Hi All,
I'm new to this forum so please bear with me. I've seen similar question to mine posted here, however, none of the suggested solutions have worked.
My build is as follows:
Mobo: Asus P8Z68 Deluxe Gen 3
Intel Core i7 Chip set 2600K 3.4 GHZ 8MB
RAM: CORSAIR Vengeance 16GB
Graphics Card NVIDIA Quadro 600
Corsair H80 Cooling Kit
CORSAIR Enthusiast Series TX750 PSU
Western Digital Black SATA 2 TB HD w/64 MB and 6.0 HDD
Operating System: Windows 7 Pro 64 bit
My system build went smoothly and the computer has been performing flawlessly for 3 months so I know there is nothing wrong with any of the components or anything with the way I put it together. If flat out worked and worked great.
However, as I wanted optimal performance for doing pro audio as well as video I had planned from the beginning to overclock my machine. That's the whole reason I selected the components that I did when planning the build.
Rather than doing it manually, though, I used the Asus software utility that automatically overclocks the machine for you (one would assume within safe limits). After using that, however, a strange thing began happening. The utility would say that the overclocking had been successful, and claimed to have boosted the speed to around 4.6 GHZ -- not spectacular compared to what a lot of people claim to achieve on this forum, but a respectable boost of around 38% nevertheless and I was satisfied with that. I wanted performance and stability and didn't want to wear out my components prematurely by going too far with the overclocking. Anyway, the problem was, the overclocking that the utility claimed was happening was not verifiable using CPUID or any of the other utilities that measure it. And, n fact, in benchmark speed tests, my computer actually did worse than before I ran the Asus utility. From all appearances it seems that the overclocking wasn't taking effect. The clock speed reading would disappear and revert back to approximately stock speed immediately afterwards.
So, during my research in trying to get to the bottom of that, someone suggested that I might need to update my BIOS. I checked on the ASUS website and, sure enough, a new version of the BIOS for my mobo was just released in mid February.
I downloaded it, read the instructions and warnings concerning how to install it and decided to again use the ASUS utility designed to update the BIOS for you. The utility said the install was successful and my machine began to reboot. Everything looked like it was going well except that when it got to the BIOS screen, it would fail to boot and then would just restart the machine, doing that over and over a couple of times until the machine just stays on while showing a totally blank, dark screen.
There are two LEDs that light and stay on inside the box while it attempts to boot. One, is the "Boot Device" LED and the other is the "DRAM" LED. Additionally, the error code eventually settles on 55 which, according to the manual, means "memory not installed" (I'll get back to that in a minute).
Now, before everyone tells me to remove the CMOS battery and either move the jumper to the alternate set of pins for 15 seconds, or press the "Clear CMOS" button on the rear panel, let me assure you I've done that. Or, more accurately, maybe I should say that I've tried to do that. If anyone out there actually owns one of these boards, you'll quickly find that the "jumpers" that they refer to in the manual don't exist on this board (and btw, neither does the page they refer you to from that page in the manual itself). Complicating matters is that, though the back panel does indeed have a tiny, pin-hole, in the back, around which the words "CLR CMOS" are written, there IS NO BUTTON there. I've seen the button depicted in the diagram on the ASUS website and I assure you mine does not have one. I'm not sure if you're supposed to stick the end of a paper clip or whatever through that little hole but there is no button. However, as all the advice relating to this problem seemed dependent upon clearing the CMOS, I knew it must be important to try to somehow make that happen. So, I removed my cooling unit (a huge pain, as well as my graphics card and could get enough access to that part of the mobo to see that it did appear to have some type of pressable switch on the inside. So, I removed the CMOS battery, pressed the "CLR CMOS" switch from the inside of my case" and tried to boot up again. Still, it would not boot.
I also tried removing two sticks of memory, as well as disconnecting my internal hard drive and seeing if it would go into the BIOS but nothing worked.
I get the same problem: it restarts, begins to go through the boot sequence but when it reaches the screen that shows the ASUS logo with the instructions to press the delete key to get into the BIOS ... you can press that key all day but nothing will happen.
So, please, is there anyone out there who has any idea of what the problem might be? Again, let me repeat that there wasn't a thing wrong with this machine before I tried to update the BIOS so it's highly unlikely that a key component failed just at that particular time. I'm puzzled why it seems to think there's no memory installed though. And, yes, I went back over everything and made doubly sure everything is set firmly in its socket.
Please help if you can and suggest other things I might try.
Thanks in advance.
