ASRock P67 problem. Update. Solved.

[de8212]

Earlier tonight my PC in my sig would not boot. The error code on the board showed "b4". A little googling said it was "USB hot plug". So, I unplugged the two usb cables from the rear ports and it booted fine. I had two usb hubs plugged in with various devices (mouse, keyboard, etc). Inside windows I plugged them back in and everything works.

I haven't rebooted yet but does anyone know exactly what might have happened?

 

[de8212]

Definately USB related. I can't get it to boot with my hubs plugged into the top 2 USB 2.0 ports. haven't tried the USB 3.0 ports or the bottom USB ports yet.

Any ideas what might be going on?

 

[de8212]

Well, things went from bad to worse. I couldn't isolate waht exactly was casuing the weird USB issue. I decided to flash to the newest BIOS. I did so, following all the instructions. Flash gave me a completed successfully message at the end so all was well. Rebooted and now it doesn't see my SSD drive. It sees the other 2 SATA drives but not my 128GB drive. ONly thing I had to change in BIOS when I built the system for the firs time was to change it from IDE to AHCI. I went back and did that but still nothing.

Help!!!!!!!!!!!!

I'm wondering if the board is bad. I connected the SSD to my laptop via a SATA - USB device and the drive is fine.

 

[you2]

Double check the bios; when flasing it always reset the bios options.
-
Doe the SSD show up in the bios? Is it connected to the marvell or intel sata port? Is the marvel controller enabled ?
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Also check which devices are configured as boot devices....
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[de8212]

I think it was the Marvel controllers. It was the White ones near the top. All other SATA devices were in the blue ones.

So, I put it in one of the blue ones, disconnected everything else and I can now see it in BIOS. But when it tries to boot I get a fast Blue Screen and reboot. It tries to do the Repair option but at the end says it can't repair. Something about a bad driver. I've not installed any new hardware on it recently. I did install the newest version of Setpoint for my mouse yesterday. I can't even get into safe mode to uninstall it.

I really don't want to but if I can get my Outlook .pst file off of it I might just reinstall windows. Still there's got to be a hardware issue with the mobo. USB was flakey and now some of the SATA ports are also.

Any other ideas?

 

[Diogenes2]

Do you have your SATA controllers set for AHCI ?

 

[de8212]

yep.

 

[de8212]

Well, I don't know what I did but it booted. Not sure what is going on with this thing.

I bought it from superbiiz (newegg was OOS). Their RMA only mentions items within 30 days so I'm not sure if I'll get anywhere with them swapping it out. I know in the past newegg has swapped out hardware within the one year, no questions asked.

I also sent an email to ASRock explaining my issues so I'll see what they say.

I'm backing up my Outlook. When that's done I'm going to plug the SSD back into the white plug and see what it does.

 

[de8212]

Oh, and I went ahead an uninstalled setpoint even though I can't imagine that being the problem.

 

[de8212]

OK, so now I connect the SSD back into the White SATA ports and have a USB mouse attached and it boots???????????????????????????????

I'm not getting a good feeling from this board. I went with ASRock on a whim and it has been great for 2.5 months but I am afraid this is the start of some instability.

 

[de8212]

Scratch that last post. Or at least some of it. Still won't boot when I have my usb hubs connected to it. Surely 2 hubs couldn't just go bad????

 

[bankster55]

USB devices, especially hubs are notorious for flakey detection, especially OLDER equipment.
As time goes on, mobo makers are adding more and more USB ports. And there are prob 10,000 dif devices from all makers, USB 1.0, 1.1, 2.0, 3.0 . These things have to be compatible with the bios, because during boot the USB devices detected have to put in a "stack" order by the bios.
We have a QVL list for RAM, and I think we also need a QVL for USB HW now. People moan and piss about this or thaqt USB problem, but one simply has to just go out and buy a dif brand. However, a bios update may mean what you have solved is back again a s a prob.
You could also experiment around with toggling legacy on or off. Also increasing post time allowing the bios to arrange things properly could help (Disable full screen logo). Thirdly a PSU with a fast rise time on the boot from +5VSB (standby) may also improve the siuation

 

[de8212]

Strange thing is that after tearing everything apart and testing piece by piece, I pretty much have it all back like it was

One thing I fogot about is yesterday morning, moving my mouse wouldn't make my LCD and system come alive. It wasn't in standby/hibernate, just LCD powers off after a certain amount of time. I figured it was a big issue but it ended up that usb ports on my lcd which hold the receiver for my mouse weren't working. I unplugged it and replaced the cable to test it out and all was well. I replaced the original cable and it was fine too. The cable that's from the LCD goes to one of my USB hubs and that hub is daisy chained into the other hub. I did that a while back just becasue the one hub wouldn't reach the back of my pc.

Anyway, all is well......for now.

 

[de8212]

Just wanted to update this. I have figured it out. I had an old sansa clip connected to one of the USB hubs. this was causing the PC to not boot. Not sure why because I've ad it for several years and it gets plugged in alot and stays that way for days. Never had an issue on any other build.

 

[DaveSimmons]

The clip is probably drawing too much power, especially if you aren't using a powered hub.

 

[de8212]

The clip is probably drawing too much power, especially if you aren't using a powered hub.

it's a powered hub.

 

[bankster55]

If you in fact have legacy USB enabled in bios, then its just too old to work in synch with todays bios.
The days of throwing in your old XP devices are pretty much gone, especially when you use an antique device on a fairly recent hub.