wearymason4 said:It seems like nobody actually bothered to read the OP's first post. Neither the BIOS nor the USB installation media shows any active drive other than the USB stick itself. It doesn't matter if there's a partition or if it's formatted—the drive has to show up, unless the installer being used is ancient, like Windows 7 for example. If the drive is running MS-DOS, you should at least see a C: drive immediately upon booting after following the post.
Look, if the SSD is functional and plugged in correctly—and assuming the BIOS setup isn't acting up—it absolutely has to show up in the BIOS. It WILL NOT show up in Windows if the drivers are missing. I actually had to manually inject a driver into a Windows 10 ISO once just to get a specific, exotic SSD model to behave.
Start by diving into your BIOS settings: 1) Switch over to legacy boot mode—then set your boot order so the USB sticks is first and the SSD is second. Honestly, I find UEFI to be nothing more than an unnecessary headache, so I usually just disable it on every machine I work on. 2) Double-check those BIOS settings to make sure the SSD is actually being recognized—whether it's plugged into an M.2 slot or a SATA3 port, depending on what you're running. 3) If points 1 and 2 look solid but Windows still isn't seeing that SSD, then you're going to have to inject the specific SSD driver into your installation ISO.
If all your drivers look solid after a clean Windows 10 reinstall—meaning no yellow or red exclamation marks in Device Manager—then I’m about 90% certain you're looking at a hardware failure. That's what's triggering those Blue Screens. The other 10%? It could just be buggy software from Gigashit or their absolute garbage BIOS. Did you actually run the RAM test I suggested earlier? If the modules pass, my honest advice is to take that bucket of bolts back to the retailer. You aren't going to find any peace of mind with a Gigashit machine.
Here is what you need to do: 1) Run a RAM test (use the standard Windows Memory Diagnostic, then try an extended version) https://www.windowscentral.com/how-c...ems-windows-10 2) Perform a file system check via CMD chkdsk c: /f Confirm the scheduled scan for when you reboot—and if you have any other partitions, run them too: chkdsk d: /f etc. Usually, d: is just your DVD-RW drive, so swap out the letter for whatever your actual secondary partition is (if you even have one) 3) Open Control Panel, go to Device Manager, and select "Show hidden devices" to see if all your drivers are actually behaving—you shouldn't see any yellow or red warning icons 4) If none of those first three steps do the trick, then a clean reinstall of Windows is pretty much inevitable 5) And if step 4 fails? Take that Gigashit bucket back to the store. Like I said at the start of this thread, that company is dead to me after the nightmare I dealt with regarding their Motherboard and GPU.
Your max temps—61°C for the CPU and 69°C for the GPU—are perfectly fine. Things only get critical once you hit the 90°C range, and the system won't force a shutdown until it reaches about 100°C (though the GPU usually handles the heat a bit better than the CPU does). We can officially rule out overheating as the culprit here. Which specific games are actually crashing? Honestly, Windows 10 isn't the best OS for gaming anyway—especially when it comes to older titles. A lot of those classics require a specific patch or switching the compatibility mode to Windows 7 to run properly.
Have you actually checked your CPU and GPU temperatures using HWMonitor? Here’s what I suggest: launch the program before you start gaming and just leave it minimized in the background. Play for a few minutes, then close the game and check the peak temps for both the CPU and GPU in HWMonitor. If you're seeing numbers pushing near 90°C, your cooling setup isn't doing its job—either you're missing a case fan entirely, or your BIOS settings are wonky and the fans aren't spinning up when they actually need to.
From what I can gather, the OP mentioned his games are crashing and Windows is freezing up (Blue Screen of Death) rather than the whole system just cutting to black—which would be an automatic shutdown. That makes overheating a less likely culprit here. If you want to get a real look at your sensor status and load percentages, I’d suggest using this tool: https://www.cpuid.com/softwares/hwmonitor.html 👍
The breakdown: it’s plagued by too many false positives, struggles when it actually comes to scrubbing viruses, the interface is mediocre at best—and don't even get me started on how much it hogs system resources. Objectively speaking, it’s only better than the absolute bottom-tier junk—think McAfee or IObit—but it falls way short compared to the heavy hitters like Bitdefender or Avast.
