Diagnostic software for older ASUS motherboard?

[IronWing]

My PC has been locking up lately and has to be unplugged to get it to reboot. Holding the power button does nothing when it locks. I suspect that the eight year old motherboard is beginning to fail but I'm not sure. Is there any diagnostic software that I might use to test the board? I'm running Win 10 with the April 2018 updates.

Motherboard: Asus P7P55D-E Pro

The system is loaded on a 950 Pro SSD, there is 8GB of DDR3, and the video card is a GTX1070 if that matters.

 

[UsandThem]

Nope, there isn't software they will do that.

You'll have to swap out parts with known good parts until you isolate the problem device(s).

 

[VirtualLarry]

What brand, model, and age, is your PSU?

It's pretty disturbing that holding down the power button won't force power-off. That's a REAL hardware HANG. Given the age of the rig and mobo, I would tend to conclude that the mobo might be toast.

If you don't mind throwing a few bucks at it to start, unplug it, pull the CMOS battery (Coin cell, +3V lithium), and then wait 15 minutes, and throw a fresh one in there, and go into BIOS, Load Defaults, Save and Exit, and reboot, and see if the problem goes away.

Edit: *The thinking being, that the CMOS battery and associated circuitry has to do with power-on/off features as well, and if that's screwed up, which it can be due to a low/malfunctioning battery, well, couldn't really hurt to try it.

Get some CR2032 lithium coin cell batteries at a Dollar store.

 

[SlowBox]

VirtualLarry do you think there's a possibility its the PSU, because motherboards don't die,, or soo Ive heard lol. He should go to monitor in the BIOS or use software to check out his PSU readings, like 12v railing and what not.. Just a thought.

 

[VirtualLarry]

VirtualLarry do you think there's a possibility its the PSU, because motherboards don't die

It maybe could be the PSU, but usually when the PSU glitches, it either shuts off, or glitches power so that the PC hangs or spontaneously reboots.

Mobos do, sadly, "die". Either the caps wear out, or the VRM components or the chipsets get thermal wear and tear, and stop operating within nominal specs.

I give OEM mobos maybe 5 years, depending on components. "Business class" desktops, and servers, last longer, as do "enthusiast" boards with solid caps, and sufficient VRM and chipset cooling.

(My P35-DS3R boards are still kicking, although on one of them, if I OC the CPU, it sometimes hangs now.)

 

[XavierMace]

Edit: *The thinking being, that the CMOS battery and associated circuitry has to do with power-on/off features as well, and if that's screwed up, which it can be due to a low/malfunctioning battery, well, couldn't really hurt to try it.

The battery serves one purpose, to allow settings to be retained during a power outage. That's it. It has nothing to do with anything else. Power button override is part of the ACPI spec, if that's not working either you have a broken button, a broken motherboard, or a broken power supply.

 

[aigomorla]

because motherboards don't die,, or soo Ive heard lo

Where did you hear this?
Motherboards DIE, they die way too often even if you start overclocking massive power hungry processors which will toast the VRM to temperatures which the you could literally burn your finger on if you didnt have a good heat sink.

Even Server boards like Supermicro and Intel are not impervious to dying.

 

[IronWing]

Didn't mean to abandon this thread. The computer has been behaving itself lately so I haven't been able to get more info.

 

[Batboy88]

Where did you hear this?
Motherboards DIE, they die way too often even if you start overclocking massive power hungry processors which will toast the VRM to temperatures which the you could literally burn your finger on if you didnt have a good heat sink.

Even Server boards like Supermicro and Intel are not impervious to dying.

Nay..Not gonna kill VRM/power delivery on this one...do you realize the Overkill as well stuff they have done. Vs stuff some have done just use more and a cheaper mosfet...

 

[IronWing]

Thanks for the replies. I let this thread lay because the computer was behaving itself for a couple months. The lock-ups are back though the power button works now.

One thing I found is that my Samsung 850 Pro boot drive is registering weird. In the ASUS BIOS, the drive can't be detected under the storage configuration but shows up in the boot section. In the boot section, it is listed as an IDE device. SATA drives are set to AHCI. The drive is detected under Win 10 correctly and the AHCI device driver is functioning. In Samsung Magician, the interface can't be detected and AHCI is N/A (the HHDs show as AHCI). Magician performance testing works but the SMART option is not available for the drive (it was when I first installed it). I may try moving the drive to a different header on the motherboard.

 

[VirtualLarry]

That's kind of weird, how your HDD / SSD SATA port(s) are reporting AHCI, but not AHCI. This isn't an NV-chipset board, right, it's an Intel P55 chipset?

It's not totally unusual, when BIOS is switched to AHCI mode, for HDDs to be NOT listed under the traditional storage drives list in BIOS, but instead, they are enumerated at boot time by the AHCI BIOS extension, which is usually separate code.

Edit: Your detection issues, may stem from having a couple of different SATA controllers on your board. (It wasn't uncommon back then.) Magician may not be able to properly read SMART values from third-party (Non-Intel / Non-MS) AHCI drivers. Or possibly, you just need to update your drivers.

 

[RLGL]

Magician may not be able to properly read SMART values from third-party (Non-Intel / Non-MS) AHCI drivers.

The above is a correct statement