P67 Extreme4 mobo takes minutes to post

[Mr. Farknocker]

I built a gaming system back in August 2011 and it ran fine for two months until I started experiencing the loss of my network adapter card in device manager while playing a multi-player FPS game on max video setting. The game would freeze and could only be hard reset. When the pc powered back up the network card could not be found in the device manager. After several power downs and restarts, the network card would show up in the device manager and the pc would function normally for a while until it crashed again, losing the network adapter. I tried to flash the BIOS to the latest BIOS files but could not get my instant flash to work properly so I reset the BIOS to default. That seem to work for several weeks and I enjoyed playing my FPS game for two weeks without a crash. Unfortunately, I started to experience crashes again and resetting the BIOS to default has not cured the problem. I am now experiencing the same problems with crashing and losing the network adapter card in the device manager with one exception: MY PC occassionally takes 3-5 minutes to post on powering up. I tried to isolate the problem with my PC by running a CPU stress tests. The PC ran fine. I then moved on to a video stress test and ran the program that had the gpu running at 100%. After several minutes the PC froze. On restart, the PC monitor remained black and showed no signs of life so I thought the video card was toast. However, after leaving the PC on while logging into this forum with my laptop, the post screen suddenly appeared and the PC booted up like it normally does, except that the network adapter was missing again in the device manager.

Granted, I could be suffering from a bad graphics card, but does a delayed posting after powering up also indicate a problem with the mobo? How do I verify that?

System:

Mobo: Asrock P67 Extreme4
Memory: 4 GB G.Skill
Graphics: MSI Cyclone R6850 PE
OS: Windows 7 Ultimate 64bit

[kick]

Re: P67 Extreme4 mobo takes minutes to post

bios flashing,do it using insta flash from the uefi.
set bios to defaults and save before you start.
Put the downloaded bios on your usb stick root directory make sure its expanded, when u click on instaflash in uefi it should see all the flash bios options..if you dloaded 3 different bios .3 should be listed.
If hitting enter on the selected bios doesnt work.clik on it with the mouse until the reflashing starts.
dont interrupt it.

network adapter card/ what one is it or do you mean the lan connection to the modem?.try the other lan port if its that.
Is the 6850 overclocked with say msi afterburner..dont have msi afterburner set to apply settings at boot up, if it is.just as easy to do it after. Set your gx to basic anyway until you get the networjk back..whether its an actual extra card or not.

Check out all the usual.weird temp files in storage clean out the hdd and defrag. If its a ssd ,you cant defrag but check it for weird files.. do a system restore before the crashes happened,check out the card/modem networker.check the connections and so on..
Course it might be other things,memory.board ,psu etc but try n get your system back as close as possible to the way it was in Aug when it worked ok first.

[Mr. Farknocker]

Re: P67 Extreme4 mobo takes minutes to post

bios flashing,do it using insta flash from the uefi.
set bios to defaults and save before you start.
Put the downloaded bios on your usb stick root directory make sure its expanded, when u click on instaflash in uefi it should see all the flash bios options..if you dloaded 3 different bios .3 should be listed.
If hitting enter on the selected bios doesnt work.clik on it with the mouse until the reflashing starts.
dont interrupt it.

network adapter card/ what one is it or do you mean the lan connection to the modem?.try the other lan port if its that.
Is the 6850 overclocked with say msi afterburner..dont have msi afterburner set to apply settings at boot up, if it is.just as easy to do it after. Set your gx to basic anyway until you get the networjk back..whether its an actual extra card or not.

Check out all the usual.weird temp files in storage clean out the hdd and defrag. If its a ssd ,you cant defrag but check it for weird files.. do a system restore before the crashes happened,check out the card/modem networker.check the connections and so on..
Course it might be other things,memory.board ,psu etc but try n get your system back as close as possible to the way it was in Aug when it worked ok first.

I will try to flash the BIOS to the latest using the technique you just outlined.

The Network adapter card I was referring to was my Netgear 108 Mbps Wireless PCI Adapter (WG311T)

Not sure if the 6850 comes overclocked with afterburner by default but neither the CPU nor the graphics card were overclocked. I haven't touched the settings on either so the default settings are what is being used.

Will follow up with the results. I reset the PC and am waiting for it to post so I can hit F2 and get into the UEFI mode. Wish me luck.

[Mr. Farknocker]

Re: P67 Extreme4 mobo takes minutes to post

I couldn't enter into the UEFI mode because the PC wouldn't post on restart so I tried to swap out the video card with another to determine if the blank screen I was getting was caused by the video card. I ended up pulling out the graphics card and reinstalling it after I determined that the card I was planning to swap in wouldn't fit. When I powered up the PC, it posted and I used that opportunity to enter into the UEFI mode. I successfully flashed the BIOS with the latest files and the PC has successfully rebooted and posted several times without any problems. However, the wifi adapter still does not appear under the Network Adapter section of the Device Manager. I used the restore function to restore the settings back to a time when everything worked but still no luck.

I have spare D-Link Air-Plus Xtreme G DWL-G520 lying around and will try to swap the Netgear wifi adapter (WNDR3300) out to see if the wifi card is actually defective and will report back.