Reformatting my disk/booting problems

I just got around to building my new PC, and I installed Windows 8/etc. I was installing the drivers for the GPU and it seemed like my computer sort of froze so I left it like that for around 10-15 minutes and decided to turn it off. Now, after it gets past the "Press delete to go into BIOS or f11 to run boot menu." it'll just black screen. No Windows logo or anything, no way to start safe mode.
Does anyone know what the problem is? I was thinking installing the drivers might have done something, but I have no way of starting in safe mode (to my knowledge) and I can't figure out how to reformat my disk. I installed Windows via USB and still have the drive.
This was also installed on my SSD.

Thanks in advance.

 

The first thing i would do is boot from a disk and open the recovery console and run the system file checker. You should make backups every time you install a driver just in case you installed the wrong one. And before you start on your driver adventure, make a ghost disk so if you mess up you can just toss that in and start from scratch again.

 

It sounds like it's either your hard drive or your mobo.

If its hitting the mobo splash screen then just going blank, it may be that your hard drive has failed (though you should get an error for this, pending your mobo). Have you tried booting from anything other than the HDD? (USB, or a linux live disk).

I would try putting the HDD in another computer, and try booting from it. If you cant, boot from something else and re-install windows on it. If it's not even recognized as being installed, its dead.

You could also press F11, and see if boot from HDD is an option (If it isn't, again, it may have failed).

P.s. I know you said its technically an SSD, not a HDD, but those can fail too (they can actually fail much quicker than a HDD if you are heavily reading/writing from them. EX: Using them for cache).

 

I plugged in my hdd and installed windows on that, and when I go to the device manager, the ssd doesn't show up. Does that mean it's dead? This is a brand new drive that I just put in yesterday. Is there any other things I can do?

 

Before i called it dead, i would check through all the cheap stuff first. Is the sata port dead? Sata cable? Molex --> Power sata adapter (Is used)?

I would also make sure you haven't fried it XD As a general rule of thumb (always double check, just use this rule of thumb for very, very basic troubleshooting):

3.5" Mechanical almost always draw 12v + 5v
Some 2.5" mechanical (generally 5400 RPM drives) draw 5V
2.5"/3.5" SSD generally draws from a 5V rail.
1.8" generally draw from 3.3v rail.
mSATA/mPCIe use the 3.3v nearly 100% of the time.

 

Do what the people suggest on top. Try different data ports, motherboards, determine if is the ssd's issue or other components. If is the ssd,simply refund it or as for a replacement from where you bought it. Ssd usually dies easily, this is why I only buy ssd from good brands like corsair

 

Check to see if the HDD is recognized in the BIOS. If it isn't and you've tried different SATA ports / cables then just return it as DOA (dead on arrival).