Win7 64bit - Stuck on 'Loading Operating System'

[evilsp3rm]

Morning! As the topic suggests, my PC randomly gets stuck on a black screen with 'Loading Operating System' at the top. It just hangs there, no errors etc and will only disappear when I reboot the machine. Which leads me to my next problem. Once I have restarted the machine now goes into an endless restarting loop, every 5 seconds. It will only stop when I power off the machine.

What I've done so far;

I had a similar problem with the machine and the 5 seconds restart loop a few months back and it turned out to be the motherboard had fried. So, sent it back to OC for a checkup. All came back fine.
Motherboard - Check!

My setup came pre-installed (motherboard, RAM + CPU bundle) with 4gb of RAM. I ordered another set of 4gb (exactly the same brand + model) and installed without a problem. It was running fine for about a month before I started to get stuck on the black screen and since the motherboard was fine I ran memtest on the 4 sticks. I ran it over night and woke up with zero errors. Granted I did test all 4 banks at the same time and not individually, which I will.
RAM - Check! (for now)

PSU is brand spanking new (XFX 850w Bronze), only 2 months old. Its bottom of my list of things to check because its so new, but I will check it if all else fails.

Graphics card I highly doubt is causing the problem since I haven't noticed any obvious signs of graphical shitness.

Which leaves me with the HDD. Now I had to recently format this HDD because of a few speed and general errors regarding game files etc and since it has been fine. However, forum posts have made me think again about this HDD and perhaps bitting the bullet to get an early upgrade to an SSD might be worth it.

I can boot into safe mode fine, boot off CDs and USB sticks. I don't get any errors / BSOD when in windows, nothing to determine the problem. AFAIK I haven't installed any major windows update recently.

A temporary fix;

Turn machine off and remove a stick of RAM, restart and check for black screen of death. If I get to windows login then I shutdown, reinstall the stick and power up (if the machine gets to login then shutdown + reinstall always boots fine). If problem still persists then I continue to take another RAM stick out and retry. I have never had to take out more then 2 sticks, and the 2 I take out aren't paired. I currently take out DIMM3 first (newest stick) and then DIMM1.

At the moment I don't have any spare parts to put in for any real length of time to try and replicate this problem as it can work fine for days .

I'll add more as I dig deeper, but if anyone has any more input I would greatly appreciate it!

Much love
Liam

[red_ned]

check in the bios for your memory voltages and clock speeds - sometimes mobo mis-reads these, also check for bios update which may have fix for known issues.
always a good place to start

[Smock]

I'd still blame the Mobo tbh...

Is it getting past POST and hanging, or hanging before ?

Also are you sending the PC to sleep/suspend or are you shutting it down??

I had a PC that didn't like the sleep/suspend function, never got to the bottom of it though as it was a piece of crap work PC. Properly shutting down at the end of the day prevented it from happening though - it only ever happened if the pc was left for a few days unattended. Then when it woke/resumed instead of the normal windows logon screen I had a black one with text at the top.

EDIT: Well I do sort of know what was wrong with it - was either the NIC or the GFX card didn't like being suspended