Black blinking screen after 22H2 Upgrade

I just ran an install of Windows 11, well, I was trying to update from 22H1 to 22H2. My hardware is unsupported, I ran a cmd file which bypasses the TPM check. I'm seeing a black screen, the icons are flashing, and there are two error messages.

The black flickers screen happens, tgen the AISO message, then the other message.

I cannot get past this. Im able to CTRL ALT DEL and sign out. I restarted as well. No luck. Not sure how to SAFE BOOT from here.

Any advice?

Specs:
5960X
Rampage V Extreme
64 GB RAM
GTX 980

Do you have a USB bootable disk (flash pen drive) and an image you can restore from?

Boot your computer into safe mode to see persists.

FreeBooter said:

Boot your computer into safe mode to see persists.

Click to expand...

I did that. Option 5. Same thing.

wiganken said:

Do you have a USB bootable disk (flash pen drive) and an image you can restore from?

Click to expand...

No I do not. I'd never seen this problem before. Ugh.

If you reset the computer 3-4 times before fully loading Windows you should see the troubleshooting screen. Select Troubleshoot and let it try a startup repair. Of course that won't do anything but then you can select a more advanced option. Select System Restore (just in case there is a restore point to return to). If you have no restore points try Uninstall feature update or Uninstall cumulative update. If nothing seems to work I am afraid you have to backup and reinstall. If you have over 30GB free space you can boot into Windows 11 22H2 USB directly and select to install Windows on the previous Windows partition (usually the larger) WITHOUT deleting or modifying any partition. This will warn you that there is an earlier Windows installation that will be copied to Windows.old folder. By all means select Yes and proceed. After installation install all your drivers and then you can recover your data from C:\Windows.old\Users\accountname. Your applications must be reinstalled unfortunately, but you can restore your settings in some of them. For example, copy any Mozilla or similar folders from C:\Windows.old\ProgramData , C:\Windows.old\Program Files, C:\Windows.old\Program Files (x86) and C:\Windows.old\Users\accountname\AppData into the respective folder of the new installation BEFORE installing Firefox. Look in all three folders Local, LocalLow and Roaming in AppData folder. This will make Firefox Setup think you already have Firefox installed and offer to "upgrade" it. Select Yes and you should restore all your settings, themes, bookmarks and passwords! You can try the same for some other applications, you never know.

UPDATE
I am ON my computer now, it took some trial and error, but there's a catch.

I'm on Google Chrome as I type this. I booted to my user, my screen is still blinking, I pressed CTRL+ALT+DEL, opened a Chrome process via Task Manager and boom, I'm on Google Chrome.

This method did not work for Explorer. I also tried appwiz.cpl, which threw me an error which was some registry key.

The overall experience I'm having is that the background keeps bouncing/flickering. As it's flickering, I'm unable to type for a split second.

I did create another local account, logged in and I was at least able to see a Desktop image, but everything else in terms of the flickering was the same.

Could BitDefender be causing me problems? I could've sworn I'd disabled it permanently before attempting the upgrade. I still do see a lot of BitDefender tasks running.

Could some malware causing it? Apart from a full scan (preferable in Safe Mode) with Bit Defender I suggest to download Superantispyware and do a full system scan with it also. Delete all findings. Also check your desktop shortcut for Chrome. I have seen malware modifying browser shortcut to load their own search engine or whatever. It is not a bad idea to delete the shortcut and create a new one.

Uninstall AsIO.sys is a virtual driver associated to Asus PC Probe.

In this video, i will show you how to uninstall offline windows operating system drivers with Dism command.

FreeBooter said:

Uninstall AsIO.sys is a virtual driver associated to Asus PC Probe.

In this video, i will show you how to uninstall offline windows operating system drivers with Dism command.

Click to expand...

Can't seem to locate it. Can you help me? Here's a pastebin. Deployment Image Servicing and Management toolVersion: 10.0.22621.1Image - Pastebin.com

I hope you have a backup of your data.(It should always be backed up before one goes into an upgrade)
Create bootable media using Rufus, making sure you select all the incompatible hardware bypass options during creation of the media.
Use the media to clean install.

You can attempt to undo the change by booting from installation media and selecting repair but I don't think it will work in your case.
Advanced options will let you use system restore or uninstall an update. But you did an UPGRADE which is completely different from an update. IMO, a clean install will be needed.

From Command Prompt, execute the following commands to rename this driver and reboot your computer.




Please replace partition letter C: with Windows installed partition letter. When the computer boots into Windows Recovery Environment (WinRE) environment, the drive letter assign to Windows partition may not be C: drive letter because Windows 7, 8 , 8.1, 10 and Windows11 creates a separate system partition when it's installed from scratch. The system partition contains boot files WinRE assigns the system partition the C: drive letter and the Windows installed partition will be assigned any other drive letter, usually D: drive letter is assigned to Windows installed partition. The Bcdedit | find "osdevice" command can be used to find out the drive letter of the Windows installed partition, the output of the Bcdedit command is similar to this osdevice partition=D:. The drive letter after partition= is the drive letter of the Windows partition.

FreeBooter said:

From Command Prompt, execute the following commands to rename this driver and reboot your computer.

Code:

Ren  C:\Windows\System32\Drivers\AsIO.sys  AsIO.sys.bak

Click to expand...

So, the file wasn't in System32\Drivers, so I looked in SysWO64\drivers, applied a similar code, restarted and I got my computer back, at least on the first boot. I haven't rebooted again as of yet. HOWEVER, I'm still seeing the two errors that I need to get rid of, one being the AsIO.sys error pictured in the OP along with the other error from the OP. I typed out the codes, so I'll list them here:

Any assistance on how to get rid of these two errors?

There was one other issue, and that my Quick Launch toolbar was missing from the Taskbar. I was able to retrieve it, as the folder itself wasn't deleted, just the new toolbar from the Taskbar.

Open Task Manager and go to the Startup tab. If the application looking AsIO.sys is there, disable it. If it isn't, it must be a service. Press Win+R to open a Run dialog box and type msconfig Go to Services, check the box to hide Microsoft services. If you find it uncheck its box, click OK to save changes and restart.

spapakons said:

Open Task Manager and go to the Startup tab. If the application looking AsIO.sys is there, disable it. If it isn't, it must be a service. Press Win+R to open a Run dialog box and type msconfig Go to Services, check the box to hide Microsoft services. If you find it uncheck its box, click OK to save changes and restart.

Click to expand...

Sorry I haven't been back to this thread in a few days.

Nothing in Startup.

In Services, the only thing I see that is remotely similar is AsSysCtrlService (Asus System Control Service). Again, my Motherboard is a Rampage V Extreme. Could this service be the culprit? I'm just not sure about disabling it since I don't know if it's required to run during bootup.

It is probably a monitoring service or one letting you tweaks some settings. I don't think it is necessary to boot. Try disabling it. If it works, try uninstalling the Asus software and reinstalling.

Boot your computer into Safe Mode and perform clean boot.

In this guide, you will learn the steps to perform a clean boot on Windows 11 and Windows 10 to help you troubleshoot and determine conflicts in your setup.