Help me troubleshoot a P8z68v boot problem please

[speedlever]

I built a nice rig for a friend a couple of years ago:
Asus P8z68V mobo (BIOS 0902 - old now)
Core i5-2400
CM Hyper 212 plus cooler - dual fans
16 Gb PC3-10666 GSkill Ripjaws ram
Corsair Carbide 400R case and 3 case fans
Corsair HX650 PSU
Crucial M4 64Gb SSD (cache drive, setup in RAID)
Hitachi 1Tb 7200 rpm spinner (accelerated drive) (C:\ drive)
Samsung 1Tb backup drive (D:\ drive)
Seagate 320Gb drive (old drive from another PC with an XP install) (E:\ drive)
Media reader
DVD burner
Windows 7 HP

I set up the 64Gb SSD and Hitachi 1 TB spinner in BIOS as RAID and used IRST (Intel Rapid Storage Technology) in enhanced mode and this thing ran like greased lightning. Then some of the grandkids got on it and Lord knows what they did. It started running slow... taking 10 minutes or so to boot up. Before this, it rivaled or beat my Intel SSD main drive for boot up speeds.

I've gone through it and cleaned up a bunch of junk. Tonight I thought I scored a big win as I found the SSD cache drive was dissociated. I went through the process (as I understand it) to re-associate the cache drive and now it says it's enabled, but the PC won't boot unless I hijack the boot routine, enter the BIOS, and choose the Hitachi drive from Boot override in the Boot tab.

Looking at boot options, the Hitachi (main drive) doesn't show... just the DVD drive and an old SATA data drive. Neither the Hitachi (C:\) or the Samsung (D:\) drives show in Boot options.

I have no idea what changed or caused this. Once I go through the work-around and boot the right drive, it runs like greased lightning again. But if the friend has to reboot for any reason, I'll have to walk them though the work-around process.

Any ideas what might cause this and how I can fix it?

PS: I found that the IRST service was not running, so I went into services and changed it from automatic (delayed) to automatic and started the IRST service. But that shouldn't affect the BIOS' ability to see the c: and d: drives.

 

[Krispy Kritter]

Have you tried setting the BIOS back to default, rebooting, and then reconfiguring the BIOS to suit your needs?

 

[speedlever]

No, I haven't tried that yet.

Is there any risk of data loss doing this? I'm not that familiar with RAID so I'm not exactly sure what the risks are of resetting to AHCI mode are. Then resetting back to RAID so as to enable the SSD cache drive.

 

[Dangman]

No, I haven't tried that yet.

Is there any risk of data loss doing this? I'm not that familiar with RAID so I'm not exactly sure what the risks are of resetting to AHCI mode are. Then resetting back to RAID so as to enable the SSD cache drive.

Very little risk.

With that said, since you have a Crucial SSD, update the firmware for it as the issue you're having sounds kinda similar to a Crucial SSD bug that's been fixed with the latest firmware.

 

[speedlever]

Hadn't heard about that. Definitely worth looking into.

But I don't think that would explain why the BIOS is not giving the option of C:\ or D:\ as a boot drive. Unless that's a function of the RAID setting in BIOS (needed to run the SSD as a cache drive in IRST).

Admittedly, this build is 2 years in the past and I've forgotten the details of how and why I set it up that way, although at the time, I knew what I was doing. Or thought I did.

Right now, just booting from scratch it brings up the option to boot into the recovery console (where it fails) or boot into XP (on the old E:\ drive) which also fails. So I have to go into BIOS and choose Boot over-ride to get to the Hitachi (c:\) drive to boot into Win7. Strange.

For clarity, the F:\ was the old C:\ from an earlier computer and was the XP boot drive in that setup... but it also has data on it from the old PC. I can remove it without causing an issue for the user, but have been lazy about doing that.

 

[speedlever]

I updated the firmware on the SSD from 0009 to 070H, but no change.

I'm starting to think this is going to required a format and reinstall of Win7. Might as well update the BIOS while I'm at it. I have no idea what has become scrambled. It really went unstable after I reassociated the cache drive with IRST.