Question Asus M5A97 LE R2.0 reboots after POST when HDD is plugged in.

[Mark Sinister]

I was working on my PC over the weekend rendering large images in DAZ3D after the render finished I saved my file and shutdown the PC. I monitored my CPU temp at about 113 degree Fahrenheit. I had just put in a new larger CPU fan. My CPU went from 130 on large renders to 113.

So after I shut down my PC for the night the next day I turned on my PC and it didn't beep but the POST screen came up with all the usually information about RAM, HDD, CPU speed etc. then when the screen changed to "What suppose to be the" the Windows 10 Logo it never does it just shows 3 blinking cursors then shuts down and restart. After the restart it doesn't beep or show POST, it just shows a Blank screen and sits there.

I thought I had a boot sector virus, because when I removed the HDD the computer will go through POST then it will go to the next part to boot and say please add a bootable device to the computer without rebooting the computer.

So I took out the HDD and added it to an external case and I scanned it for Virus on my laptop. Zero Virus found.

Then when I restarted my Laptop I forgot my external HDD drive in and my laptop booted my Desktop HDD from the USB and everything appeared on my laptop.

So I decided to plug the drive back in to my Desktop and the same thing happens again... I plugged it into other SATA ports and the same thing...

I'm officially stuck... Can anyone help please?

Mark

 

[Darkbreeze]

We monitor CPU temps in Celcius, not Fahrenheit. If you want to avoid confusion you should do the same.

Are you SURE we are talking 113°F and not 113°C? Because there is a HUGE difference.

Are you saying that the system will only boot into Windows IF you have the external hard drive connected?

 

[Mark Sinister]

Yeah it's Fahrenheit, the app has the option to choose , and yes I know that's a huge difference.

On my laptop as an external USB drive the computer will boot into windows 10 from the drive. But as soon as I add it back to any of the SATA ports on the motherboard it will go past POST make 3 blinking cursors then shutdown and reboot to a blank screen without any POST, Beep, Etc...

I have a second drive that has no OS on it just normal files when I plug that into the board the computer would boot up go pass POST then it will come to the normal screen where is say:

"Reboot and Select a proper Boot Device or Insert Boot Media in selected Boot device and press a key"

Without restarting.

I'm unsure what the problem really is? All the Drives I plug in to the computer appear on the POST screen even the OS one that's giving me problems to boot.

Trend micro rescue disk
I was thinking it was a Virus but it boots from my Laptop USB port and I scanned it for viruses on my laptop from a bootable USB antivirus stick I made. No Virus found.

The only thing I didn't mess with was the Boot Sector feature on the Bootable USB antivirus because it says it will render your drive unbootable. Which is already is...

That is the last thing I'm thinking of doing because it's bootable on my Laptop and I don't want to damage the boot sector.

Mark

 

[Darkbreeze]

I'm not sure honestly. I have a few ideas, but I'd rather bring in somebody I think might have a more substantial clue as to why it's doing that.

 

[USAFRet]

First off, 113F under load is trivial. 45C. We should all be so lucky.

For the desktop...
Was more than one drive connected when the OS was installed on this?

 

[Darkbreeze]

That was my first thought, but I'm confused over why, even if there was, it will boot when it's connected as an external drive but not when it's connected internally.

 

[Mark Sinister]

The computer has 3 SATA drives 1 has the OS with about 5 partitions the others are just large storage space.

All were working up to a day a go. Then the OS drive wouldn't boot.

The OS drive I didn't boot it from the USB from the desktop. I accidentally booted it on my Laptop after I did a USB bootable Antivirus scan.

When I scanned the drive for viruses after it didn't find anything I removed the USB stick but I forgot the change my BIOS to boot from the internal drive and it booted from the Desktop drive in the external case.

Everything on my desktop drive appeared fine on my laptop. I tried attaching it back to my mother board SATA port to try and boot it and it did the rebooting crap again. I tried different SATA ports on the board and it does the same thing.

I haven't attached it to the USB on the board to try booting it that way. I don't want do it that way because I don't want to run my computer from USB. It will most likely work...

Right now I'm doing another USB stick virus scan with a different Antivirus software. It's going to take a long while to finish.

Mark

 

[Darkbreeze]

To me, it sounds as though the boot partition for the desktop drive is borked, and when connected to the laptop it is likely using the boot manager/partition from THAT device in order to boot the C: partition from the desktop drive WHILE in the external enclosure. That is the ONLY thing I can think of that would allow it to be booted on a different machine, but not on your primary machine, unless there has been a physical failure of your motherboard or the SATA controller on your motherboard.

Have you tried connecting the drive to a DIFFERENT SATA header on the motherboard, or using a different SATA cable? It's possible one of those could have bit the dust. Happens all the time.

Try unplugging all the other SATA drives connected to the desktop, and then plug the drive in and try one of the SATA headers that the other drives were working on, or swap out the cables. Maybe even try a different SATA power cable. It's possible there could be a problem on that specific circuit of the PSU.

