Can't even start windows now PLEASE HELP!!!!!

[Frog_Brothers]

I have an I9, 4080 and after playing this morning it crashed my whole PC when I exited the game and now I can't even start windows.

I get a message saying...

>>Checking Media Presence......
>>Media Present......
>>Star PXE over !Pv4 on Mac: and a set of numbers

Can anyone help me get back into my PC please????

[s | b 🐝]

I’m glad you got it back up, I doubt this was caused specifically by Spiderman alone.

In my experience, most people don’t know to properly optimize their SSD drives, you can do this by opening Defrag & Optimize from your windows programs. I do it 1-2 times a month.

Since you just went through having to do repairs, I’d also download the firmware and diagnostic tool for your drive. This depends on what brand you use. Seagate has Seatools, Western Digital has WD Dashboard, Samsung has Samsung Magician, etc.

Using the tool for your drive will allow you to check for any firmware updates and perform a proper diagnostic test to confirm the drive isn’t failing.

[s | b 🐝]

Originally posted by Stormspark:

Wow, PXE is something I haven't seen in over 15 years. We used it for network testing during the time I worked as a contractor at Intel. At the time it was much more convenient to have a bunch of images you could pull on demand over the network...but these days almost noone ever uses it anymore because USB sticks are faster and easier.

We use it because the deployed windows can be done in under 15 mins, with all drivers, company software installed, properly joined to Active Directory domain, etc.

There’s more manual work having to do the manual route via a USB.

[Frog_Brothers]

I have a Netac NVMe SSD 2TB - Whenever I have checked the Optimise & Defrag option in Windows its said Optimisation not available, and the Scheduled Optimisation is set to Weekly.
Do you suggest downloading the NetacSSDToolBox from their website?

[s | b 🐝]

Originally posted by Frog_Brothers:

I have a Netac NVMe SSD 2TB - Whenever I have checked the Optimise & Defrag option in Windows its said Optimisation not available, and the Scheduled Optimisation is set to Weekly.
Do you suggest downloading the NetacSSDToolBox from their website?

I never heard of that brand before.
I opened the PDF "Netac SSD Tool Box UserGuide_A1.pdf", and it looks similar to other SSD tool programs, so yes.

I'd use some precaution, back up any critical data from the drive in the event that anything further goes wrong.

It seems like the SSD has issues being recognized by Windows as an SSD, which would be why optimization isn't available.

You can see if Defraggler will work for you, it's free: https://www.ccleaner.com/defraggler

But backup any important things first.

[s | b 🐝]

I came across this reddit thread googling about that brand:
https://www.reddit.com/r/buildapc/comments/ssttrh/are_netac_ssds_good_for_the_price/

It's mentioned by 2 users that there's high failure rates with them.

I'd highly recommend looking into replacing it with a more reliable drive. At the very least for Windows.

[Frog_Brothers]

thank you I will power down for now and get myself a new SSD for windows and look at installing Windows on that next weekend.
I am guessing I can install Windows on the new drive by booting from the USB drive I have created to get this far.
Sorry for all the questions, I have not done anything like this since Windows XP years ago

[s | b 🐝]

Originally posted by Frog_Brothers:

thank you I will power down for now and get myself a new SSD for windows and look at installing Windows on that next weekend.
I am guessing I can install Windows on the new drive by booting from the USB drive I have created to get this far.
Sorry for all the questions, I have not done anything like this since Windows XP years ago

It's all good man!

In the end, I just want to help get the PC running reliably for you, since you mentioned it's an i9 with an RTX 4080.

We've been using Western Digitals at work more recently, since we've had high failure rates with Samsung 860/870s manufactured in 2021.

Then more recently if you google "Samsung 990 high failure", you'd see issues with their latest models too.

[Frog_Brothers]

OK looks like its a WD drive that i'll grab this week. I had been meaning to get another internal drive so its all good.
I've just not had to do anything like this for years so your help has been invaluable

[Stormspark]

Originally posted by s|b 🐝:

I’m glad you got it back up, I doubt this was caused specifically by Spiderman alone.

In my experience, most people don’t know to properly optimize their SSD drives, you can do this by opening Defrag & Optimize from your windows programs. I do it 1-2 times a month.

Since you just went through having to do repairs, I’d also download the firmware and diagnostic tool for your drive. This depends on what brand you use. Seagate has Seatools, Western Digital has WD Dashboard, Samsung has Samsung Magician, etc.

Using the tool for your drive will allow you to check for any firmware updates and perform a proper diagnostic test to confirm the drive isn’t failing.

Do not ever defrag an SSD. It doesn't do anything that can possibly help, and it just adds a LOT of additional wear on the cells.

[s | b 🐝]

Originally posted by Stormspark:

Originally posted by s|b 🐝:

I’m glad you got it back up, I doubt this was caused specifically by Spiderman alone.

In my experience, most people don’t know to properly optimize their SSD drives, you can do this by opening Defrag & Optimize from your windows programs. I do it 1-2 times a month.

Since you just went through having to do repairs, I’d also download the firmware and diagnostic tool for your drive. This depends on what brand you use. Seagate has Seatools, Western Digital has WD Dashboard, Samsung has Samsung Magician, etc.

Using the tool for your drive will allow you to check for any firmware updates and perform a proper diagnostic test to confirm the drive isn’t failing.

Do not ever defrag an SSD. It doesn't do anything that can possibly help, and it just adds a LOT of additional wear on the cells.

I didn’t suggest such a thing. The name of the windows tool is called “Defrag & Optimize”, it should properly identity which are SSD and which are HDD, so that it only offers the optimize option for SSDs and defragment for HDDs.

[s | b 🐝]

Originally posted by Frog_Brothers:

OK looks like its a WD drive that i'll grab this week. I had been meaning to get another internal drive so its all good.
I've just not had to do anything like this for years so your help has been invaluable

Hey Frog_Brothers, just to provide you some setup info, once you have the new drive and windows installed, you'll need to go online to download the proper drivers for your motherboard and GPU.

An easy way to do this, is to Google your motherboard's make & model, example: ASUS PRIME Z790-P WiFi

Google that with "Drivers", so: ASUS PRIME Z790-P WiFi Drivers

Which should lead to a page like this:
https://i.imgur.com/p2XVlsn.png

You may have to navigate to the proper drivers page by clicking Support > Drivers.

ASUS, MSI, Gigabyte, etc, they all have driver pages like this. If you need assistance finding it, just let me know your motherboard information.

You can get this information in a couple of ways:
- Open the PC and look at the motherboard, generally there's text information there. But it could be covered by the GPU.
- Boot to BIOS, the BIOS should provide this information.

Download the latest LAN, WiFi, Chipset, and Audio drivers. You can get other tools such as Bluetooth, Intel Rapid Storage, etc as needed as well.

I'd also suggest doing an upgrade to the BIOS while you're at this. It's good to keep the BIOS up to date. You can download the BIOS update from the drivers page, extract the file onto a USB key, you can do this with your Windows USB, I generally just put the file into a folder called "BIOS".

Boot into BIOS, find the BIOS upgrade option there, once you're loaded in, you just have to navigate to the USB's BIOS folder and select the file. It only takes a few minutes to update.

For GPU, I wouldn't depend on Windows Updates, as Microsoft may not have the latest NVIDIA pack as part of their Windows Updates distribution, you can get it directly from NVIDIA:
https://www.nvidia.com/en-us/drivers/

Fill out GeForce > GeForce RTX 40 Series > NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4080 > Windows 11

You should get this:
https://www.nvidia.com/en-us/drivers/details/240920/