CPU/Mobo Faulty hard disk - is my Asus H97 also faulty?

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jinvidia

jinvidia

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is my motherboard faulty...

This is my Config

My config:
i5 4460
ASUS H97 PRO
CORSAIR CMV4GX3M1A1600C11 4GB
CORSAIR VS550 PSU
1TB HDD
WINDOWS 7 & 8.1 32bit


Initially i was facing some performance issues with my PC but i didn't have any random freezes or hiccups with windows 8.1. The mistake i made is each and every time i install windows 7, i install it after or before windows 8.1 and that made me think that this motherboard hates windows 7 and/or dual boot.

So today i installed windows 8.1 alone and found that for the first time the random freezes happen here too. Even in windows 8.1 i have not spent hours, but today i ran memtest for 3 hours and no problems found with memory.

Now the big issue here is my 1 TB HDD which was working fine for around 2 years and which worked fine, the 1st day when i installed in this PC without any errors reported under HD tune and HD sentinel, shows around 1300 Reallocated sectors. I noticed this only today after WIndows 8.1 caused random freezes.

So long i was concerned with making windows 7 work and also to find what makes win7 incompatible with this mobo. Now i am very dissappointed and i am starting to doubt the motherboard.

I even checked the event log and i get this error when my PC froze randomly under win 8.1

The IO operation at logical block address f0 for Disk 0 (PDO name: \Device\00000030) was retried.

Moreover whenever i install windows 7 sp1 either from within win 8.1 or from the CD/USB device, i am taken to the BIOS screen where i cannot find my hdd listed. But if i keep the PC switched off for around 30sec- 60sec. setup resumes. this happens even when the random freeze occurs as soon as i login to windows 7 and i restart the PC. Here i can restart the PC by start menu itself and the PC restarts fine though it randomly freezes.
So far i was thinking that the windows 7 boot manager is messing up with the new UEFI bios since the O/s is old.

Finally i came to a conclusion that the motherboard is faulty but before attempting to disassemble it to handover to the service center by tomorrow, i have just removed the power cable and sata cable from my DVD drive. But even after that one time i was taken to the BIOS screen where my HDD was found missing. I restarted PC and the PC stayed with a cursor and after sometime it booted to windows 8.1 from which i am creating this thread.

Even i had got a blue screen 2 to 3 times in the past weeks which stated that one of the device is about to fail and this message is from windows 8.1 startup i think . Just day before yesterday i came to know that i must use the grey sata ports and not the black ones . I knew that but the ports looked alike with minor colour variation so i thought that all the ports are black. SInce then i thought that plugging in the DVD drive in the black port has caused all these issues and plugged it in the grey port.

But today i suspect the mobo is faulty as it has killed my HDD.

Now friends please help me out to ensure that the mobo is faulty. I am looking to get a new mobo in exchange as i have been facing issues from day ONE.

So in a nutshell, please tell me how i can find out if the SATA controller is malfunctioning in my motherboard ..

Sometimes even when the HDD doesnt appear in the BIOS, i can boot to USB and the PC is able to find the HDD and even access the partitions. There are some other people who have experienced the same issue.

http://www.bleepingcomputer.com/forums/t/523993/ahciide-problem

Is it usual with the modern UEFI bios to fail to show HDD sometimes even when the SATA controller and HDD is working fine ? Is there anyone aware of this behaviour with any other motherboard ?

Then in event log, i dont find anything which says error with the sata controller blah blah





Sorry for the long post

Mod Edit: Please avoid using large fonts unnecessarily​
 
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is my motherboard faulty...
Click to expand...
No, your hard disk is faulty.

So in a nutshell, please tell me how i can find out if the SATA controller is malfunctioning in my motherboard ..
Click to expand...
Step 1: connect a hard disk that is not faulty.

Is it usual with the modern UEFI bios to fail to show HDD sometimes even when the SATA controller and HDD is working fine ?
Click to expand...
Only if your hard disk is faulty.

Finally i came to a conclusion that the motherboard is faulty
Click to expand...
Now friends please help me out to ensure that the mobo is faulty. I am looking to get a new mobo in exchange
Click to expand...
You concluded that your motherboard is faulty based on a faulty hard disk? :confused:


All of us already told you a hundred times over that it was an issue with your hard disk in your earlier thread and you still kept blaming the processor! : https://www.techenclave.com/community/threads/newly-bought-i5-4460-slow-kindly-help.167304/
Now that the hard disk is indeed faulty, you're again saying its something else. Please don't say the mouse is faulty next :P

If in the rare chance you are interested in some actual facts -> a motherboard cannot kill your hard drive. But a PSU can. I'm not sure who recommended that PSU, but the VS series is crap. Still, unless it has QC issues it should not go bad from the start. You can try checking output voltages with a multimeter for a start, or even check the voltages through the BIOS, although without a 'scope there's no way to check if ripple is in check. The other possibility, and more likely one, is that your drive was already dying.

