Asus M4A78T-E Issue

[Dissolution187]

I am in dire need of assistance.....I do not know what to do and I cannot afford to have my computer break down right now.....

I have an Asus M4 as stated above and for some reason every single time I power down my system it will not boot up correctly. It will just sit and wait and wait....and then it will give me an error and tell me that it cannot find my HDD......

After restarting many times I decided to try some other things....I took apart my computer and replaced cables and reset the bios......I changed the port that my hdd was plugged into.......

After doing that I was able to get into the bios......then I was able to change the boot sequence and my mobo recognized my HDD!! I was pumped and I was able to get into windows.......

Then I had to turn it off again....when I turned it off the SAME thing happened again....it would not boot up and it told me that there was no HDD......So I reset the bios again and powered down the pc and tried again....

Again I was able to go into the bios and change the boot priority.....The bios was trying to boot from the floppy drive instead of the SATA 5 port......

So here I am again.....able to access my files and get on the internet....BUT I CANT POWER DOWN!!!

Anyone know what could POSSIBLY be causing this? Is my mother board going? Or is it just the cmos battery that needs replacing? Could my HDD just be failing? Has anyone heard of this issue before? Why would my bios reset every time I power down and then not recognize the HDD...

Another strange thing was after I had switched the sata cable as well as the port when I powered it on one time the motherboard was still looking for the HDD in the sata 2 port instead of the sata 5 port even though it was still in 5.....Does that shed any light?

Note that my bios drivers are up to date at this point as well....

 

[tlmck]

Sounds like the motherboard is not retaining BIOS information. It could be as simple as changing what is called the CMOS battery. It is the little silver disc about the size of a quarter. Part number on the back should be something like CR 2032 or close to it. You can get a new one of these at most drug or department stores that sell batteries. Just make sure the one you get has the same part is the same part number somewhere on the package.

 

[Dissolution187]

I am going to try that today and see what happens.

 

[Dissolution187]

I replaced the battery and it is still doing it....I am able to restart but if I power down it resets the bios back to factory and I lose my settings....Then I have to take the battery out just to get back into the bios to be able to set it so that it does not boot from floppy...

Has anyone ever heard of this? I mean what do I do? There has to be a fix....My computer still works but this doesnt make any sense....Why would powering down make it reset the bios every single time?

 

[Dissolution187]

Alright I ran thise disk self test and it said the last self test routine completed with a failure of the read element...What does that mean?

 

[tlmck]

It means your hard disk is going bad. It would be a good idea to backup all the data you want to keep on whatever size media you need. If you have only a little amount, say 4gb or less, you could burn it to a DVD. If it is a larger amount, you would need to invest in a external hard drive.

Once all your data is backed up, I would check to see if the failing hard drive is still in warranty. I recently has a 2 1/2 year old Western Digital go bad on me and it had a three year warranty. I went to the web site and filled out the form, and paid for shipping. Sent the old drive back, and within 2 weeks had a new drive just for the cost of shipping which was about $6.

 

[Dissolution187]

Yeppers you guys were correct..... My HDD crapped out unfortunately.....I bought a new one today and everything is working fine....Really appreciate your help.