BIOS forgets SSD - sometimes

[simcoo]

Hi,
I don't see this specific problem elsewhere in the forum, and wondered if anyone has some ideas.

I have a 3 year old PCS desktop with an ASUS P7P55 LX motherboard and recently added a Samsung 250GB 840 EVO Series SSD as my main C drive, leaving the old HDD as the E drive. Everything works OK most of the time but occasionally the pc boots up onto the old HDD drive. When this happens I notice that the boot order in the BIOS appears to have forgotten the SSD is there. At this time I also note that the system hangs on booting at "Autodetect SATA 3" (SATA 3 is where my SSD is).

I can correct this in the BIOS and get everything working again but it fails to detect the SSD again a few days later.

I also note that there is a Realtek PCIe Boot agent that appears to run before the BIOS, and this is set to PnP/BEV(BBS) (Boot ordered by BBS BIOS). I tried setting this to Int 18h to force it to use the BIOS boot setting, but the boot agent didn't seem to remember this setting, as it was back to BBS next time I looked. (I'm unclear as to what the boot agent is doing, so this was a bit of a guess.)

I guess I have 2 questions:
1. Why would my system occasionally fail to boot from the SSD?
2. Why would the BIOS boot order change automatically, without my intervention?

Thanks anyone who can help with either of these questions.

 

[baron75mk2]

i had the same problem with mine not so long ago , boot order kept changing & sometimes the windows drive was not even detected causing boot issues obviously , tried everything to sort it out , even RMAd the whole pc & had a new motherboard installed - just came back with the same issue.

well things were not to good in my life at that time (parents died) , so i just got fed up with it all & gave up on pc & gaming in general , now i had two palitt gtx 680s in there , these i sold as it was some quick cash , then the pc sat there for 12-18 months or more doing nothing ( not even plugged in )

well only in the last month or two have i wanted to return to pc gaming , my freind gave me a GTX 580 to get started
(he upgraded to a GTX-650 & thought it was better than the GTX-580 , i was honest with him & told him the 580 was the better card but he didnt believe me)
so i installed the GTX 580 & have been gaming on it right up to yesterday when i got my 2 Gainward GTX 780s) , & not one issue with the boot order in all that time , usually it would do it nearly every time i booted up & i would have to enter the bios & re-set it all & save it , everything else in bios saved fine , all my overclock settings & everything else , but not the boot order , sometimes i would have to switch it off at the mains & hold the power button on the pc for 30 seconds just to get the drive back in to the boot order , it would sometimes not even appear in the bios at all then on the second or third boot it would happen again , but for the last month & a half there has been no issues at all like this (gamed on a radeon HD-5850 for 6 months or so before he gave me the GTX 580.

Pc specialist tested all the hard drives (even the one they didnt install wich was good of them) , every component in the pc & they found no issue so naturally thats why the new MOBO , only thing left it could have been , common sence would tell us this wouldnt it ? , no because the problem persisted after the new mobo (& i know they did replace the mobo , but i wont get in to that now , but they definately did i can ussure you)

now i have all the same hardware as before (exept the palitt GTX 680s that is) , same external , hdd , same periferals (kb & mouse , xbox 360 pad reciever , wireless adapter etc , nothing has changed at all , even the same windows & software as before.

So as stupid as it sounds it had to be something to do with the Palitt GTX 680s , as the issue wasnt there when i got the pc & i was running the two radeon HD-5850s & the two GTX 580s after them , it was only after the palllits went in there that this all started & it didnt end untill they were removed.

So i know it doesnt really help as the explination sounds silly , but there it is , my pc has been totally fine after removing them , its the only thing that has changed.

Maybe asus boards dont like certain GPU configurations ? - something to do with the way the chipset works perhaps ? , i havent got a clue , but the facts speak for themselves - i still cant get my head around it at all.

Maybe experimenting with some different hardware might stop the issue , did for me !!

Hope this can give you some insight in to how to deal with the issue

Got to admit its the strangest issue i have ever had with a rig - just glad its sorted now :yes:

 

[Grimezy]

Bought my Samsung Evo 840 Pro 250gb at the weekend, can't wait for the problems to commence now :|

 

[simcoo]

Well, thanks baron75mk2 for your insight. You may not be so far off the mark in suspecting a clash with the graphics card (I have a Radeon HD 5450) as randomly (and very infrequently, and usually when it is left alone) my pc crashes with the screen completely corrupted. (Unfortunately the crash dump fails, so no hope there.)

@Grimezy - good luck to you!

 

[baron75mk2]

Well, thanks baron75mk2 for your insight. You may not be so far off the mark in suspecting a clash with the graphics card (I have a Radeon HD 5450) as randomly (and very infrequently, and usually when it is left alone) my pc crashes with the screen completely corrupted. (Unfortunately the crash dump fails, so no hope there.)

@Grimezy - good luck to you!

Is there any way you can source another gpu to try for a few days ? - doesnt matter what it is , even a cheap £50 one from pc world , if the crashing & boot issues disappear then you know you had the same issue as i did .

 

[simcoo]

Update: I haven't been able to source a spare GPU, but did remove the boot attribute from the old HDD to prevent it booting from the HDD when the SDD was not found. Of course, all that did was to cause a system hang when the SDD was not found!
So now I've switched from ACHI to IDE to see if that results in a more reliable system. Everywhere seems to recomend AHCI in place of IDEs when installing a new SSD, so I'm not sure how performance much I'll be loosing out on here...

 

[simcoo]

Update: I've had no further problems since the switch to IDE. I'm treating this as "solved". :rockon:

 

[baron75mk2]

Update: I've had no further problems since the switch to IDE. I'm treating this as "solved". :rockon:

Thanks for posting this - are there any performance drawbacks with this , its just that mine did it again 2 days ago & if it sorts it out i will do the same :yes:

 

[baron75mk2]

Thanks for posting this - are there any performance drawbacks with this , its just that mine did it again 2 days ago & if it sorts it out i will do the same :yes:

Update ; just did it , cant see any throughput drops at all , only thing is it seems to disable hot plugging , not bothered as i dont use this anyway,

everywhere says it is more compatible with hardware than AHCI , but it is reccomended to enable it for SSD drives , thats a non issue for me as i dont have one & never will have one.

So hopefully it will stop this issue for me as it did for you - thank you & + rep in advance for the heads up :yes:

 

[simcoo]

@baron75mk2: I've been away for a couple of days, only just got back and pleased to say I've not found any noticable performance degradation after switching to IDE (I changed from an HDD to an SDD, so everything is relative here). I believe that you can find data on the web that will indicate AHCI as faster due to native command queuing, but compared with an HDD, its still blisteringly responsive. Good luck!

 

[baron75mk2]

@baron75mk2: I've been away for a couple of days, only just got back and pleased to say I've not found any noticable performance degradation after switching to IDE (I changed from an HDD to an SDD, so everything is relative here). I believe that you can find data on the web that will indicate AHCI as faster due to native command queuing, but compared with an HDD, its still blisteringly responsive. Good luck!

Thank you for the posts , i havent had any problem since the change to IDE , so hopefuly its the last both of us will see of this pesky issue