Please get a proper hard disk that is tested to be working (zero filled with no SMART errors), is clean formatted, and connect that drive alone to your system. Reset your BIOS and switch to legacy mode since you can't manage UEFI.
BTW UEFI is not "new". The standard was released long back in 2005 and Win XP x64 already supported it.
 
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You have a Hard drive problem. Backup your data and RMA it. A new motherboard cannot fix a faulty hard drive. Plus, if the Service center does not find any issue with the motherboard in-spite of all the 'evidence' you may provide them, they will not be able to replace it with a new one as they need to give concrete findings to the manufacturer at the backend.

In the process, you may consider buying a better PSU as well as pointed out above. If you want to do some extra effort, give that for testing to the service center.

Meanwhile, go into BIOS and post a pic showing the various voltage values you see there
 
@ crazzy eddy- thanx for your reply pal..

Kindly dont mistake me . Only after reading several forums to find that there are people who have lost more than 2 hdds on account of a bad sata controller i came to a conclusion that the motherboard has killed the hdd.
Additionally you can see that i have posted a pic about the Crystal disk benchmark . By that time i have HDtune and Hdsentinel installed and my HDD was 100% perfect as according to the status of these softwares.

This HDD i was using in my old ASUS M3n78em was functioning good without any errors whatsoever and the STATUS is always 100% excellent in HDsentinel and hdtune.

Only after i used my HDD in this motherboard this issue has occured which made me think that the sata controller could be the cause for this issue.

Moreover i think the Corsair VS550 is not that bad PSU but now i am scared as you say the PSU may be the culprit. I was about to go for Seasonic but the warranty issues made me think twice hence I have invested my hard earned money on this PSU and dont have time to run from pillar to post.

I am posting the snap of BIOS . Kindly have a look and suggest..[DOUBLEPOST=1407775138][/DOUBLEPOST]What do the snaps say bro ?
 

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Voltages seem within tolerances, so might not be the PSU.

The only connection between a motherboard's SATA controller and a SATA disk is a data cable. Just like you cannot kill a hard drive by copying files or deleting files, the same way a SATA controller cannot physically kill drives. If the controller is faulty, at the most it will encounter crc errors with the interface, nothing more.

The only things that can kill a hard disk is the power cable, or the hard disk itself.

Bad sectors are encountered when a disk attempts to write to a bad sector, you probably did not encounter the bad area till you were doing a fresh install of the OS. The other possibility is that the drive got damaged while you were shifting it to your new system. You can try shifting it back to your old system to confirm.
 
Tried performing a zero fill operation with seatools in the disk, but hdsentinel and hdtune status is the same. But the operation completed successfully. checkdisk reports 0 bad sectors .

I cannot move this hdd to the old PC as it is not with me now. I am pretty well sure that the status would be same even in that. And i dont understand how will shifting a hdd to another PC will harm it. I always do these kind of work over a thick table mat and there is no chance of the drive being subject to any shock whatsoever. I take utmost care even when dismantling the drive from the cabinet.

I ran hdd regenerator under scan and repair mode and it completed the session successfully without detecting any errors. It took around 3 hours time however.

If these results cannot be relied upon then i will have to go for a new hdd. Dont know why the hdd prices which have skyrocketed after tsunami have not come down yet.

So almost decided to get a new one but i am slightly skeptical about the PSU or the mobo hence checking it with a good working hdd. I am typing this from the same PC under windows 7 and havent experienced any issues so far.
 
Bought a new seagate hdd and the PC is going fine as of now.

But what i am skeptical about is the ACPI\PNP0A0A driver which controls the power management capabilities of the motherboard could have caused the issue. Because in either windows 7 or windows 8.1 , if i attempt to manually install this driver the driver installation window will not go away for a long time and say that the driver timed out. Sometimes after installing this driver and the PC is restarted, it boots to BIOS without my HDD listed. If PC is switched off for say 30 secs. then it will boot fine. Seems strange. I think this driver might have damaged my hdd.

The ASUS helpdesk did ask me to install this driver to bring performance.

