Motherboard going south?

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The Original Ralph

The Original Ralph

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Sep 14, 2011
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1st, this is not the computer in my signature below, system specs are:
Win 7 Pro x64
Asus Z97M-Plus (micro-ATX)
intel i7-4790 (non-k)
OS drive samsung NVMe 950
cloned backup drive - samsung 850 EVO SSD
32GB Ripjaws DDR3 SDRAM 1600 (PC3 12800)

Motherboard is 4 yrs + old. Problem - for the past two years, every 5 or 6 months, my computer seems to corrupt the BIOS - reason i say that is it will start showing sign of going south by not recognizing the OS drive - at which point i'll insert the cloned backup drive (sector by sector clone) - the OS drive will be visible in disk management but not under "my computer".

A few days ago, it was worse, first the computer would not boot on the OS drive, then after multiple booting from the backup cloned drive, it then failed to recognize it and wouldn't boot from it - the multiple bootings were from trying to correct or repair the MBR partition on the OS drive.

Solution was to turn off computer, then turned off the PSU switch, and pressed the power button and held down for 30 seconds, then cleared RTC and then cleared CMOS by removing the battery. Following that I reflashed the latest BIOS from a USB drive in a 2.0 port (per Asus instructions) - that brought all my drives back to life or recognition.

Then today, same failing to boot from OS drive, then after multiple boots from the cloned back up drive, same - it failed to see the cloned drive - but in the meantime, i noticed this time it failed to recognize some USB drives (one is a 238 GB mSata drive, and another drive, a video worktable SSD. The failing to recognize the USB drives was something new to the mix.

One detail that may help, Tonite i cleared CMOS without clearing RTC - and it did not bring back any recognition of drives. I went back, did the earlier described procedure of powering down the computer, turning off at the PSU, holding power button for 30 seconds, then cleared RTC and CMOS, and reflashed the BIOS and this time it brought every thing back EXCEPT the samsung 950 NVME drive, and yes i re-installed the NVME driver from samsung.

is it common for BIOSs to corrupt like that (the latest BIOS from ASUS is 2 years old) and i made sure to download it from ASUS just before reflashing? The CPU is not overclocked except for the system's Turbo Boost which takes it to 4.0 MHz

any opinions?

I've got a back up mobo (H97) that i picked up as a backup when i noticed Z97M mobos were getting hard to find new
 
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tejayd

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Mar 11, 2018
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For the hell of it you might want to change the battery. My situation was a bit different. But it was also with an Asus mobo with bios flash. I had to reset the cmos often. Sometimes twice a day other times it would work for a week. Swapped it with the battery out of my spare car key fob and if fixed the problem. Might be worth a shot if no one has anything better.
 
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The Original Ralph

The Original Ralph

Distinguished
Sep 14, 2011
2,222
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20,510
MERGED QUESTION
Question from The Original Ralph : "Asus Z97M-PLUS motherboard keeps corrupting CMOS"

Win 7 Pro x64
Asus Z97M-Plus (micro-ATX)
intel i7-4790 (non-k)
OS drive samsung NVMe 950
cloned backup drive - samsung 850 EVO SSD
32GB Ripjaws DDR3 SDRAM 1600 (PC3 12800)

Motherboard is 4 yrs + old. Problem - for the past two years, every 5 or 6 months, my computer seems to corrupt the BIOS - reason i say that is it will start showing sign of going south by not recognizing the OS drive - at which point i'll insert the cloned backup drive (sector by sector clone) - the OS drive will be visible in disk management but not under "my computer".

A few days ago, it was worse, first the computer would not boot on the OS drive, then after multiple booting from the backup cloned drive, it then failed to recognize it and wouldn't boot from it - the multiple bootings were from trying to correct or repair the MBR partition on the OS drive.

Solution was to turn off computer, then turned off the PSU switch, and pressed the power button and held down for 30 seconds, then cleared RTC and then cleared CMOS by removing the battery. Following that I reflashed the latest BIOS from a USB drive in a 2.0 port (per Asus instructions) - that brought all my drives back to life or recognition.

Then today, same failing to boot from OS drive, then after multiple boots from the cloned back up drive, same - it failed to see the cloned drive - but in the meantime, i noticed this time it failed to recognize some USB drives (one is a 238 GB mSata drive, and another drive, a video worktable SSD. The failing to recognize the USB drives was something new to the mix.

One detail that may help, Tonite i cleared CMOS without clearing RTC - and it did not bring back any recognition of drives. I went back, did the earlier described procedure of powering down the computer, turning off at the PSU, holding power button for 30 seconds, then cleared RTC and CMOS, and reflashed the BIOS and this time it brought every thing back EXCEPT the samsung 950 NVME drive, and yes i re-installed the NVME driver from samsung.

This time i replaced the CMOS battery with a new one, but the one it replaced was not the original, it had been in there maybe 2 years

is it common for BIOSs to corrupt like that (the latest BIOS from ASUS is 2 years old) and i made sure to download it from ASUS just before reflashing? The CPU is not overclocked except for the system's Turbo Boost which takes it to 4.0 MHz

any opinions?
 
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The Original Ralph

The Original Ralph

Distinguished
Sep 14, 2011
2,222
1
20,510
just thought i'd come back and post what i found, in case anyone researchs a similiar issue

it looks like the mobo is going bad. Did a ton of research on the web, and there's no definitive identifier, but more than a few describe the symptoms i've listed as indicators of either the mobo going bad, a controller going bad or the BIOS chip going bad, mainly sata ports disappearing, USB ports dropping out, Bios repeatedly corrupting

yesterday, after taking the orig OS drive (samsung 950 Pro, mounted on a PCIe expansion card), i moved it to another computer, did a complete 3X wipe, reformatted it, ran checkdisk on it and a couple of other utilities, all showing it healthy, i moved it back to the original computer and even the original PCIe slot it has resided in for the past 2+ years - after turning the computer on, it went straight to BIOS, not even recognizing the samsung 850 SSD with the cloned copy i'd made of the OS drive. So it took out another Sata port - i moved the cable to another port, and no luck - it would not boot or recognize the 850 SSD.

Luckily, i had made a clone of the cloned 850 SSD and connecting it to a sata port, system booted into windows. I went back into BIOS, and what was odd, neither the 950 or 850 showed up in the boot priority selection list, but scrolling down where it simply lists drives, they were both showing.

I reflashed the BIOS without the 950 installed in the expansion slot, system booted fine even recognizing the 850 SSD and booting from it as well. I shut system down, installed another samsung 960 mounted on an expansion card, that had benn residing on this mobo thruout this ordeal, it's a drive that i use as a video worktable. After installing that 960 into the OS drive's PCIe slot, it did the same thing - the 850 SSD wasn't recognized, so it would only boot straight to BIOS.

Pulled that 960 out, reflashed BIOS, and it's working on the 850 SSD - either that PCIe slot has gone, or something else in the mobo - luckily, i've got that H97 mobo as a backup board, but i may wait a bit and decide if it's worth upgrading this system.
 
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