I'm new to this forum so please bear with me. I've seen similar question to mine posted here, however, none of the suggested solutions have worked.
My build is as follows:
Mobo: Asus P8Z68 Deluxe Gen 3
Intel Core i7 Chip set 2600K 3.4 GHZ 8MB
RAM: CORSAIR Vengeance 16GB
Graphics Card NVIDIA Quadro 600
Corsair H80 Cooling Kit
CORSAIR Enthusiast Series TX750 PSU
Western Digital Black SATA 2 TB HD w/64 MB and 6.0 HDD
Operating System: Windows 7 Pro 64 bit
My system build went smoothly and the computer has been performing flawlessly for 3 months so I know there is nothing wrong with any of the components or anything with the way I put it together. If flat out worked and worked great.
However, as I wanted optimal performance for doing pro audio as well as video I had planned from the beginning to overclock my machine. That's the whole reason I selected the components that I did when planning the build.
Rather than doing it manually, though, I used the Asus software utility that automatically overclocks the machine for you (one would assume within safe limits). After using that, however, a strange thing began happening. The utility would say that the overclocking had been successful, and claimed to have boosted the speed to around 4.6 GHZ -- not spectacular compared to what a lot of people claim to achieve on this forum, but a respectable boost of around 38% nevertheless and I was satisfied with that. I wanted performance and stability and didn't want to wear out my components prematurely by going too far with the overclocking. Anyway, the problem was, the overclocking that the utility claimed was happening was not verifiable using CPUID or any of the other utilities that measure it. And, n fact, in benchmark speed tests, my computer actually did worse than before I ran the Asus utility. From all appearances it seems that the overclocking wasn't taking effect. The clock speed reading would disappear and revert back to approximately stock speed immediately afterwards.
So, during my research in trying to get to the bottom of that, someone suggested that I might need to update my BIOS. I checked on the ASUS website and, sure enough, a new version of the BIOS for my mobo was just released in mid February.
I downloaded it, read the instructions and warnings concerning how to install it and decided to again use the ASUS utility designed to update the BIOS for you. The utility said the install was successful and my machine began to reboot. Everything looked like it was going well except that when it got to the BIOS screen, it would fail to boot and then would just restart the machine, doing that over and over a couple of times until the machine just stays on while showing a totally blank, dark screen.
There are two LEDs that light and stay on inside the box while it attempts to boot. One, is the "Boot Device" LED and the other is the "DRAM" LED. Additionally, the error code eventually settles on 55 which, according to the manual, means "memory not installed" (I'll get back to that in a minute).
Now, before everyone tells me to remove the CMOS battery and either move the jumper to the alternate set of pins for 15 seconds, or press the "Clear CMOS" button on the rear panel, let me assure you I've done that. Or, more accurately, maybe I should say that I've tried to do that. If anyone out there actually owns one of these boards, you'll quickly find that the "jumpers" that they refer to in the manual don't exist on this board (and btw, neither does the page they refer you to from that page in the manual itself). Complicating matters is that, though the back panel does indeed have a tiny, pin-hole, in the back, around which the words "CLR CMOS" are written, there IS NO BUTTON there. I've seen the button depicted in the diagram on the ASUS website and I assure you mine does not have one. I'm not sure if you're supposed to stick the end of a paper clip or whatever through that little hole but there is no button. However, as all the advice relating to this problem seemed dependent upon clearing the CMOS, I knew it must be important to try to somehow make that happen. So, I removed my cooling unit (a huge pain, as well as my graphics card and could get enough access to that part of the mobo to see that it did appear to have some type of pressable switch on the inside. So, I removed the CMOS battery, pressed the "CLR CMOS" switch from the inside of my case" and tried to boot up again. Still, it would not boot.
I also tried removing two sticks of memory, as well as disconnecting my internal hard drive and seeing if it would go into the BIOS but nothing worked.
I get the same problem: it restarts, begins to go through the boot sequence but when it reaches the screen that shows the ASUS logo with the instructions to press the delete key to get into the BIOS ... you can press that key all day but nothing will happen.
So, please, is there anyone out there who has any idea of what the problem might be? Again, let me repeat that there wasn't a thing wrong with this machine before I tried to update the BIOS so it's highly unlikely that a key component failed just at that particular time. I'm puzzled why it seems to think there's no memory installed though. And, yes, I went back over everything and made doubly sure everything is set firmly in its socket.
Please help if you can and suggest other things I might try.
Thanks in advance.