Takes forever to POST & Boot (5-10 minutes) - Asus Maximus VIII Hero Alpha

[Vinsis]

Hey all,

I'm running the following system and I'm pretty sure I've got all the latest firmware and BIOS updates, but from the moment I built the computer to 3 months later it takes a ridiculous amount of time to boot up.

I went to great lengths and expense this time around to buy only high speed SSDs with the intent to not worry about boot times, but this is worse than my old HDDs by far.

Motherboard: Asus Maximus VIII Hero Alpha motherboard,
CPU: Intel i7 6700K
Video Card: Asus Rog Strix GTX 1080
Memory: G. Skill 32GB DDR4 3200 RAM
Boot drive: Samsung 950 Pro (512GB) M.2
Second drive: Samsung 850 Evo (1TB)
PSU: Corsair RSi 750W

Any thoughts on what I can do to fix this, short of RMA'ing the board and returning it?

Is there any way for me to test if I'm getting the appropriate speeds out of the drives once I'm in Windows? I think I am, so once I get into the OS I'm fine, starting from scratch though or restarting can take forever.

Thanks for the help in advance.

Abe

 

[Tradesman1]

Do you have the latest BIOS and mobo drivers?

 

[Vinsis]

I now have the latest BIOS and motherboard drivers, specifically the SATA drivers (both Intel and ASmedia).

After putting all my settings in the BIOS again it did what it usually does to boot up:
It takes a full 2:10-2:20 to go from pushing the power button until the logo shows up with the prompt to press Del or F2.

Now, usually it goes to the next Asus logo screen with the spinning dial for about 15 seconds, and then Windows shows up.

This time the screen went black after the first logo, the computer seemed to reboot, and then it took another 2:10-2:20 to the first logo. Then 15 seconds at the second logo, and then Windows showed up.

All told, ~8-10 minutes, which seems about on par for what I often experience.

One thing I've noticed is that while it's thinking about booting, the QCode is 41 (I think) which isn't listed as an option in the manual.

After sitting there for a while things move along obviously, but something weird is going on.

 

[jdlech]

I have the same motherboard, and here's what I've found.
The first boot after modifying the BIOS can take a long time. It seems to be doing a whole lot of POSTs, and perhaps even trying a whole bunch of reconfigurations before starting. This happens even if you just changed one simple timing. Just let it work itself out - within reason. All subsequent boots will be much, much faster.
The boot section of your bios has a "fast boot" option. I turn it off when tweaking my bios and turn it back on when I'm done. It does help.
A lot of times, when I push the overclocking too hard, it goes forever trying to work things out. I've even walked away and came back an hour or two later or even overnight - only to find it's still working. . I power down, restart, and revert my settings back to the previous version before continuing.
But every time my bios changes works out, it will take a bunch of time to boot up. But then all subsequent boots are far faster.

Possibility #2 - Windows.
Another possible problem could be Windows itself having a hard time booting with bad hardware drivers - Even W10 can have this problem. The only way to solve that is to make sure EVERY hardware driver is up to date and with no conflicts. I once updated my graphics card driver (NVidia 980Ti) only to find two conflicting audio drivers screwing everything up.

And as an aside... My last BIOS update did something I really didn't like. There's a place to store your BIOS settings - up to four, I believe. I started using that. But the last BIOS update erased them all. Grrrrrr. (ASUS, you pogues! What's the point in having them if you're just going to erase them right when we need them?)
So yeah... I know it's tedius, but do keep your bios settings on paper.

And as per your last question:
AI Suite III article: https://rog.asus.com/tag/ai-suite-iii/
I didn't find a download link, but I did find ROG now has something similar. http://rog.asus.com/downloads/
Bottom right corner. I wonder if that's replacing their AI Suite???

And one last thing (Sorry, I'm starting to sound like Columbo). Read your Qcodes during boot up and check your user guide. That often gives you some good insight into what's going on.

 

[Vinsis]

So far I've had conversations with Asus and G.Skill, Asus tried to tell me it was the memory's problem, that it's not compatible with their motherboard. G.Skill refuted that by saying they tested for that specific motherboard and it's compatible.

Now Asus is talking about RMA because they don't have any idea what's wrong.

I really don't want to completely disassemble my PC and reassemble it. I also really don't want to be without a computer for a month while the board ships, is looked at, and then something is shipped back to me presumably.

 

[Tradesman1]

Have you tried a fresh install of Win?

 

[Vinsis]

I haven't, but the delay isn't in the loading of windows, it's before I even can enter the BIOS. I take almost 2.5 minutes to get to where I can hit Delete to enter the BIOS, and then another 2-3 minutes looking at the Delete screen. Once it progresses to the next Asus/ROG logo with the spinning circle, things move at a seemingly normal pace from there.

 

[jdlech]

Once it booted into windows, have you tried simply rebooting without entering the bios to see how long it takes? All subsequent boots should be much faster than the first one. If not, it sounds like either a hardware comparability problem or a failed firmware update.
Have you found anything nonfunctional or missing from Windows Device Manager?
And I'm afraid that basic t-shooting involves removing everything and adding components one by one. By not doing that, you severely limit your ability to find the problem.
also,
https://www.lifewire.com/free-hard-drive-testing-programs-2626183

 

[Vinsis]

The one item that drew my attention in the Device Manager was the Intel(R) Management Engine Interface that has a "Status_Device_Power_Failure" message and it says "This device cannot start. (Code 10)"

I'm not sure what that means exactly but I'm guessing it's not good. I downloaded the latest drivers for that and tried to update it but that didn't do anything.

I don't actually enter into BIOS every time I start. I reboot and it goes through the usual steps and it takes a long time in POST and what not as I described above.

There really aren't that many components installed. I've tried it with each hard drive individually and it takes forever to boot either way. The only other item is a graphics card, and I haven't tried booting without that. The QCodes I'm getting are 15 and 41 generally while it sits and thinks about life during the boot process, which points to a memory problem.

When I have my 2 DIMMs installed in the A2 and B2 slots like the manual recommends, it gives a QCode of 55 after thinking about it a long time, which means it doesn't detect any memory. I've booted the system successfully (albeit equally slowly) with each DIMM individually by itself only in A2. I've only been able to get it to recognize both DIMMs if I have them in A1 and A2, or B1 and B2.

My suspicion is there's a problem with the DIMM slots somehow, but I don't know how to diagnose or fix that.

 

[Brutaka]

My Asus IX Hero motherboard is having the same issues. It takes a good 30 seconds to get past the BIOS boot before hitting the ROG splash screen.