Did you also go ahead and change the owner for those directories? Just tweaking the NTFS permissions doesn't always cut it in certain scenarios.—I've learned that the hard way before.
Larry Ortiz5 said:Stop talking nonsense and bringing up unknowns—you're just tilting people here. Just because you personally had issues with a Gigabyte motherboard or a GPU doesn't mean there's a pattern; maybe yours just happened to have a factory defect. Gigabyte and Asus are both industry leaders when it comes to motherboards and graphics cards, so please don't spread misinformation in the future..
The difference between Asus and Gigabyte is night and day—at least in my experience. My Gigabyte build fell apart pretty quickly; I was unhappy from day one. It was either unstable or riddled with bugs. With Asus, I haven't had a single issue.
fadedorca66 said:Honestly, that power supply is more than enough. His configuration probably pulls barely more than 250W.
I remember an old Gigashit card I used that pulled 300W all by itself—add any other components to a 450W PSU and you're looking at a black screen. So, I'm highly skeptical that 500W is actually "enough" for him.
Microsoft Defender just can't hold its own against a dedicated, pure-bred antivirus—especially when it comes to actually scrubbing malware from a system. The only reason people even bother using it is because it's baked right into Windows, making it the path of least resistance for the average user. Personally, I don't trust a Microsoft product that far, but I suppose it beats having zero protection. Besides, as Larry Ortiz5 already pointed out, if you're downloading every random file you see without paying attention, no antivirus on the planet is going to save you from an infection.
If you're looking to salvage files or fix things on a corrupted drive, TestDisk is actually a solid choice—it's a reliable tool for this kind of mess. I haven't personally put it through its paces for this specific issue, but I found these guides that should walk you through the process:
Microsoft Defender is honestly pretty weak protection—let’s be real, we're talking maybe 80% detection, whereas actual commercial AV programs hit closer to 98%. Malwarebytes is fine, but it's really more for hunting down spyware; you can't rely on it as your sole line of defense. If you want something free, try Avast or AVG—out of all the free options out there, they're easily the most demanding and actually get the job done. Also, uBlock Origin is a solid solution for your web browser.
Your power supply is way too weak—500W just isn't going to cut it for a GPU like that once you factor in everything else. On a side note, I’ve had some pretty terrible experiences with Intel motherboards and their graphics cards—the software is incredibly buggy and the BIOS is unstable. As far as I'm concerned, that company has been dead to me since my last rig died thanks to their garbage hardware. If I were you, I'd swap it out at the retailer while it's still under warranty; otherwise, you're just asking for constant headaches and total frustration.
You’re going to need to convert that dynamic disk back to Microsoft Basic so it can actually hold its own partition. The reason the disk is showing up as invalid is pretty simple—it’s missing the other partitions from the dynamic setup on your old computer. To function normally, unlike a standard basic disk, you need an MBR at the start of the first partition and an LDM at the end of the last one, as explained here: https://www.easeus.com/resource/dyna...k-recovery.htm http://techgenix.com/basic-disk-dynamic-disk-convert/ Don't bother trying to use Windows Disk Management or diskpart for this—both are extremely limited and will just demand that you wipe your partitions entirely. You need a legitimate, full-featured partitioning tool like Paragon, EaseUS, or AOMEI. Just a heads-up: you'll likely need a commercial version, since the free ones usually strip out the advanced features you actually need here. Your alternative is to boot from a Linux CD and use its built-in partition manager for free. In Linux, you can even access the data directly without mounting the partition, though that requires using the CLI. Honestly, if you aren't experienced with this kind of thing, you might want to just take it to a pro—this is a quick fix if you have the right software, but it can get messy if you stumble.