you sure your MSI laptop will handle 64GB of ram?
I take it these are 2 x 32GB modules and if so does your board support Dual Channel?

It appears that your original Hynix 8GB stick is a Single channel stick. If your board does not support dual channel and you have a dual channel module installed this may be the problem. I wouldn't know as I have never done that. Why not pull the dual channel module from the board and see if that changes things for you?

The fact that the old ram does not work now is actually immaterial. Reason is that the board at this point has attempted to apply settings for the new ram so changing ram back is likely to fail.

My advice, pull all ram modules, set the bios to load defaults, save and exit. Let the machine power up. It should give some error beeps that would indicate no memory installed. Shutdown the PC, install the Single channel module only then see if the machine will post and possibly boot Windows. Given all the other things you have done with bcdboot and such, the machine may post successfully but may not boot Windows now.