ASUS P8Z77-V Problems during Boot

I haven't heard that anyone had a blinking cursor on the screen and they had to hit a key to get it to start during normal operations. I would say it is indicative if some sort of problem.

If there are more than 1 SATA ports made for SSDs on the motherboard, try it in a different one and see what happens.

Also, it is normal for the HDs to slow down, yes. Sometimes the fans run faster or slower and if they go pretty slow then it isn't very easy to hear them. If the computer doesn't really need them for anything, though, it could just put them to sleep until they are needed. There would be nothing wrong with that either as long as you can still access them as you desire.

The hard drive with Windows installed on it, I am guessing the SSD, will probably not shut off as long as the computer is actively operating, but for the others it shouldn't really matter.

I would only really worry about the first problem unless you have some sort of problem during operations related to the second one.

the sabertooth mb has the same bios..make sure your running the 1015 bios. under sata you want to change it to raid. in boot under hard drive boot order you have to change it to the ssd if you want it to boot from the ssd.

Ok, the news.

I finally looked into the board at boot and the boot status led is red.

Oddly if I press any key it disappears. What could it be? Incompatible drive? Configuration issue? I will try with a diferent drive just for test, but I cannot return the Intel drive...

Start disconnecting things one at a time and checking if anything changes.

It would be an easy way to rule out problems with non-essential components.

Keyboard, mouse, CD/DVD drive, extra hard drives, all the stuff like that can go.

You would be surprised at some of the weird problems that can be caused by non-essential components.

I had a computer in the past that would take 15 minutes to boot into Windows and once it got there it would work perfectly. Nothing I did could even put a dent in the problem. Turns out I found the root cause completely by accident. I got a new case and when I was moving things over I forgot to plug in the CD Drive and the computer booted into Windows in like 15 seconds. I plugged the CD drive in again and it was back to 15 min. Unplugged it again and back to 15 seconds. I got a new CD drive and trashed the old one and the 15 min problem never came back.

Nobody would have seen that coming and I never tested it because it never crossed my mind that my CD drive would make my computer take 15 min to boot up. If I would have done this method I am suggesting to you I wouldn't have lived with the problem for years and I wouldn't have just left my computer on draining power all the time as a way to avoid it.

Learn from my mistakes and test the easy simple stuff first.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9vWqA_s3adk

be carfull that you dont have a cd-rom or drive pluged into the non intel sata ports. the non intel sata ports are only for data drives..no cd-roms. i would check that you have both the efi and older bios still turned on. if the bios is set to raid you have to go into the boot screen and under hard drive boot change the boot order from the raid drives to the sd if you want that one to boot first. with the raid chipset turned on you should be getting a message at post if you want to hit control i to make a raid array. i dont know if the mb will halt if there not raid array made yet. as i posted before have you installed the 0906 and 1015 bios they fix some bugs with the asus bios.

I'm officially ticked off... I just got a replacement board and it behaves the same!!
No bios update, no bios setting changed or anything! Brand new, pluged in, data drives connected...on and the same!!
I'm very much disapointed with this model of MB... I'm actually thinking that it could be the PSU or the CPU...but it's too strange.
I even made a video... probably someone will figure this out. SOrry I'm portuguese  .

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9vWqA_s3adk&feature=plcp

I would reiterate that you should try the things I suggested on the 5th.

I have the same board. And if I remember correctly, the grey sata ports are storage ports and not actual boot ports. I have my ssd connected to the blue port and I have my scratch disk ssd connected to the grey port and when i start it says to remove media or usb (something to that effect) and I push enter and my windows loads. Move your ssd to the sata 1 port.

I stand corrected...I was thinking of e1 and e2. I should have read manual first...Do you have other drives connected to any other ports. i do though however have the same issue (it's not an issue) I wouldn't worry about...It's because you have the two HDDs on the amedia ports. Don't worry about it.

have you tried another hard drive on the same port as the raid on to see if the drive controller is bad??

Tried everything... except the obvious (not!).

Today I disassembled everything, from every fan to every dimm... and just when I was almost giving up I remembered the one thing I never tried because I knew it would give an error!!
Keyboard off... POST passed, keyboard missing error... as I expected. BUT THE DAMN THING didn't show the cursor! Clean boot to the error.

now I know... ASUS boards are incompatible with CHERRY PS2 keyboards... who knew!

Thanks guys.

A lot of times it really is the stupid things.

I wouldn't have guessed it would be the keyboard, but I suppose if I would have known it was an old PS2 keyboard I might have thought about that aspect more. My flawed assumption I guess, since most people now have USB keyboards these days.

Anyway, I am glad you are on track now.

- Edit - Typo

does it error out with the new 120x bios???

Sorry, binned the KB... can't test.