System won't boot after changing any setting in BIOS

C

CarpCharacin

Limp Gawd
Joined
Nov 8, 2016
Messages
135
I had a thread about this a while back, and I still haven't been able to fix the problem. I have an ASRock Fatal1ty X99M killer 3.1 motherboard in my computer, and when I tried to set the fans to silent, it wouldn't boot after I saved it the settings. It has gotten worse to the point where if I try to change any board setting and save it, it won't boot and I have to clear the CMOS. I have talked to ASRock support, and they haven't helped much. They offered to send me a replacement board, but I'd like to avoid having to do that because it would be a pain to swap out the board, and I would have to send the old board in, and I need my computer. Any ideas on how I can fix it?
 
It sounds like the board is going bad, so I think a replacement is your only option. You could buy a cheap board to swap in while waiting on the replacement, but that's really your only option if they don't cross ship.
 
If the issue is only in changing BIOS settings, you MAY be able to reflash the BIOS and see if that fixes things for you. Of course, with a BIOS that's not behaving properly to begin with, flashing the BIOS is even more risky than usual, so proceed with caution and be prepared to have to swap the board anyway. I presume that since you've already talked to their support people that you already have the latest BIOS for the board. I'm unsure of whether ASRock boards allow you to reflash your current BIOS version or not, so it may or may not actually be an option.

Short of that fixing it, Fix Me is correct - Something has gone wrong on the board itself and an RMA is likely required.
 
I tried reflashing the bios a while back, and that didn't work. I'm going to get a new laptop in a few weeks, and then I'll send in the board and get a replacement.
 
Reseat everything connected/attached to the MoBo (RAM, CPU, even cables and headers such as those going to HDD/ODD, USB/Front Panel, and fans), then reset the CMOS, reflash the BIOS, and finally try applying your custom BIOS settings.
 
ryan_975 said:
Have you checked the battery? If it's starting to go flat it could be not keeping the settings you're changing in a valid state.
Click to expand...
I'll check the battery tomorrow, what kind of battery does it use? I'll have to take out the graphics card to get to the battery. I still haven't sent it in for an RMA since taking everything apart is a pain, but I'm still planning to.
 
CarpCharacin said:
I'll check the battery tomorrow, what kind of battery does it use? I'll have to take out the graphics card to get to the battery. I still haven't sent it in for an RMA since taking everything apart is a pain, but I'm still planning to.
Click to expand...
Most use CR2032 button battery.
Pretty cheap to buy Panasonic on Amazon.
 
I'd see if you can get ASROCK to send you the replacement first then send in the old one...somethings wonky and it's not worth the PITA figuring out if you can just replace it
 
Wait, I had a similar problem with my MSI 990fx. I basically tried to reset it by removing the battery. Battery solution didn't work, tried a hard Cmos jumper pin. It turned out I messed up the UFEI somehow. I had to reset everything manually to default in bios while unplugging hard drives. Thought my board was bricked, viola started working like it is supposed to do. Check to see if your UFEI is corrupt somehow?
 
Just an update on this, I never ended up swapping the board, as I need my computer, and now swapping the board is no longer an option. I just recently tried troubleshooting again, and the board has a switch to select between two BIOSes, so I switched it, and I was able to set the ram speed to 3200mhz, temporarily. The second bios was outdated, so I attempted to update it, but I couldn't get it updated, and then I tried to alter the fan settings, and then the system stopped booting again, so I had to reset the BIOS settings. Then I tried to set it to 3200mhz again, with that being the only alteration to the settings, and it didn't boot, so I ended up switching back to the other BIOS. I wish I could get it to work properly. I also tried swapping the battery a while back.
 
CarpCharacin thanks for this. I've followed your other post and then this one as I'm having the same issue. It's happened out of the blue and I also tried swapping the battery (CR2032) to no avail.

Oddly, I hadn't changed my settings through UEFI since my boot years ago. When I used it for the first time (since Feb 2019), there were a lot of Windows 10Pro updates and GPU driver updates. ASRock App wouldn't even work and I attempted up update the Bios through the software from 1.4(?) to the current (4.x). It wouldn't let me and said it had to download any manually flash -- odd. As part of the Windows updates there may or may not have been an ACPI driver update -- I'm not exactly sure.

It can be started up (eventually):
  • cannot use the A/B bios switch
  • the case power switch will not work once it shuts down
  • the only way to get the case power switch to work again is to:
    1. turn off power supply
    2. pull out power code from case (it's being fed from UPS)
    3. pop out CMOS battery
    4. hold down case power button for 10-15 seconds
    5. re-add power in reverse order (put CMOS battery back in, plug in power cord, turn on PSU switch)
    6. power on via case button

Updates?
At one point I went into UEFI and reset to defaults. When I save, it says "restarting" and the whole case powers off. Case power does not restart it. There is no odd beeping from the case or anything it's unresponsive. Sometimes the A/B bios LED is lit on the motherboard, but otherwise it will never go back on unless I do all the steps above. The only thing I kind of recall is there have been a few times the UPS has had to kick in due to storms recently, but the computer has been off (again, unused since Feb 2019 and limited before that).

One Success
I have to stress, at some point I stopped trying to boot into UEFI and the computer did boot into Windows and stayed stable for a 2-3 hours of using it until it needed to restart, which it didn't. At one point I even used the OC Tweak (and got the CPU to 4.3); timings looked good, the motherboard and CPU were not overheating -- I don't know what to think.

This sounds like it could be a PSU issue, but it seems other users had this problem, so I'm guessing it's more motherboard related. The thing is, I don't want to take everything apart to find out. The case is tight, especially with the water cooling and I did a pretty good job about keeping wires hidden. The GPU barely fit in the case and takes up all the room. I suppose I could take a picture, but just thinking about taking everything apart at this stage is daunting. The parts were pretty good a few years ago when I first built it, but now I'm at the point that I almost rather buy new than take this apart to play with this.
 
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