Constant Reloading on log-in, PC unusable

[Lu-minaire]

I’m having a major issue with my pc and am quite out of my depth. It’s basically unusable and I’m not even sure why. I shut my pc down normally on Thursday night then found it was already on when I went to turn it on Friday morning. On login, within 2 seconds, the desktop just starts constantly refreshing. Task manager will open and it shows various processes constantly loading and disappearing in a loop (search, windows explorer to name a few). My taskbar doesn’t ever load up, there’s just nothing there.

I have tried:
🔹 SFC /scan now (says it repaired some files, but after reboot there’s no difference upon login afterwards.)
🔹 Startup Repair (which said it couldn’t repair my pc)
🔹 System Restore (says it failed to restore and for some reason the only restore point was from the night before the issue began and the issue remains)
🔹 Uninstall updates (in case it had tried to update on shutdown) Quality update uninstall worked but feature update uninstall failed. Still no difference.
Loading into safe mode actually makes the desktop reload every 1 second instead of every 2 seconds.
🔹 Someone from another forum suggested running BOOTREC but that came up with the message “not recognised as an internal or external command, operable program or batch file”)

Any idea why this whole fault is happening? Or anything else I can try? Do I need to go the drastic step of Reset this PC? Or am I barking up the wrong tree and this is a fault outwith windows files? (Like hardware or driver conflicts) I have backed up important information this week, thankfully, but could still lose some data.

Any help would be majorly appreciated. Many thanks in advance (and please be kind 🙃 I’m not the most tech savvy these days).
Specs below for info.
(I also have Norton 360 installed.)


Case
COOLERMASTER MASTERBOX TD500 MESH ARGB GAMING CASE
Promotional Item
Get Marvel's Midnight Suns with select GeForce RTX 30 Series GPUs!
Processor (CPU)
AMD Ryzen 9 5900X 12 Core CPU (3.7GHz-4.8GHz/70MB CACHE/AM4)
Motherboard
ASUS® ROG STRIX B550-F GAMING WIFI II (AM4, DDR4, PCIe 4.0, Wi-Fi 6E)
Memory (RAM)
32GB Corsair VENGEANCE DDR4 3200MHz (2 x 16GB)
Graphics Card
8GB NVIDIA GEFORCE RTX 3070 Ti - HDMI, DP, LHR
1st M.2 SSD Drive
512GB PCS PCIe M.2 SSD (3300 MB/R, 2200 MB/W)
1st Storage Drive
8TB SEAGATE BARRACUDA SATA-III 3.5" HDD, 6GB/s, 5400RPM, 256MB CACHE
External DVD/BLU-RAY Drive
6x Slim USB 2.0 External Blu-Ray Writer
Memory Card Reader
USB 3.0 EXTERNAL SD/MICRO SD CARD READER
Power Supply
CORSAIR 850W RMx SERIES™ MODULAR 80 PLUS® GOLD, ULTRA QUIET
Power Cable
1 x 1.5 Metre UK Power Cable (Kettle Lead)
Processor Cooling
PCS FrostFlow 100 V3 Series High Performance CPU Cooler (AMD)
Thermal Paste
ARCTIC MX-4 EXTREME THERMAL CONDUCTIVITY COMPOUND
Sound Card
ONBOARD 6 CHANNEL (5.1) HIGH DEF AUDIO (AS STANDARD)
Network Card
10/100/1000 GIGABIT LAN PORT
USB/Thunderbolt Options
2 PORT (2 x TYPE A) USB 3.1 PCI-E CARD + STANDARD USB PORTS
Operating System
Windows 11 Home 64 Bit - inc. Single Licence
Operating System Language
United Kingdom - English Language
Windows Recovery Media
Windows 10/11 Multi-Language Recovery Image - Unlimited Downloads from Online Account
Office Software
Microsoft® Office Home & Student 2021 (1 Digital License)
Anti-Virus
NO ANTI-VIRUS SOFTWARE
Browser
Firefox™

 

[SpyderTracks]

Are you opening task manager or is it just automatically opening?

That cooler is nowhere near suitable for the CPU, you will never have experienced what that PC is capable of.

 

[Lu-minaire]

Are you opening task manager or is it just automatically opening?

I am opening task manager myself. It’s about the only thing I can do.

 

[SpyderTracks]

I am opening task manager myself. It’s about the only thing I can do.

So it suggests that explorer.exe is in an infinite crash/restart loop.

Could be a number of things that's caused it.

In theory a full DISM online repair should fix it.

From taskmgr, go to run new task in the top type powershell and select the run as administrator check box

Then type the following "DISM /Online /Cleanup-Image /RestoreHealth"

This will take quite some time, it's basically searching through all the windows modules, finding any corruption and reinstalling those entirely. Leave that running until it's complete, it will have a crude progress bar underneath

Then reboot once that's completed.

 

[Lu-minaire]

So it suggests that explorer.exe is in an infinite crash/restart loop.

Could be a number of things that's caused it.

In theory a full DISM online repair should fix it.

From taskmgr, go to run new task in the top type powershell and select the run as administrator check box

Then type the following "DISM /Online /Cleanup-Image /RestoreHealth"

This will take quite some time, it's basically searching through all the windows modules, finding any corruption and reinstalling those entirely. Leave that running until it's complete, it will have a crude progress bar underneath

Then reboot once that's completed.

Thanks for trying to help, unfortunately that hasn’t worked any magic. The process said it ran successfully but upon reboot there’s no change.

 

[SpyderTracks]

Thanks for trying to help, unfortunately that hasn’t worked any magic. The process said it ran successfully but upon reboot there’s no change.

In that case a clean install would be the best route, it will be a lot quicker than attempting to troubleshoot.

As always, the issue isn't the corruption, it's what cause the corruption. It would leave me suspicious of some rogue process that's caused such an important system file to become borked.

Note, a clean install is not the same as a windows reset, there are plenty of guides on the internet on how to do a clean install from bootable USB

 

[Lu-minaire]

In that case a clean install would be the best route, it will be a lot quicker than attempting to troubleshoot.

As always, the issue isn't the corruption, it's what cause the corruption. It would leave me suspicious of some rogue process that's caused such an important system file to become borked.

Note, a clean install is not the same as a windows reset, there are plenty of guides on the internet on how to do a clean install from bootable USB

Thank you, I will look into doing a clean install 👍🏻