Not booting, not even into BIOS. PLEASE help.

[buttersjohnson81]

Hello,

I have a custom built computer with a Asus P8H67-M Pro motherboard, Intel i7 2600K processor, 8GB Ram, 128GB Intel SSD, (And another 1TB 7200K SATA Drive, and I have Windows 7 on both of those hard drives in case one goes bad) and a NVIDIA GeForce GTX 460 2GB video card. Now you know a little more about my computer, here's my problem(s):

The following has happened three times: The computer freezes, I hard reset the computer, windows becomes corrupt, I have to boot into my other Windows partition to reinstall Windows on my other hard drive, then I restore the system from an image backup and everything works again.

Except this time, my computer has started to not recognize my SATA devices. I have a Samsung Blu-Ray drive and a normal DVD drive, both are SATA devices. Then I obviously have my two SATA drives, making 4 SATA devices in total. It won't recognize any of them. Sometimes it does, but it's really hit and miss. I restart it, go into the BIOS, and look at available devices and usually none of them are there, but sometimes there's a drive or two.

Then the worst problem I have is my computer has stopped going into the BIOS. I reset everything on the motherboard, and that helped. But that's also hit and miss. Sometimes it'll boot into the BIOS, and sometimes it won't.

I personally thought I needed a new motherboard or a new power supply. A guy at work thinks it's a SATA controller problem and that I should get a 4 port PCI sata controller and that would fix the problem. Once I get the SATA problem fixed, I intend on completely wiping everything and starting from a new Windows installation. But I need my DVD drives to work so I can boot from the Windows 7 disc. So I need to fix my SATA problem first.

Any help would be extremely appreciated.

Thanks

 

[o1die]

All I can say is whenever you reset the bios, be sure to change your sata setting back to achi, since most boards default as "native ide". If you don't need the space, use only one sata hardrive or ssd at a time; your choice. I clone my sata II drive to my ssd, then disconnect the old drive so it doesn't give me issues as you describe. If you're overclocking, I would discontinue it for better stability.

 

[buttersjohnson81]

Thank you for your time and your reply. I appreciate the help. I will look into the ACHI thing. I use two hard drives because the SSD is my windows 7 drive, and since it doesn't have a ton of space on it, I use the other one to run backups and system images. I am not overclocking.

 

[lxgoldsmith]

if you can't boot into the bios, it could be a number of things, but based on you're situation, you could either have malware(virus) or bad RAM.

Those are two likely problems, but there is still a possibility of a screwed up bios due to stated problems.

 

[buttersjohnson81]

Ok, just for hypothetical purposes, lets say it's a virus, because I also have had that idea. What part would I have to replace in order to fix it? Or could I fix that without getting a new part?

 

[o1die]

I've never seen a bios that won't recover except from a bad flash. Your screen will always stop at the post or boot into the bios whenever you reset it, so that's normal. Your board is new enough that you may want to run memtest first (if you can) then request an rma from asus. I was able to flash the bios using suite II while running windows, but that is a last resort, and could give you a dead board if it doesn't reboot properly after a bios flash. If you rma the board, give asus 24 hours to respond; simply say it doesn't post, inspect for any surface damage, and ship in an anti static bag in the original box with just the board, and keep all accessories. Then place that box in a shipping box. I've even used parcel post, but priority mail with insurance is probably the safest. Good luck.

 

[lxgoldsmith]

you could fix it if you can boot into safe mode. let's start with that

 

[buttersjohnson81]

One other thing I forgot to mention:

I bought this computer from CyberPower PC, and when they were building it (I think this was in February-ish of 2011) they called me and said Intel had recalled the chipset. They said it probably wouldn't affect my computer, and I said fine whatever just send it. I think that recall had something to do with the SATA controller. I'm pretty sure that's what the problem is now that I think about it. Thoughts?

 

[nukemaster]

The affected chipsets had problems with the SATA 6gigabit ports(grey), you should still have 4 3gigabit ports(blue) that '"should" work correctly.

 

[buttersjohnson81]

Well, when I was messing with my sata cables a while ago, I broke off one of the sata 2 ports. So now I have three Sata II's and two Sata III's. So I was forced to use the Sata III port. If I got a new PCI Sata controller with 4 ports, do you think it would at least fix my Sata problem?

 

[buttersjohnson81]

I called Asus. They said with the model number I have, they'll just give me a new motherboard for free, no questions asked. So what I'm going to do is take out the motherboard battery for 15 minutes and let the motherboard completely reset, then update the BIOS via USB because the guy said the new update solves a lot of SATA problems. At the end of all that, if I still have a problem, I'm going to get a new motherboard from Asus. That should solve the problem.

 

[buttersjohnson81]

Best answer selected by buttersjohnson81.