Solved! Has anyone seen this?

[Roy Batty]

So, my B550 Asrock mobo had been doing just fine running Win 11 and friends, when suddenly it would not boot, but rather sit there with the Asock logo and the message for booting into the BIOS or alternate disk/device. At first it took perhaps a minute to finally start Windows and then all was well. As time went on, it took longer and longer (up top 10 min.); I'd come back and find Windows running. Finally, no love at all. It just sat there ruminating. Out of frustration, I tried a new mobo with a single memory stick, etc. and all was good, so I figured the original board was borked. Still, just for s*its and giggles, I put the original back in with only the boot drive and one stick, and (you guessed it), it started right up. "A-Ha!" I said. So, I began adding RAM and connecting the other drives until it quit again. Anyone want to guess what it turned out to be? Stop reading and take your best shot. BTW, I searched the ENTIRE interwebs, Asrock forums, etc. and found more possible causes than you can imagine. Answer below.





An older SSD connected to one of the SATA3 ports. Didn't matter which port in the end, so I assume it was the drive. So I guess my question is (you knew there was one here, somewhere, right?) has anyone had a drive connected that caused the board to hang like that? I can see why it would choke on an errant drive, but why no message or some clue as to why? TIA for any feedback you all can offer.

 

[In2Photos]

I feel like this is a pretty common thing that could happen. Drives are typically checked during the boot process. Older motherboards would show you the results during post as the devices get checked. I have a circa 2009 X58 still sitting here that does this very thing. It checks all USB and SATA devices and reports their tests on the screen. Newer boards may have a setting to turn something like that on, but usually you just have to go by some debug LEDs unless you have a board with a LED code readout.

Often when a PC is starting to have trouble we advocate that the person doing the troubleshooting gets down to the bare minimum (CPU, 1 stick RAM, no drives if possible, no fans, USB devices, EPS and 24 pin only, plus GPU if there is no iGPU) to see if it posts. From there you start adding in components one at a time until the problem shows back up.

Good for you sticking to it and figuring it out! Hopefully you were able to return any extra parts you had to buy. If not, you got some spares if something does happen.

 

[kschendel]

Yes, I've seen this sort of thing before. If you have the right kind of failure at the device end, it can hang the controller, and if the POST doesn't have appropriate hung-device timeouts, you get long boots or no boots at all. The person writing that part of the BIOS code either figured a message wouldn't be useful to most people, or couldn't figure out how to produce a message, or error handling got dropped because of BIOS ROM space issues, or (s)he was just lazy, or .... etc.

You used the correct procedure to diagnose the problem.

 

[Shmee]

Yeah I have seen this happen before as well. Bad drives can definitely slow down systems and even prevent booting, even if they are not system drives.

 

[Roy Batty]

Thanks for the replies. I'm not sure why it didn't occur to me that it might have been a drive, but that's likely because I had yet to have a drive go bad on me, this being the first in a long list of home-built computers. I got my first PC in 1990 (Intel 286, 512K RAM, 40MB Miniscribe HD, EGA card (16 colors!!)) This episode has been filed away with the others that have accumulated over the decades (mobo shorts, faulty cables, and on) and I may never upgrade again, but I see these forums (fora?) as a reliable place to get info and offer help. I don't mind troubleshooting hardware, so long as I feel I have a shot at figuring out the problem. Keep up the good work, folks.

 

[BoomerD]

Yeah I have seen this happen before as well. Bad drives can definitely slow down systems and even prevent booting, even if they are not system drives.

I have a HDD spinner that got bumped while I was moving data from it when I built my new PC last year. Completely stops everything.

 

[igor_kavinski]

I can see why it would choke on an errant drive, but why no message or some clue as to why? TIA for any feedback you all can offer.

Go into the ASROCK BIOS settings and see if there is an option to turn on full POST diagnostics. Quick POST may not do the necessary checks.

 

[DAPUNISHER]

Good stuff for searchers that land here.

Remember kids: Best practices is to disconnect everything and go barebones during a troubleshoot. Far too many try to be lazy and take shortcuts. Sometimes it works out, more frequently it does not. Add things back one at a time. I will say I only take it out of the case if the above fails. With a no power on TS, it is easy enough to short the pins if the board does not have a power button on it (most don't).

 

[Roy Batty]

Go into the ASROCK BIOS settings and see if there is an option to turn on full POST diagnostics. Quick POST may not do the necessary checks.

Good suggestion, thanks. Fergot 'bout that setting.

 

[tcsenter]

I'm more curious that it wasn't always this way, from the first time the drive was connected to that port. The change suggests there may be something going on with that drive.

 

[lakedude]

Hey how did you get your title to say "solved"?

 

[Roy Batty]

I "solved" it my starting from scratch, connecting one drive after another until the system showed the errant behavior when I connected the older SSD. And yes, I am almost certain the drive was the issue (as opposed to the cable or port). I haven't pursued it any further, so I can't say whether the drive can be salvaged.

 

[lakedude]

Sorry, I was asking about the green "solved" graphic in the title of your post.

When I look I see options like "question", etc. But not "solved".

 

[Roy Batty]

Yeah, I didn't put that in my post, so I assume it was the moderator.

 

[lakedude]

Thanks!

 

[Roy Batty]

As an after thought, it irks me that I have no way to run diags on that drive. It is an oldie (as SSDs go), but I'd like to know what happened to it. Any way to recycle these?