u/SanityfortheWeak

Yesterday, I was messing my taskbar with Windhawk and ran into an issue where some of the pinned icons to the taskbar kept changing back to their original icons instead of retaining their custom ones.

I thought about editing the registry, but was being lazy so just executed System Restore. The problem was, the most recent restore point had been created before the feature update. However, since I had an experience that had been able to revert to a previous version via System Restore after a Windows feature update, I proceeded without much caution.

But after the restoration process and re-booting finished, Windows immediately displayed a GSOD with the message 'Your device ran into a problem and needs to restart,' forced the system to reboot again, showing the same screen repeatedly, and it eventually threw me into the purgatory of WinRE Advanced Options screen.

I tried Quick Machine Recovery and other restore points, but they were no use as well. In panic, I had no choice but to try Point-in-Time Restore, which I had set it up as soon as was released and forgotten about, and hadn't never touched until now.

It took so long, and when it got stuck at 21% for like half an hour, my heart sank, but in the end it completed, and booted the Windows successfully. The most recent captured snapshot was two days ago with older version of Windows, so I expected major registry-related issues to occur, but no, it was perfectly restored to that exact moment without any error or problem.

I'd like to thank Microsoft for creating Point-in-Time restore system. If it weren't for this method, I would've lost my sanity while formatting and resetting my OS by now.

Spoiler: It's not the CPU.

For nearly two years, my 9800X3D and Nova were rock solid pair, but yesterday, my Windows suddenly crashed and forced a reboot while I was browsing internet and listening a music.

Thinking it's just a simple symptom of memory overclocking failure, I reset the CMOS and rebooted PC but Windows kept crashed on the logon page. After few more attempts, the motherboard threw me a code 99 and refused to load the Windows.

Initially thought my 9800X3D finally met its fate just like the others, but I was still able to access the BIOS, and there were no signs that the CPU or RAM was dead.

So, I entered the EZ mode and, nightmare, of all 3 installation, only 1 NVMe SSD(least important one) was being shown on SATA panel. My OS and game drive were not recognized at all. Although I backed up some important files, I felt a insane panic at the thought that every data I had built up over the past 10 years seamlessly was completely gone. And losing NVMe SSDs in this economy? Unthinkable horror.

I barely managed to regain my sanity and, disassembled the PC and installed the OS drive into the currently recognized NVMe 4.0 slot, and, voila, it was successfully recognized and booted the Windows normally! And after swapping their positions, all three SSDs worked without problem. I felt huge relief.

I readjusted the memory overclocking and was able to play games normally. I also downgraded the BIOS from the recently updated 4.43 to 4.20, which previously had no issues for me. However, the peace didn't last long. After a day, Windows suddenly crashed, again, and the same symptoms recurred, again.

I've cleared CMOS and re-swapped their position, but now none of the three are being recognized, at all of the 5.0 and 4.0 NVMe slots. But something funny happened, as a last resort, I opened the PCIE 3.0 NVMe slot, which I hadn't touched even once since purchasing it, and installed my OS drive, and guess what? It was recognized and Windows booted normally again! Fucking piece of shit.

So, the conclusion is; 1 PCIE 5.0 and 3 4.0 NVMe slots are all dead for some reason. Since the warranty period is still up, I'll file for an RMA. The question is not whether the replacement can replicate my existing memory overclocking setup, but whether this new motherboard will burn my CPU.

My 9800X3D is a peculiar specie that has remained intact despite sitting on Nova for two years, so I think whether it continues to function normally might provide a slightest hint as to whether the ongoing X3D CPU burning issue is AMD's fault or ASRock's.

I've never missed a big match, thanks for it.