Windows Flickering and Unresponsive

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selfhighfive

PCHF Member
Jul 5, 2022
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Hi there, I’m at my wits’ end with a problem with my pc. This morning everything was running fine. I got up to get the mail, came back inside, and my pc had restarted (I believe from a Windows Update). When Windows booted back up the screen flickered on and off and the monitors were mostly blank. Start, search, etc don’t work and the only thing I can access is Task Manager.

My first thought was that a Windows Update had messed something up. So I booted back up in Recovery Mode to uninstall the updates. The Quality update uninstalled fine, but when I tried to uninstall the feature update I got the message: “We ran into a problem and won’t be able to uninstall the latest feature update of Windows. Try resetting your PC instead.”

Then I tried booting in Safe Mode to see if there was an updated driver or something I could roll back. Safe Mode flickers the same way and is unresponsive as well.

Next, I performed a System Restore to yesterday. That didn’t help and Windows continued to flicker and was unresponsive.

After that I tried to reset my PC, both with keeping my files and removing everything, using a local reinstall. Each time it gets to 40% and I get the message: “There was a problem resetting. No changes made.”

At this point all I can really do is use the Command Prompt in Recovery Mode.
I used CHKDSK, and it says there are no problems.
I tried to do a SFC scan and I get “Windows Resource Protection could not perform the requested operation.”
SFC verify only says “Windows Resource Protection found integrity violations.”
I don’t know if that’s relevant because 99% of this stuff is over my head.

Any ideas of what could be going wrong? I haven’t found anyone else with an issue like this in the amount of time I’ve searched. Any help would be greatly appreciated but you may have to explain like I’m five.

Thanks!

ps. Here’s an example of what’s happening if that helps: https://gfycat.com/fakewillingbaleenwhale
 
make/model/age of PC?
make/model/age of PSU?
under warranty?

at first guess, due to the errors in trying to reload stuff, I was going to say your hard drive.
but based on that video, if that's what you are getting as well, I've never seen a drive cause that sort of issue.

I'd be tearing it all down and re-assembling on a piece of cardboard on a table and seeing if anything stands out when inspecting all the parts, and hoping I get luck during the re-assembling.
only put back the core essentials, so only one drive, one memory stick, no GPU if your mobo and CPU supports on-board graphics - that sort of stuff.
 
Thanks for the help!

PC is custom built about 7 years ago. The only thing I’ve replaced were some memory sticks a few years ago.
PSU is a PC Power and Cooling Silencer Mk3 750W
I doubt that anything is still under warranty.

I opened it up and tried what you said, and unfortunately Windows is still flickering and unresponsive even at the bare minimum.
 
then you have some faulty hardware in the mix.
what can you get your hands on for swapping and testing?
another monitor, a spare power supply, more memory, a motherboard and processor?

try to boot without any memory or drives or add-on cards, you should at least be able to get to BIOS, if not, the motherboard would be the first things I'd be looking at.
and plug in an internal speaker to the mobo and see if it makes any startup beeps.

one of these;
1657075930650.png
 
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