I'm having a very strange problem with my new PC, and I think the culprit might be the motherboard.
I built this system a month and a half ago, and until today, everything in it worked fine. I used it last night and didn't make any changes to it before shutting it down; but today, when I started it up, it seemed to hang during the POST process, displaying the GIGABYTE boot menu options screen but not responding to the keyboard. Actually, the POST didn't hang perpetually; it took about 10 minutes. During the 10-minute POST, the motherboard's debug LED goes through the first few codes quickly, but then hangs on code 64: "CPU DXE initialization is started," according to the mobo's manual. After that, it spends several minutes each on:
92: PIC Bus initialization is started
A2: Detect and install all currently connected IDE devices
and A0: IDE initialization is started
Then a Windows loading screen appears for a few seconds, after which the screen goes black and the PC really DOES hang. (It did that 2 of 3 times; the middle time, a Windows Error Recovery service ran, and tried to reset the system to an earlier restore point; but the system hung again when it restarted.)
During the 10-minute-long POST, the POST screen is showing the whole time. If I press DEL or one of the other keys listed on the screen, I can access those menus eventually. I used that fact to update the bios from F3 to F11, because a lot of forums have pointed people towards flashing their BIOSes to fix crazy hardware problems. But the problem persists.
I have tested each stick of RAM in each slot, and both GPUs in each slot; no change. I unplugged all of the SATA devices, and finally, I unplugged the CPU. Only unplugging the CPU had any effect: that made the PC loop on/off about every 5 seconds. Otherwise, with every other component unplugged, the system still hangs with the motherboard's LED reading 64.
I examined the CPU's housing for any bent pins, but didn't see any.
At this point, I can't think of anything more to try. I've scoured Internet forums, none of which report the exact thing, but many of which suggest one of two options: 1) the BIOS is simply out of date, or 2) the motherboard is malfunctioning. Since I took care of 1), I'm left with 2).
Does anybody have any different theories or solutions?
SYSTEM
GIGABYTE GA-Z77X-UD3H LGA 1155 Intel Z77 HDMI SATA 6Gb/s USB 3.0 ATX Intel Motherboard
Intel Core i5-2550K Processor 3.4 4 LGA 1155
2x EVGA GeForce GTX 560 Ti Superclocked 1024MB GDDR5 PCI-Express 2.0
Corsair Vengeance Blue 8 GB (2X4 GB) PC3-12800 1600mHz DDR3 240-Pin SDRAM
Seagate Barracuda ST2000DM001 2TB 7200 RPM SATA 6.0Gb/s 3.5" Internal Hard Drive
SanDisk Extreme SSD 120GB GB SATA 6.0 Gb-s2.5-Inch Solid State Drive
Corsair HX Professional Series 750-Watt 80 Plus Certified Power Supply
ASUS Black Blu-ray Burner SATA BW-12B1ST/BLK/G/ASG
I built this system a month and a half ago, and until today, everything in it worked fine. I used it last night and didn't make any changes to it before shutting it down; but today, when I started it up, it seemed to hang during the POST process, displaying the GIGABYTE boot menu options screen but not responding to the keyboard. Actually, the POST didn't hang perpetually; it took about 10 minutes. During the 10-minute POST, the motherboard's debug LED goes through the first few codes quickly, but then hangs on code 64: "CPU DXE initialization is started," according to the mobo's manual. After that, it spends several minutes each on:
92: PIC Bus initialization is started
A2: Detect and install all currently connected IDE devices
and A0: IDE initialization is started
Then a Windows loading screen appears for a few seconds, after which the screen goes black and the PC really DOES hang. (It did that 2 of 3 times; the middle time, a Windows Error Recovery service ran, and tried to reset the system to an earlier restore point; but the system hung again when it restarted.)
During the 10-minute-long POST, the POST screen is showing the whole time. If I press DEL or one of the other keys listed on the screen, I can access those menus eventually. I used that fact to update the bios from F3 to F11, because a lot of forums have pointed people towards flashing their BIOSes to fix crazy hardware problems. But the problem persists.
I have tested each stick of RAM in each slot, and both GPUs in each slot; no change. I unplugged all of the SATA devices, and finally, I unplugged the CPU. Only unplugging the CPU had any effect: that made the PC loop on/off about every 5 seconds. Otherwise, with every other component unplugged, the system still hangs with the motherboard's LED reading 64.
I examined the CPU's housing for any bent pins, but didn't see any.
At this point, I can't think of anything more to try. I've scoured Internet forums, none of which report the exact thing, but many of which suggest one of two options: 1) the BIOS is simply out of date, or 2) the motherboard is malfunctioning. Since I took care of 1), I'm left with 2).
Does anybody have any different theories or solutions?
SYSTEM
GIGABYTE GA-Z77X-UD3H LGA 1155 Intel Z77 HDMI SATA 6Gb/s USB 3.0 ATX Intel Motherboard
Intel Core i5-2550K Processor 3.4 4 LGA 1155
2x EVGA GeForce GTX 560 Ti Superclocked 1024MB GDDR5 PCI-Express 2.0
Corsair Vengeance Blue 8 GB (2X4 GB) PC3-12800 1600mHz DDR3 240-Pin SDRAM
Seagate Barracuda ST2000DM001 2TB 7200 RPM SATA 6.0Gb/s 3.5" Internal Hard Drive
SanDisk Extreme SSD 120GB GB SATA 6.0 Gb-s2.5-Inch Solid State Drive
Corsair HX Professional Series 750-Watt 80 Plus Certified Power Supply
ASUS Black Blu-ray Burner SATA BW-12B1ST/BLK/G/ASG
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