New build, worked yesterday but not today (MSI H97M-E35)

[ace32229]

So I did my new build yesterday (specs below), fresh install of W8.1, installed mobo and graphics drivers etc and it worked fine for the day.

Came back to my computer today and upon powering on all it would display is a little '9C' in the bottom right corner of the display (it wouldn't even get to the BIOS splash screen). Left it like that for an hour and was still exactly the same.

So I suspect either the motherboard must be at fault, or there is an issue with the boot priority, which is difficult to confirm since I can't even get to the BIOS menu to check. Anyone experienced anything like this before? Thanks

Specs:

PCPartPicker part list / Price breakdown by merchant

CPU: Intel Core i5-4590 3.3GHz Quad-Core Processor (£144.97 @ Amazon UK)
Motherboard: MSI H97M-E35 Micro ATX LGA1150 Motherboard (£58.76 @ Scan.co.uk)
Memory: Crucial Ballistix Sport 8GB (2 x 4GB) DDR3-1600 Memory (£51.72 @ Amazon UK)
Storage: Crucial M500 120GB 2.5" Solid State Drive (£52.78 @ Misco UK)
Storage: Seagate Barracuda 1TB 3.5" 7200RPM Internal Hard Drive (£37.80 @ Aria PC)
Video Card: MSI GeForce GTX 970 4GB Twin Frozr V Video Card (£269.99 @ Aria PC)
Case: Fractal Design Arc Mini R2 MicroATX Mini Tower Case (£61.72 @ Amazon UK)
Power Supply: EVGA SuperNOVA NEX 650W 80+ Gold Certified Fully-Modular ATX Power Supply (£63.31 @ Amazon UK)
Total: £741.05
Prices include shipping, taxes, and discounts when available
Generated by PCPartPicker 2015-06-08 13:15 BST+0100

 

[Lannister in the North]

Well the 9C signifies your mobo reporting an issue;
Likely it has problems with a certain device/peripheral.
try removing a device and rebooting untill you find the culprit.

 

[smorizio]

9c is usb error. unplug all your usb but your keyboard and mouse. if there no video see if the mb fell over to the onboard port.

 

[ace32229]

Thinking about it, I was struggling to plug in the front USB 3.0 cable into the motherboard last night? Is it possible this is caused by the plug being slightly unplugged?

 

[smorizio]

may have plugged the front cables into the wrong port or missed a row of pins.

 

[ace32229]

After a fiddle with the USB cable (I assume it is now in correctly, I pushed it in as far as I could) it now reports 99 then 9C very quickly (both pass in less than half a second) then an A2 error. This is without any USBs plugged in. Does this mean one of my drives is now broken?

Correction: it shows A2 for about 20 seconds before showing BIOS splash screen, even with USBs plugged in. Looking at boor order now.

Update: After changing literally nothing in the BIOS, but saving and rebooting, it now boots ok. There are still a few seconds of firstly 92 error, which I understand to be an input device error (?), and then some more A2. This does work, but I still feel something's wrong if it's showing a few seconds of error on power up. Any advice?

 

[ace32229]

Does anyone know where there is a guide for the error codes, eg 92 and A2, I cannot find it anywhere?

 

[sora]

After a fiddle with the USB cable (I assume it is now in correctly, I pushed it in as far as I could) it now reports 99 then 9C very quickly (both pass in less than half a second) then an A2 error. This is without any USBs plugged in. Does this mean one of my drives is now broken?

Correction: it shows A2 for about 20 seconds before showing BIOS splash screen, even with USBs plugged in. Looking at boor order now.

Update: After changing literally nothing in the BIOS, but saving and rebooting, it now boots ok. There are still a few seconds of firstly 92 error, which I understand to be an input device error (?), and then some more A2. This does work, but I still feel something's wrong if it's showing a few seconds of error on power up. Any advice?

Now it boots okay? Is your performance in games and stuff okay as well?

 

[ace32229]

I guess it boots ok. I have to plug my keyboard and WiFi adapter into 2.0 ports and then I get about 10 seconds of the A2 error before it boots. Performance seems normal when the computer has booted up. Still feel like these errors are gonna come back to bite me in the arse if I don't fix them now though.

 

[Lannister in the North]

Does anyone know where there is a guide for the error codes, eg 92 and A2, I cannot find it anywhere?

Not much to find across the web, surprisingly.

99 = Super IO Initialization
9C = USB Detect
A2 = IDE Detect

The codes popping up doesn't really indicate an error though. It just indicates what the motherboard is currently doing. If the motherboard is stuck on detecting a certain component , it might indicate a problem with the defined component.

You say it waits on A2 for a while during boot, which indicates (if above codes are correct) the mobo trying to detect IDE devices.
If you aren't using any IDE devices (and that wouldn't be surprising) you may be able to turn of IDE detection in the bios somewhere to skip this timeout.

 

[smorizio]

go into the bios and reset it to factory and then see if anything changes. in the bios make sure usb handoff is on under usb and boot. go back in and check with the mb guild that your usb cables are plugged into the right ports on the mb. also check that the sata cables are in the right ports. some mb have 3 party sata cables. check that your mb bios is up to date.