PC Hard Freezes During Windows 11 Installation
I'm having issues with my PC and decided to perform a factory reset. My Windows 11 installation became corrupted, and after exhausting other troubleshooting options, I attempted a clean installation using a bootable USB. Unfortunately, the system consistently freezes during Windows Setup. But it didn't freeze at all if I waited at the BIOS screen.
The freeze can occur at almost any point in the installation process. If I move through the setup screens quickly and start the installation, it typically reaches around 10% before hard-freezing. When this happens, the entire system becomes unresponsive, including the mouse and keyboard, and I have to hold the power button to force a shutdown.
Troubleshooting I've Already Tried
Removed the CMOS battery for approximately 10 minutes and reinstalled it.
Reseated the RAM.
Moved the RAM to a different slot.
Removed the SSD to test whether the issue persisted (it still froze).
Reset BIOS settings to default.
Experimented with various BIOS settings.
Updated the BIOS to the latest version.
Recreated the Windows 11 installation USB three separate times.
Loaded BIOS optimized defaults after the BIOS update.
Taking out GPU
Using half of the RAM
Despite all of this, the problem remains unchanged.
Additional Information
Before attempting the reset, the computer occasionally experienced brief freezes while running Windows. The system would normally recover after a second or two and continue working. Now that Windows is no longer functioning, I'm wondering if the underlying issue has become more apparent.
At this point I'm suspecting either faulty RAM or a motherboard firmware issues
System Specs
Motherboard: ASUS PRIME A520M-K
CPU: AMD Ryzen 7 5700G
RAM: 16GB DDR4-3200 (1×16GB)
Storage: 1TB Solidigm NVMe SSD
Graphics Card: NVIDIA GeForce RTX series GPU
Has anyone experienced similar symptoms or have suggestions on what hardware component I should test next? I'm completely out of ideas here.