 

[USAFRet]

Yeah, this sounds like a corrupt boot partition, not a virus.

 

[Mark Sinister]

Ok follow up, I finished scanning my drive with a new USB stick it found some Help files in my 3D Studio Max program that it flagged as a virus on my Laptop drive and a media player application on my Desktop drive that was flagged as a virus. I delete both...

I rebooted the laptop to run off the Desktop drive through USB, it worked fine again...

I had a older computer I attached the drive to one of it's SATA ports and it went pass the POST screen and it started to load Windows 10 but it started to configure the drive to work with the hardware in this computer it Blue Screened. The computer didn't start up but it got to the Windows Logo and was preparing itself to start up, so this is much better than the desktop it came out of. But nothing like when it's connected to the the Laptop.

Now I went back to the desktop and I used a different SATA cord and Port I added an image. When I connect the drive to the ports in the image with the "1" the computer boots past POST showing all drives connected to the computer (currently the one that I'm testing, the OS drive) the computer reboots go past POST again then it comes to a DOS screen with a blinking cursor and sits there....

Now if I connect the drive to the ports in the image with the "2" the computer boots past POST showing all the drives again but this time it doesn't reboot. It goes to a DOS screen without a cursor and just sits there. No cursor just a blank black screen...

 

[USAFRet]

Given that:
You've been messing with this for several days
You have known "issues" with your install of 3DSMax (viruses don't come with the real version of that)
All this back and forth of drives and systems is not working...

There comes a time when you simply need to give up trying to "fix it", and do a full wipe and reinstall.

 

[USAFRet]

And then if THAT fails, you start down the road of hardware investigation.

 

[Mark Sinister]

There's something I need to tell you guys. When I got this board a few years ago, I couldn't use all the SATA Ports on the board. Whenever I attached 2 or more drives to the SATA ports the 3rd drive wouldn't work. This only happened on HDD larger than 500GB. But if 2 drives are connected with a CD Drive or smaller HDD the ports will work. So what I had to do was get a SATA PCI extension. I ran my computer like that for years.

The reason why I didn't mention this before is because the way the computer is acting now isn't like the way the drive acted then. What it did before was if 3 drives larger than 1TB are attached to the SATA, one of the drives wont appear in POST. Nothing like what it's doing now.

Now if you're going to ask to try to boot from the SATA PCI board. I tried I can't get the board to boot in BIOS. I never used this board to boot any drives it was just there to attach one of the 1 TB drives for storage.

 

[USAFRet]

Oh...
So the motherboard has known hardware issues.

That would have been nice to know.

 

[Mark Sinister]

Given that:
You've been messing with this for several days
You have known "issues" with your install of 3DSMax (viruses don't come with the real version of that)
All this back and forth of drives and systems is not working...

There comes a time when you simply need to give up trying to "fix it", and do a full wipe and reinstall.

That was my laptop drive the 3DS Max is on, it was a help file called "adsk.dynamichelp.chm.js" flagged as a virus

On my desktop drive Oracle Virtualbox extensionpacks and Team Mediaportal (bass.dll) was flagged as a virus

Other antivirus programs don't flag these as virus. I did add the highest heuristic possible for this last scan.

I already ordered a new motherboard. But I was trying to pinpoint the actually problem with this computer before it arrive. I didn't want to just buy a new board just for it to do the same thing it's doing on this board. But from the test I've done so far it seems the problems are looking like the board is the problem...

2 other computer go to the Windows logo and with my laptop it goes all the way to the Desktop no problem. The other computer just get blue screen because of devices trying to install.

 

[Mark Sinister]

Oh...
So the motherboard has known hardware issues.

That would have been nice to know.

Yes but different from the effects of what it is doing now.

 

[USAFRet]

2 other computer go to the Windows logo and with my laptop it goes all the way to the Desktop no problem. The other computer just get blue screen because of devices trying to install.

Switching drives and their OS between systems often fails, even on perfectly working hardware.

Now that we know there is a known bad motherboard...not sure what you're expecting to happen.
Bad hardware never gets better, only worse.

 

[Mark Sinister]

Switching drives and their OS between systems often fails, even on perfectly working hardware.

Now that we know there is a known bad motherboard...not sure what you're expecting to happen.
Bad hardware never gets better, only worse.

Yeah, from my test it seem the SATA Ports have finally given up the ghost. I order a new drive from Amazon:
https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00CX4MUCC/ref=ppx_yo_dt_b_asin_title_o00_s00?ie=UTF8&psc=1

Hopefully it won't have any problems like this one. I can't afford to buy a whole new RAM, CPU, Motherboard combo again.

Thanks for the assistance.

 

[Darkbreeze]

Which was my exact belief, and what I posted earlier, and what I said via PM with USAFRet on the side regarding this issue, because I really didn't think it could be anything other than a borked boot partition or a failing motherboard. So I think you are on the right path. And thanks to USAFRet for helping out here as well.