Hence i have not installed this driver now. Keeping my fingers crossed
 
Buddy just try changing the sata cable of the HDD .. even cheap ones will do. Just don't use the one that came with the motherboard. I've faced such weird issue of HDD not detecting with an Asus motherboard where pata and sata hdds both were not detecting by the bios using the cables that came with the mobo.
 
Sorry bro. I dont have any idea to check that HDD as the new HDD is working fine in this PC without any issues . The only thing which matters is the performance but i am sure it will get fixed by the upcoming firmwares and drivers. I feel that this mobo FW is in the earlier stage and it needs a lot of improvement. If the sata cable is the real culprit, then even this hdd will cause issues.

Anyway thanks for your reply.
 
All seems to be running fine... till today 15 mins. back..

Started windows 7, chkdsk runs at boot for all drives. I have run full scan for C drive and skipped other drives. There was no power failure or abrupt shutdown since my last use.
windows 8.1 seems to boot fine. Restarted windows 8.1 to windows 7 and then it starts to run chkdsk from Drive C. Now i am very frustrated...

Now i have replaced the Asus SATA cable with a different one as a safety measure.

Kindly tell me what could trigger chkdsk unnecessarily during windows boot...[DOUBLEPOST=1408595711][/DOUBLEPOST]Uninstalled sata ahci drivers yesterday and I was hopeful that the issue will not arise hereafter. But now I can see chkdsk scanning when windows 7 is booted.

But I dont have any issues with Windows 8.1 till now. Is there a possibility for Windows 7 being incompatible with this hardware ?.

Guys this setup is driving me crazy, don't know what to do.. Kindly help..
 
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  • What drives are you using?
  • Why didn't you let chkdsk scan all the drives? As long as a drive's filesystem is flagged as dirty, it will keep running chkdsk
  • Is the faulty hard drive still connected?
  • What did you use to partition the drive?
  • Are your disks using GPT or MBR
  • Why are you dual-booting?
  • Is your OS genuine?
  • Have you changed the bus speeds in your BIOS?
 
  • What drives are you using?
  • ST1000DM003-1ER162
  • GH22NS50 DVD RW


  • Why didn't you let chkdsk scan all the drives? As long as a drive's filesystem is flagged as dirty, it will keep running chkdsk -
  • i have scanned the drive 3-4 times to let it go as it wishes i.e., to scan the drive fully no issues..
  • I even ran fsutil yesterday under windows 7 and it shows not dirty
But today i checked under windows 8.1 and it shows that all the partitions are dirty.
Please tell me what causes this. I installed windows 8.1 in C: and then windows 7 in G: . Is it possible for any antivirus/firewall to cause this issue ? Is there any problem in installing windows 7 after installing windows 8.1 ?
  • Is the faulty hard drive still connected? -
  • No , it isnt

  • What did you use to partition the drive?
  • EASEUS partition manager with WINPE Bootable cd

  • Are your disks using GPT or MBR -
  • MBR

  • Why are you dual-booting? -
  • Because i need both windows 7 and windows 8.1 for application compatibility issues in case if i face in future . Moreover windows 7 is permanently activated , but windows 8.1 needs activation once in 180 days.

  • Is your OS genuine?
  • No, But i have been dual booting both the O/Ses in my old PC since their release and they run excellent without any issues

  • Have you changed the bus speeds in your BIOS?
  • No
Now i have run chkdsk /f /r and this seems to have fixed the chkdsk issue. There isnt even any errors reported by chkdsk /f /r and no errors are reported in any of the partitions But after running the above command it seems to have fixed this as fsutil reports the drive as not dirty. Dont know why and how this dirty bit was flagged in my drive.
Since i have uninstalled the sata drivers which came with the motherboard i have to see if this has caused the issue..

My last resort would be to take the motherboard to the service center.
 
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I have been working only in windows 7 since yesterday and havent encountered any issue so far.

Will check with seatools.

In one forum i read that chkdsk causes issues with dual boot systems which have Win8 CP and Win 7. But that was due to the hybrid shutdown feature in windows 8 CP which triggered chkdsk under Win 7. Hope that cant be an issue as mine is Win 8.1 and Hybrid features disabled by default.
 
It seems for dual booting windows 7 and win 8.1 fast startup under windows 8.1 has to be disabled . Will do that and report ...
 
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Didn't experience chkdsk issue under win 7 even after working under win 8.1. So it is the fast startup feature which is the culprit.
But with my old pc this option was not enabled by default so I didn't have the chkdsk issue.
 
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I have disabled fast startup under windows 8.1 and now chkdsk doesnt run in my windows 7. I hope everything will be fine hereafter.
Expecting for more firmware updates for the new mobo.

Anyway thanx pal
 
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