- Jun 24, 2008
- 27
- 0
- 18,530
I've been building and repairing computers for a decade and I have met my match: A motherboard won't recognize anything in the SATA ports except the SSD. Neither the HDD or CD/DVD show up during boot or in the BIOS editor.
The specs:
- MB: ASUS Z87-Pro (Bios rev 1602)
- Power: Corsair CX750M
- Memory: 2x8GB Viper Xtreme
- GPU: MSI Geforce GTX 750ti
- SSD: Samsung 840 EVO 250GB
- CPU: Intel i7 3.5GHz
- HDD: WD Blue 1TB
The 'boot_device_led' LED is lit and the q-code/bootcode on the MB is either '99' ('Super IO Initialization) or 'A2' ('IDE Detect'). I assume this means something important but I can't find any more detail/logs/pointers anywhere on it.
In my efforts to fix this I have worked my way through dozens of permutations of ASUS BIOS settings: CSM ('auto' 'enabled' and 'disabled'), Sata Boot (all choices), Secure Boot on/off, Fast Boot on/off, Aggressive LPM on/off, Intel Dynamic Storage Accelerator disabled/enabled, UEFI and non-UEFI boot device, etc. I have also:
I've read over 100 forum posts that discuss teasingly-similar issues and I've tried every single suggestion I've read, no matter how tangential it seemed to me. I am pretty sure my problem is some combination of BIOS setting I haven't tried but at this point I am completely open to any idea.
This is a lot to take in, I guess. So here's a few specific questions maybe folks could help me with:
I guess you can probably see that I am desperate. Thanks in advance for any thoughts or suggestions!
The specs:
- MB: ASUS Z87-Pro (Bios rev 1602)
- Power: Corsair CX750M
- Memory: 2x8GB Viper Xtreme
- GPU: MSI Geforce GTX 750ti
- SSD: Samsung 840 EVO 250GB
- CPU: Intel i7 3.5GHz
- HDD: WD Blue 1TB
The 'boot_device_led' LED is lit and the q-code/bootcode on the MB is either '99' ('Super IO Initialization) or 'A2' ('IDE Detect'). I assume this means something important but I can't find any more detail/logs/pointers anywhere on it.
In my efforts to fix this I have worked my way through dozens of permutations of ASUS BIOS settings: CSM ('auto' 'enabled' and 'disabled'), Sata Boot (all choices), Secure Boot on/off, Fast Boot on/off, Aggressive LPM on/off, Intel Dynamic Storage Accelerator disabled/enabled, UEFI and non-UEFI boot device, etc. I have also:
- 1. swapped and reseated cables a hundred times. I even stole the cables from the working SSD and tried them on both the CD/DVD and the HDD.
- 2. pulled a working CD/DVD out of another computer and tried that.
- 3. tried simplifying things by: removing as much memory as I could; pulling the GPU (while running video off the MB).
- 4. swapped out the SSD for another SSD (PNY Optima 240GB), even though SSD #1 appears to work. SSD #2 works too.
- 5. RMAed the board. I am on board #2 and the behavior is EXACTLY the same.
- 6. tried multiple versions of the bios. On board #1 I tried the factory rev and at least one newer one (I forget the #s). And board #2 came with a rev (rev 1602) which seems to be the one that other posts have suggested as a possible fix for issues like this.
- 7. started drinking heavily at this point.
I've read over 100 forum posts that discuss teasingly-similar issues and I've tried every single suggestion I've read, no matter how tangential it seemed to me. I am pretty sure my problem is some combination of BIOS setting I haven't tried but at this point I am completely open to any idea.
This is a lot to take in, I guess. So here's a few specific questions maybe folks could help me with:
- 1. 'Legacy' vs 'UEFI'. The board supports UEFI to be sure but I have no idea how to synch up the options under 'CSM', 'Secure Boot', and 'SATA'. It can make things go really wonky if I use certain combinations in these areas.
- 2. What OS? I read 'use Windows 7 64-bit SP1', which is what I am using. But are my chances better with Windows 8, perhaps?
I guess you can probably see that I am desperate. Thanks in advance for any thoughts or suggestions!
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