System sometimes booting up normally, other times not for past week now.

Not sure how to diagnose the failure or failures on this system which either boots normally or hangs forever before seeing the BIOS splash screen. Alternatively I see the spinning wheel of dots go on endlessly and windows never actually boots up.

What's especially frustrating is that after trying to boot up the system and having it hang endlessly I hit the reset button and then it boots up normally. Sometimes.

Where and how do I start to diagnose? Which items and in which order? Up to now this system has performed flawlessly since it was built in late 2022. Asus X-670-E chipset Strix E-A motherboard, Ryzen 7900X CPU, two sticks of 32 GB memory, mix of NMVe, SSD and spinning rust drives, AMD 9070 CT GPU. Not overclocked. Windows 11 installed a year ago.

Thanks for reading and replying

x509

I've been through this mill -- and ground extremely fine -- thanks to Secure Boot setup, KEK and CA 2023 keys and certificates, and more lately. If you're using Secure Boot, chances are that recent updates related to Secure Boot itself, KEK and CA 2023 certificates have been complicating boot behavior for the past 2-3 weeks. Visit the Garlin CA 2023 scripts pages for more info and guidance. It might just help. If it's irrelevant, my apologies.
--Ed--

PS: See also the deep, cold boot sequence described in my blog post for today: . It might just help out.

How to update/check Asus Motherboard secure boot certificates Windows Secure Boot certificate expiration and certificates updates | Official Support | ASUS UK

In my experience, it's not a Secure Boot problem. An incorrect setup results in a Secure Boot security violation, and you can't get past BIOS.

This sound more like a failing HDD, which is inconsistently timing out when BIOS or Windows searches for all available drives. Sometimes a bad HDD doesn't complete the spin-up cycle and the hang blocks the drive check. Eventually it might get "unstuck" and the system can continue. Which is why the HW reset sometimes "fixes" the problem.

Begin by unplugging all external or all non-system drives that you can, and confirming Windows can boot fine without them.

Then restore one drive at a time until you can duplicate the boot failures.

Check bios boot lights.



In the Bios, check how many "boot priority" devices you have? mine has only 1 !



Check for corrupt EFI system partition (Been there had that) in the above screen I had 2 Windows Boot Manager entries.

As the OP, I'm no nearer to a solution than when I did my OP. I've looked at a bunch of threads on reddit. One interesting idea was to replace the CMOS batttery. That accomplished exactly no improvement in the overall situation. Suggestions gratefully appreciated. As@edtitel said in post #2,I've been pretty ground down here.

So to restate the overall issue, this is what happens, most of the time. Other times, the system boots up normally. ????

• Minutes, not seconds, between the initial "beep" and the ROG splash screen
• Splash screen remains visible for many minutesr
• Once windows starts to boot and displays the "spinning circles of dots," more minutes.
• Finally the system boots up and then I can do work as normal. No BSODs or any other signs of RAM ;problems.
• Large file transfers seem to run slower than normal

Following the suggestions in post #2, I tried to flash the BIOS by putting the new CAP file on a FAT32 USB stick, and then selecting the USB stick as Boot option 1. Twice now, after 10-15 minutes, the system booted up in the BIOS. And twice now, the BIOS has not been updated.

I have yet to remove all the AMD drivers, and install the latest chipset drivers which I downloaded from AMD.

I'm also planning to remove my AMD 7070XT GPU and rely on the CPU's built-in GPU.

Tonight I plan to run memtest86, IF I can get the system to boot up from that USB stick. Wish me luck. I need it.

I'm resisting the idea that I need a new motherboard. I have an X670e chipset ASUS strix E and I would probably get an X870e board from ASUS, or maybe Gigabyte or MSI, Don't know yet. I would carry over the AMD 7900x CPU, and the 64 MB of Micron RAM.

Some troubleshooting options:
a) scan V2 log collector files for reported problems
b) analyze tracings from Windows Performance Analyzer (WPA)
c) bootlog as needed
d) make free or pay backup images and save the images to another disk drive or the cloud > clean install Windows 10 > monitor for one to two weeks > restore an image when there is sufficient data to establish software vs hardware as the underlying problem.

If it's slow from cold boot... ish, I would reseat the ram and set it back to basic profile. (No over clock profiles... )

DDR5 ram on my mates system would boot really slow like yours, until they released a bios update to fix it. (Intel Z790+i7 13700) now runs XMP3.

The memory on his would default to "training mode" , anything else would black screen the system!

A couple of months later I get another call... this time I found that one of the Samsung SSD's became corrupted. (used for storage only...) Disconnected it problem solved. (5+ mins to boot!!)

What M/B Bios version are you currently on?

Do as Garlin suggested in #4 disconnect all drives except boot "C"

so, the ssd drive is good? I never saw a definitive answer in the thread?

My 4 dell laptops all do this at times. Even running linux. I have just learned to live with it and reboot a couple of times before they fire up and then all is fine. It is a Bios software issue. It states on my main laptop that I have no issues etc whenever I do a test of the system. Baffled.

I'm the thread starter here, and boot times have gotten progressively longer and longer. I'm sad to report that the system did not boot into BIOS, even after two hours. And then the system would not get past a RAM error (Q-LED indicator on my ASUS ROG board. So I can't even run memtest86 now.

