Asus P8P67 Pro can't enter BIOS, garbled screen instead

[franksta]

Hi everyone,
After 5 years of flogging my AMD X2 4400+ I bought a new Intel 1155 setup and put it together today.

I can't get it to enter the BIOS. It shows a screen of "press DEL to enter BIOS" then goes to a Marvell checking screen. After that my display goes to garbage. If I press DEL or any other key when the display is borked it reboots and the same thing happens. Even if I don't press any keys it goes to the same thing.

Specs:
Asus P8P67 Pro
i5 2500k
Radeon 6850
16GB Corsair DDR3

I tried different monitors, my old video card, a different keyboard, a couple of iterations of different memory setups all with the same result.

Any help would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks,
franksta

Update:
I disconnected my hard disks and SSD leaving only my DVD drive connected and was able to enter the BIOS. I put the DVD on one of the Marvell ports and my other drives were on the Intel ones. There was a note with the manual stating something about AHCI being enabled by default. I don't know if that would have effect here but disconnecting drives from the intel controller allowed me to enter the BIOS. Hopefully I'll be able to put the other drives back in the system.

 

[Nintendesert]

Best way to do it, disconnect and remove components and get it up and working. Then add one item back at a time until you find the one causing the problems.

I think AHCI has more to do with windows than getting into the BIOS, only had problems with windows BSOD if AHCI/IDE was incorrectly set.

 

[franksta]

It seems it's just one of my hard disks not wanting to work and when it's connected the system doesn't know what to do. All the others seem to be OK.

 

[Haunty]

It seems it's just one of my hard disks not wanting to work and when it's connected the system doesn't know what to do. All the others seem to be OK.

I have the exact same problem. What SSD do you have? Mine is Crucial RealSSD C300 128GB (CTFDDAC128MAG).

It turns out that, if one of the other HDD drives is re-volumed and re-formatted, it will no longer boot with that HDD attached. I tried 3 different HDDs, and all had the same issue, unless they were blank with no formatted volumes on them.
No workaround that I could find yet.

 

[Haunty]

This worked for me, but it is not a permanent workaround.

Leave extra HDD(s) unplugged from the motherboard
Enable hot plug in the BIOS: Advanced - SATA Configuration, for the SATA ports you're using for extra HDDs.
Once booted into windows, plug in the HDD(s).
Has to be done at every reboot.

I did this in BIOS version 1253
Windows 7

 

[bankster55]

hmmm
lots of interesting probs - I luv new mobo rollouts heh

@franksta
The first thing that stands out is you have four 4GB sticks in
Correct?
At the very least youre gonna have to stick in some cheapo 1 or 2gB DDR3 single stick in A2 blue slot as first test

BTW you guys are not alone - 1253 is wrecking lots of SSD with non SSD drive configs

Haunty's prob seems slightly dif
I'm wondering if 1253 doesnt like HDD with dif offsets from prior partitioning ops. One HDD may have a 32K XP offset one a 1024K Win 7 offset and the SSDs a special 2048K offset

The easiest way to see is in diskpart from CMD prompt either from DVD or in Windows. So if you want to humor me you can type the following at cmd prompt

diskpart
lis dis
sel dis 0
lis par
sel dis 1
lis par
sel dis 2
lis par
--------------------
Hit Enter after each and "0" is number not letter
list partition command gives offset
Any drive not showing can be done with the Win 7 DVD cmd prmt

I would be really curious whats going on in your drives parttioning
Theres something fishy going on here with 1253 and SSD

 

[Haunty]

Here's mine, disk 0 is my system drive, and 1 is the HDD with no system on it:

One thing I noticed before, when I booted with an empty HDD with no volume on it, the system SSD became Disk 1 and the HDD was Disk 0. Not sure if that means anything.
When I plug in the HDD after Windows boots up, it is Disk 1.

 

[kittysox]

and this is mine

 

[bankster55]

both you guys are fine should be 2048K on SSD, but no deal breaker
There is something going on with the SSD firmware and the 1253 bios
May be seeing it as GPT on SATA 3 6gb ports
To prove this all you have to do is take out SSD and throw O/S on a non SSD drive and put two regular HDD on SATA 2 or two regulars on SATA 3, or one on ea.

remember a bios flash may change your settings and you might not realize it
you have to go thru ea setting with a fine tooth comb
a cmos reset with PSU unplugged for a few minutes never hurt anything either
alternately you could take the battery out for a few min - dont know if pro has jumpers or button

tho at this point I'm thinking avoid 1253
use the crashfree bios utility to roll back

might want to check boot order
I guess you guys know the Marvel are data only - no O/S

Somebody's going to have to try the no SSD thing, or we cant go any further

 

[Haunty]

I may try the no SSD thing when I have some time.

I updated my BIOS because of this problem, so I had the same problem on 3 different BIOS versions. My problem started after I re-volumed my HDD after I installed Windows. Before I installed Windows, I had both the SSD and HDD attached. The HDD was my previous system disk on my old computer and I was copying files off of it, then deleted volumes and recreated volume in Disk Management to use as my data disk.

 

[franksta]

I have the exact same problem. What SSD do you have? Mine is Crucial RealSSD C300 128GB (CTFDDAC128MAG).

It turns out that, if one of the other HDD drives is re-volumed and re-formatted, it will no longer boot with that HDD attached. I tried 3 different HDDs, and all had the same issue, unless they were blank with no formatted volumes on them.
No workaround that I could find yet.

I have the exact same SSD. I also have a 74GB Raptor and a 300GB Caviar Blue. The 300GB Caviar was the one causing the problems. However I think the problem may have been a shorted drive or motherboard somehow.

