Asus Z87 Pro Boot Issue

[Tom Wright 438]

Hi All,

Just posting on the off-chance someone has one of these boards (or similar), I know it's quite an old model now.

I've had my Asus Z87 Pro with 4770k for a few years now, and from the outset have had intermittent problems with it, usually to do with the USB controllers.

Every few months or so I get repeated failure to boot. I press the power button, the system and fans fire up and it just sits there with nothing on the screen. I can't even access the BIOS. I know it's not the GPU as I've had three different GPUs throughout the life of this machine (currently on a GTX 1060) and it's done it with all three.

Normally, if I pull out all the USB devices that are plugged in (which is only my external HDD, my joystick and my wireless keyboard and mouse receiver), and power down and back on again it'll boot successfully, if not the first time then after 2 or 3 goes. I can then plug everything back in again and it's happy.

This doesn't happen every time, and the recurrence is seemingly random. It can go for months on end without doing it, and then suddenly as is the case more recently, it fails more times than succeeds.

The motherboard shows a code when it's in this failed state, which is usually either 98 or A2. I understand from manuals that this indicates either bad USB device or bad boot device. It's running the latest BIOS, 2103, although this is a few years old.

Anyone else had this?

Edited December 8, 2018 by Tom Wright

[nordance 4]

Had same issue last year; turned out my main hard drive (with Windows on it) was failing.

Brian

Edited December 8, 2018 by nordance
bad grammar

[Guest]

If its not the board itself. It is something plugged into the board! I have a Sabertooth Z87 and each cluster of ports has a little red LED nearby. Once you turn on take a look at the board and see if you can see a red light on. If there is it will be hard to miss. It sounds to me like it might be memory module based on your discription. If it was your HD I doubt you would have any problem booting into your bios.

If the red light by your memory port is on after you turn on the system it might be a bad memory module (if it comes on and goes off don't worry about it) or bad memory settings. Make sure you have the XMP profile set in your bios. You might have to test each memory module in the slot closest to the CPU. Good luck with it.

If you can't get to the bottom of it ASUS support is your friend.

[vc10man 732]

I have had this motherboard since 2013 paired with an i5-4670k and it has never once let me down.

[penta_a 428]

I have same model, with similar problem, disconnecting external USB drive solves the problem.

[Tom Wright 438]

Thanks for the replies.

I'm certain it's not a RAM issue. There's no red lights on the board except for the Q Code mentioned. And it's the same 16GB of RAM (2x 8GB DDR3 DIMMS) that has been installed since new. As said above once the machine is booted it's never skipped a beat. The XMP profile has always been enabled.

Similarly the boot drive (Samsung 840 Pro SSD) has always been reliable. It used to do this occasionally with the previous drive also.

The USB ports have always been dodgy. The uppermost four on the back have never worked, I believe these are the Asmedia ones. Googling this it appears it's very common with this series of board.

[Guest]

maybe it has something to so with your USB drivers. Did you originally install them from the disk that came with the board?

[cgbart 7]

Tom,

Experienced same if not similar until I found out it was my video cable...went from a display port to an HDMI (did not have a dual DVI) and have never had the problem again.

Hope this helps as it was quite frustrating as well. FYI... this was on a P68 board running an i5-2500K and an  AMD card. Now using a FTW1070.

Chris

[penta_a 428]

additional info on my case with this MB, noticed lately that time/date is always stuck on the time that my computer entered sleep mode, I had to re synchronize time/date in windows to correct the issue, replaced CMOS battery (PN=CR2032) and things look stable so far including the initial BIOS boot up issue. (I need to give a few days to confirm however).

Note: you need to backup your BIOS settings (profile) before replacing battery if you had to.

thought it might help good luck.

[Tom Wright 438]

Well I flashed the BIOS using the BIOS Flashback utility (not update, since it was already on the latest) and it seems to have stopped doing it now.

Seem to remember the exact same thing happening about a year or so ago, and the same thing cured it. Very weird.