Z77 OC Formula "A9" in lower right hand corner.

[Ken429]

My ASR Z77 OC Formula has been running for many months with no issues. Yesterday, I went into the BIOS to make a change and strange things started to happen. The System took forever to enter the BIOS and a "-" appeared in the upper left hand corner and "A9" appeared in the lower right hand corner of the monitor and then it entered the BIOS. I made a few changes but they did not seem to take and it took forever for W8.1 to boot. After that the system will boot into W8.1 normally - meaning in a few seconds and all is well until I try to make a BIOS change then the whole thing starts over again.

I have tried clearing the BIOS, Re-burning the BIOS, Re-loading the BIOS via the backup BIOS and yet the problem remains. I have seen this problem mentioned elsewhere but can't find a solution. Any suggestions would be appreciated.

[profJim]

Re: Z77 OC Formula "A9" in lower right hand corner.

Post code A9 = start of bios setup

If your system has problems trying to apply the new settings, the A9 post code might remain for a while.

Can you post a list of the new bios settings that you are trying to apply?

[Ken429]

Re: Z77 OC Formula "A9" in lower right hand corner.

profjim,

Good to see your still at it! My old Q9550 system that you helped me OC a long time ago is still going strong!

Anyway, I'll keep it very simple - all I have to do is enter the BIOS via the "Del" key and then Save and Exit via the "F10" key and the system takes over a minute (~65 seconds by my count) to boot back into W8.1. I did not change anything in the BIOS. After that initial "whatever" the system will do a cold boot into W8.1 in ~9 seconds.

The only reason I discovered the problem was I went into the BIOS after many months of running with no changes and tried to raise the Offset Voltage from +.015 to +.020 because I got a WHEA error transcoding a Blu-Ray. Believe me the system NEVER took 65 seconds to reboot after making a BIOS change. Let alone the fact the change did not take!

[parsec]

Re: Z77 OC Formula "A9" in lower right hand corner.

IIRC, A9 is not the usual POST code displayed when the BIOS UI is running.

Any idea what the Dr Debug display shows during the long boot time into Win 8.1?

It might help to differentiate between the system's POST time, and the actual Windows boot time.

I consider the time from a cold start or somewhere in the restart cycle, to the POST beep to be the POST time. The Windows boot time starts immediately after the POST beep, to the appearance of the Windows desktop.

Some ASRock boards won't do a POST beep unless you start the BIOS UI first (like my ASR Z77 board), so you may not have that as a reference. My point in this is to identify where the delay is taking place, in POST or the Windows boot process, which are two different things.

I'm guessing the delay is in the POST process, not the Windows boot.

[Ken429]

Re: Z77 OC Formula "A9" in lower right hand corner.

Just a follow up in case someone else has this problem. I requested technical help from ASR and they responded relatively quickly with some suggestions.
Based on ASR's suggestions and a few of my own here is what I did:

1. Pulled the power plug.
2. Jumper the Clear CMOS for a few minutes.
3. Disconnected all the USB and SATA Devices except the Keyboard and Mouse.
4. Removed one of the Memory Modules.
5. Restored the CMOS jumper and plugged the power cord back in.
6. Booted the system holding the F9 key.
7. Saved and exited the BIOS.
8. Put everything back together one thing at a time checking to make sure the problem did not return.

The system is now running as it should - cold boot to W8.1 ~9 seconds. I can now make BIOS changes that "stick" and the system enters (DEL key) and leaves the BIOS (f10 key) almost instantly.

I have renewed faith in ASR technical support!

[Ken429]

Re: Z77 OC Formula "A9" in lower right hand corner.

Now that I know how to fix the BIOS when it get's screwed up beyond normal recovery I'm trying to figure out what the @#%% I did to cause the problem to appear after almost a year of solid performance running at 4.5GHz.

The program I suspect is at the root of my problem is RealBench v2.2 from ASUS ROG. The system ran ok for a day or so at the default settings (no OC) after resetting that BIOS (above) with no problems. I made changes to the BIOS every which way I could think of and the system handled it with no issues. THEN... I ran the benchmark function of RealBench v2.2 to see just how much slower the system was at the default settings and all heck broke lose again. It took over a minute to enter the BIOS and then it took over a minute to get back out.

I had to go through the reset routine described above to get the system back to normal. I am not going to touch the RealBench program ever again on this system and see if the BIOS problem returns. I have run the RealBench v2.2 benchmark on the Z97 Extreme6/4790K system and it did not seem to cause a problem. Could it be remotely possible that the RealBench program could cause/corrupt the BIOS on an "old" Z77 OC Formula to run amok?!

[Ken429]

Re: Z77 OC Formula "A9" in lower right hand corner.

I was WRONG again. Take RealBench v2.2 off the bad guy list. The MB is back doing all the same stuff it was doing a couple days ago. I will try to escalate the problem with ASRock technical support. We'll see if the MB really has a warranty after 1 year of use.

[Ken429]

Re: Z77 OC Formula "A9" in lower right hand corner.

If anybody cares, ASRock replaced the MB - it took about 10 days - and the replacement MB works ok. All the crazy stuff I had going on with the original MB has been resolved with the replacement MB. Hopefully, this one will last more than a year.