I borrowed an external enclosure which converts the SATA to USB. Even with it connected like that it wouldn't let me get to the BIOS. However if I booted Windows and then connected the USB it worked just fine. So I figured it was shorting somehow. I removed the drive from my case and had it sitting on the desk and it booted up without any problems. I also changed the "On Board Devices" or however the wording is in the BIOS.

In the Marvell SATA controller I disabled the PROM. I think the mode is currently set to AHCI but I tried IDE and that worked as well. I have not tried the 300GB Caviar on the Intel controller but my other drives are working on it without any problems.

 

[Haunty]

When did you attach each of your HDDs, prior to installing Windows or after?

Which sata ports are your SSD and HDDs plugged into?

I have an external enclosure like that too, and I also can't boot with that attached, not sure what that is.

Anyway, I submitted a problem report to ASUS.

 

[bankster55]

yeah, your post is very hard to get a handle on
did you put SSD on marvel?
precisely what ports were the 3 drives on before and after external?
As i said above, cant have O/S on marvel

@haunty
when you hook up multiple drives, esp from other systems and only format, the mbr and its copy dont go away, the partition table and the MFT change.

Another thing that can change is the Large LBA CHS setting for ea dr from the old bios geometry to this one.

Now this is another operation that may be too much hassle for you, but going by what you said, I would run killdisk freeware 7.1MB burned and booted to iso. This is a zero fill utility. If you just run it on the first few GB of ea HDD you will permanently erase all MBR/Part table MFT data and geometry, You highlight ea drive (80h 81h 82h) and go. And as you start fresh with Win 7 install and then add one drive at a time, everything will be in perfect order. But dont use 3rd party partitioners. Only Win 7 install and diskmanager

 

[Haunty]

I might just start over this weekend.
Does it make any sense to killdisk the SSD before reinstalling Windows on it?

 

[bankster55]

well, yes, I always killdisk prep a new install
first few gigs is all thats needed
there is always the copy of the MBR, thats how recovery sw do their thing when not in raw mode.

You might be able to give me some info here

I have no SSD, they run too hot and arent very durable, so I cant trust them.
However with the new 550MB/s drives coming out in two months I wont have any choice - I will have to buy. So I have often wondered what the hell geometry would be avail if any for these drives.
They have no sectors and no BIOS geometry - CYL HEAD SECTORS, just flash chip addresses

You could download the killdisk for Windows suite install - free vers that can do no erasing
http://www.killdisk.com/downloadfree.htm
and install and run the app - it will pick up all drives
240 heads means LARGE
255 heads means LBA
CHS is totally dif - usually not seen
You get the heads readout when you select WHOLE drive
I would love to see the SSD geometry if any

When i see someones killdisk readouts I can really tell whats going on

 

[Haunty]

Here's the readout on mine:

 

[bankster55]

Interesting - SSD are made LBA mode.geometry, but have no heads cylinders or sectors, only flash chip addresses like RAM. Must be emulated by HDD logic chip
Thnx for shot

Anyway, I know what the prob is now
I need someone to stay with me from a certain time point and do what i say
I am not going to wait an hour between answers and make this a whole day project
I can solve the "cant load Win 7 on SSD SATA Intel 6GBs" prob
You must have Win 7 X64 install disk, pro or Ult
Game?

 

[Haunty]

Interesting - SSD are made LBA mode.geometry, but have no heads cylinders or sectors, only flash chip addresses like RAM. Must be emulated by HDD logic chip
Thnx for shot

Anyway, I know what the prob is now
I need someone to stay with me from a certain time point and do what i say
I am not going to wait an hour between answers and make this a whole day project
I can solve the "cant load Win 7 on SSD SATA Intel 6GBs" prob
You must have Win 7 X64 install disk, pro or Ult
Game?

Can you summarize your theory?

I was thinking of putting the SSD on one of the 3Gb ports, with no other drives attached except for the optical drive on another 3Gb port (or maybe not even that and use a flash drive to install windows). Then install Windows with SP1 slipstreamed. Then install all drivers, then attach killdisked HDD to 3Gb sata, and format it in Disk Management. If it boots, then try moving SSD to 6Gb sata.

 

[bankster55]

Edit:
My theory was that certain SSD on Intel SATA 6GBs were being detected as EFI partitioned drives from an SSD controller chip misread. If the EFI bios detects EFI ready drive, it will not allow MSDOS MBR install.
The solution was to click on the little square GPT box during Win 7 custom install after killdisking the drive, and just let it instal as GPT EFI

However two of the posters on this forum have today solved their probs by doing other things. So I am now leaning towards flawed user config.
Shame i dont have a SSD

 

[Haunty]

I tried something today, with some strange results.

Disconnected SSD.
Plugged in blank HDD with no volumes.
Installed Windows on HDD
Boots fine, no problems.

Connected SSD
Boots fine to HDD, no problems.
Change boot priority to SSD.
Boots, HDD visible, no problems.

Delete volumes on HDD, killdisk first 10% of drive
Reformat with default allocation unit size
Boots, no problems.

Delete volume on HDD again, reformat with 512 allocation unit size
Can't reboot, same original problem described in first post.
Detach HDD, boot, attach HDD, reformat HDD with default allocation unit size
Boots with no problems.

The allocation unit size of 512 may have been the cause of my original problem because I think that is what I selected. I'm going to try reformatting that drive with the default size and see what happens.

When I couldn't boot, I also tried disconnecting the SSD, so the HDD was the only drive attached, and it still did the same garbled screen thing. So there must be something strange going on related to the allocation unit size.