Question Did Windows kill my motherboard?

[trippity]

Mobo is the Asus Z170 Sabertooth Mark 1
This all started after a blessed Windows update:

2022-08 Security Update for Windows 10 KB5012170:

What it is: Security Update for Secure Boot DBX
"Windows devices that has Unified Extensible Firmware Interface (UEFI) based firmware can run with Secure Boot enabled. The Secure Boot Forbidden Signature Database (DBX) prevents UEFI modules from loading. This update adds modules to the DBX."

It force updated my BIOS on the next reboot, after which my computer would no longer start. Turns out it could no longer handle the default XMP profile for my RAM...so I turned that off and things seemed to be OK.
Until I started getting complete freeze ups and shut downs, no BSOD..just stop and drop, this has been going on for months now, every few days a failure.
All I can find is the following from the MEMORY.DMP and event logs:

BugCheck failures in the events
and
ntoskrnl.exe in the bucket failure from the MEMORY.DMP
Both are vague and give no conclusion.

Every time I run sfc /scannow it finds corrupted files
Every time I run chkdsk it finds corrupted sectors

I have updated drivers, ran memtest all night, ran S.M.A.R.T diag on the SSD - nothing...all is good at the component level.

Today I decided to give it a clean install to hopefully increase the mean time between failure and to my surprise the motherboard no longer gives the option to boot the Windows installer USB in UEFI mode. Despite UEFI being set in the boot options.

I'm at a loss? Either the update damaged/corrupted the BIOS or its some sophisticated malware..
Aside from scrapping the whole build not sure what else to try.

 

[Eximo]

Have you updated the BIOS on the motherboard yourself? That would be my first thing to do.

 

[kerberos_20]

thats just DBX database, that is separate from bios firmware, bios update wont replace DBX, but if your user space in uefi is corrupted, uefi update could possibly fix that

 

[trippity]

I have updated the BIOS to the latest version, still doesn't give me the options to boot the Windows installer in UEFI mode though. The only thing I can think off (and I'm stabbing in the dark here as my knowledge of UEFI/DBX is limited).
Since the USB installer is Windows 10 version 1607, maybe the Windows update rendered that incompatible with whatever updates it made to the DBX??
I'll create a new bootable media with the latest Windows release and see if that changes anything (will report back).

Through further digging I did find that running 3600MHz RAM on an XMP profile was subject to the following caveat:
*When running XMP at DDR4 3200 MHz or higher, the system’s stability depends on the CPU’s capabilities.

I have switched back to my old RAM @ 2400MHz - Hopefully that is the end of the BSODs on that front..

@kerberos_20 When you say a 'uefi update' I assume you mean a BIOS(UEFI) update?

 

[kerberos_20]

disable secure boot if you think its DBX certificate related, btw CSM is disabled, right?

how was your usb install media made?

you could probably boot it manualy from uefi shell (command line similar to unix), bios boot override options should have uefi shell selection, on some bioses you will need to download it first from github then launch shell from bios, from there you can manualy run windows installer