BIOS won't POST after Shutdown, after previously working fine

BrianRampage3

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Jan 1, 2011
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Hello,

I have an issue which has stumped me. I just built a new computer with a Core i7 950, 12GB of Corsair DDDR3 1600 RAM, and a ASUS Rampage 3 Extreme motherboard, Corsair HX1000w power supply and an H50 water cooler. I've done no overclocking as of yet, my goal was to jsut get a working stable computer before tinkering with the OC settings. My situation is odd because as of last night my setup was running and running pretty well, I had rebooted numerous times after doing Windows updates etc and everything was great, and then I shut down as I normally would, Start --> Shutdown. I was going to bed, no more updates to install. Win7 installed, all my programs updated and running, everything was fine. I had done a few reboots after the last install and update I did to make sure everything was fine on rebooting and everything was, no problems, I expected no issues and a normal working computer in the morning.

Then today I go to turn on my computer and I get stuck at the BIOS POST screen. I was like WTF? I get the following on my boot screen and then the BIOS just stops, no more anything, just frozen:

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
American Megatrends
AMIBIOS(C) 2010 American Megatrends, INC
ASUS Rampage III Extreme ACPI BIOS Revision 1102
CPU: Intel(R) Core(TM) i7 CPU 950 @ 3.07GHz Speed : 3.06 GHZ

Press F8 for BBS POPUP
Press ALT+F2 to execute ASUS EZ Flash 2
DDR3-1066MHZ
Initializing USB Controllers..Done.
12228MB OK


(C) American Megatrends, INC
65-1102-000001-00101111-092310-TYLERSBURG-A1545000-Y2KC
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

After that the screen is just stuck, I get nothing else. Everything else is working as normal, fans, cooler, PSU, All other LED's are green and the POST LED's all cycled through except "Boot Device". Like I said this is weird because everything was fine before, seems like it reset itself somehow.

The LED's on my Rampage 3 Extreme are all cleared except now the "Boot device" LED is stuck lit up. Definitely weird since it was all working smoothly when I shutdown, now I can't get it to POST BIOS.

** This may or may not having something to do with it but the audio connector was starting to pickup and then disconnect the audio cable I had connected to the stereo system. This was interesting because it only started happening last night. I wonder if the audio driver was failing and then cause something in my BIOS to fail? Either way I can't get to the BIOS at all, I can't use the DVD that came with the motherboard cause I can't even get into the BIOS to change the Boot sequence. frustrating!

I've cleared the CMOS by using the clear CMOS switch on the back of the I/O panel as well as using the Q-reset switch, I've used the Reset button I think 100 times already. and I've switched from BIOS 1 to BIOS 2 and tried all the same again and still I cannot get past the initial BIOS POST screen.

My issue seems to be the same as this guy had but no one ever answered it:
http://www.tomshardware.com/forum/286892-31-rampage-extreme-boot-problem
I'm stumped. HELP PLEASE!!

Thanks,
Brian
 

BrianRampage3

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Went down to a single DDR3 RAM stick, RAM is not the problem, it was detected fine. I feel like the issue is with the BIOS being corrupted after updating it online, somehow it did not like the update.

Nothing hardware wise has changed since it was working last night. So it's not a failed PSU, or RAM stick or SATA drive. So must've been the BIOS update, but now that it's not even able to get to the BIOS screen and I can't boot from a USB drive since it won't let me change the boot sequence what am i to do to re-set the BIOS? I have the motherboard DVD in the DVD drive but I can't access it as far as I can tell. CrashFree is not available eventhough it should be. I currently don't have a USB stick to flash the BIOS, but shouldn't the CrashFree BIOS recovery on the motherboard DVD work just the same?
 

BrianRampage3

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Jan 1, 2011
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OK so I literally can't get into my BIOS at all. I've tried every way I can think of rebooting and clearing CMOS, etc. I jsut need a way to get into the BIOS to begin with. Anyone have any good ideas as to jsut get back to the default BIOS, but doing it I' also taken the CMOS battery out and waited 5 mins and then reset it and still nothing. I went out and got a USB flash drive, and I have the newest ASUS BIOS update on there and it is formatted to FAT32, and so everything shold work, but the BIOS does not get past the splash screen with "Republic of Gamers"

I CANNOT GET INTO BIOS AT ALL!!!!!

HELP!
 

catcpp

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Feb 3, 2011
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hi, i have the same problem as yours.
Could you plz tell me if you have already solved this problem?
 

BrianRampage3

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Jan 1, 2011
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Once what happened to me happens it's a DEAD board. You need to RMA it ASAP. What happened to me was that I had removed the "removable drive" from the boot list because everything was fine, my OS was installed properly and everything was fine, but then the OS failed to load for some reason or got corrupted and so I had to re-install the OS, for some reason it would not see the CD-ROM drive so I could not boot from the disc. There was no way else to get into the bios, I was essentially "locked out" of my BIOS, the only way to get into it is a full reset my the manufacturer , in other words, the board is toast.

I just sent mine back to Amazon and within a week had a new board. Word of advice do not remove or disable the "removable drive" from the BIOS boot list. You can re-order the boot list but don't take the removable drive off the list or disable it, that will only cause big problems when/if you OS crashes. I had to re-install Win7 like 5 times for it to properly work.