I can think of at least three different failure modes, but I don't have any spare parts that I would need to replace CPU or RAM for testing. I know that it's not the NVMe boot drive or the AMD XT9070 GPU.

So I have sadly concluded that it's time to take this system to my local Micro Center for diagnostics, etc. A Micro Center tech support guy said that once I bring in the system, they can do the necessary diagnostics in less than one hour. Only concern here is that because of some short-term medical issues, I can't do that for at least a month. I hate my current case, so I would use this repair to install all components into a new case. So I need to limp along with my Lenovo T14S.



I appreciate all the posts in response my my thread starter. Thanks guys. This forum is the greatest.

x509 said:

I'm the thread starter here, and boot times have gotten progressively longer and longer. I'm sad to report that the system did not boot into BIOS, even after two hours. And then the system would not get past a RAM error (Q-LED indicator on my ASUS ROG board. So I can't even run memtest86 now.

I can think of at least three different failure modes, but I don't have any spare parts that I would need to replace CPU or RAM for testing. I know that it's not the NVMe boot drive or the AMD XT9070 GPU.

So I have sadly concluded that it's time to take this system to my local Micro Center for diagnostics, etc. A Micro Center tech support guy said that once I bring in the system, they can do the necessary diagnostics in less than one hour. Only concern here is that because of some short-term medical issues, I can't do that for at least a month. I hate my current case, so I would use this repair to install all components into a new case. So I need to limp along with my Lenovo T14S.



I appreciate all the posts in response my my thread starter. Thanks guys. This forum is the greatest.

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Hope it works out for you. My dell XPS never skips a beat but my inspiron I have learned to live with them acting up when firing them up. Good luck on getting the system back up and running quickly.

x509 said:

I'm the thread starter here, and boot times have gotten progressively longer and longer. I'm sad to report that the system did not boot into BIOS, even after two hours. And then the system would not get past a RAM error (Q-LED indicator on my ASUS ROG board. So I can't even run memtest86 now.

I can think of at least three different failure modes, but I don't have any spare parts that I would need to replace CPU or RAM for testing. I know that it's not the NVMe boot drive or the AMD XT9070 GPU.

So I have sadly concluded that it's time to take this system to my local Micro Center for diagnostics, etc. A Micro Center tech support guy said that once I bring in the system, they can do the necessary diagnostics in less than one hour. Only concern here is that because of some short-term medical issues, I can't do that for at least a month. I hate my current case, so I would use this repair to install all components into a new case. So I need to limp along with my Lenovo T14S.



I appreciate all the posts in response my my thread starter. Thanks guys. This forum is the greatest.

Click to expand...

OK, today is weeks after my OP. It turns out that the motherboard was the problem!! Who knew that a midtier ASUS board that was only 4 years old could fail?

Micro Center diagnosed the problem. That cost me all of $80, well worth it. Nothing I could have done by myself. So I decided that as long as I'm getting a new motherboard I should really get a new Fractal Designs North XL case because I really don't like the Phanteks Enthoo case I have now. And because I don't need new RAM, saving lots of money these days, I thought I would also get a new AMD 9900 X CPU. Micro Center charges a flat rate $300 for new system assembly, a very reasonable charge for the work involved.

x509 said:

OK, today is weeks after my OP. It turns out that the motherboard was the problem!! Who knew that a midtier ASUS board that was only 4 years old could fail?

Micro Center diagnosed the problem. That cost me all of $80, well worth it. Nothing I could have done by myself. So I decided that as long as I'm getting a new motherboard I should really get a new Fractal Designs North XL case because I really don't like the Phanteks Enthoo case I have now. And because I don't need new RAM, saving lots of money these days, I thought I would also get a new AMD 9900 X CPU. Micro Center charges a flat rate $300 for new system assembly, a very reasonable charge for the work involved.

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I have had top tier asus boards crap out after 6 months to a year. I am leery of any Asus product to tell you the truth. I have not had one Asus product last and their warranty and customer service are a joke as well.

Kojack said:

I have had top tier asus boards crap out after 6 months to a year. I am leery of any Asus product to tell you the truth. I have not had one Asus product last and their warranty and customer service are a joke as well.

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Over the years, I have had two bad experiences with ASUS RMA. If you can't trust the boards to last like forever, then you need to look at the alternatives. In any case, I thought the MSI X870e Carbon was a superior board anyway, and guys on this forum dispelled my concerns about BIOS updates. So sayonara ASUS.

x509 said:

Over the years, I have had two bad experiences with ASUS RMA. If you can't trust the boards to last like forever, then you need to look at the alternatives. In any case, I thought the MSI X870e Carbon was a superior board anyway, and guys on this forum dispelled my concerns about BIOS updates. So sayonara ASUS.

Click to expand...

Exactly. I bought 3 vivotab RTs back in the day. within 4 months all 3 systems developed ghost touch on the displays. Rendered the systems useless. Contacted warranty and they said it was user error. Ever since then I have refused to buy ANYTHING asus. I almost buckled with the a14 and ProArt stuff, but my spidey sense was tingling so I backed off.