Afraid my mobo may have bombed out - Asus Rampage II Gene

Hi all


My first post here. I have an Asus Rampage II Gene, which appears to have developed a faulty storage controller.

If no one objects, can I just run the symptoms past you? Reason being I'm about 2 clicks away from ordering a replacement, but I don't want to get a new MB only to discover the problem is something else.

Symptoms:
- Started with system freezing ad requiring a reboot
- After so many freezes, Windows Startup Repair had to be performed. The more often the freezes occurred, the more often (and the longer it took) startup repairs had to be performed. At this stage I thought it might have been my SATA drive giving up the ghost.
- About 3 days or so ago, another freeze occurred. Reboot the PC yet again, only to be greeted with the generic "please insert system disk to continue booting".
- Finally get back into Windows, only to find that my PC now no longer picks up my USB drives...
- Reboot, go into BIOS, no SATA being picked up. If you shut down the PC completely and switch it back on again though, it picks up the drive fine (or at least up to about 5 minutes after logging into Windows)


My current situation is that I am effectively unable to use my PC at all. If I start it up from scratch, the CMOS boot up sequence takes far longer than usual, then on the off chance that I'm greeted with a Windows login screen, I get jittery mouse movement, randomly freezing screens and eventually, complete system failure. The whole system just hangs. I'm able to move the mouse pointer for the most part, but anything else is just unresponsive.
If I just leave the thing like that for a while, it eventually spits out a BSOD and that's where it stays.

I apologize if it sounds like I might be a little irritated with this, but if it sounds like I am, that's because I am.
I had to consciously restrain myself from picking up my PC and throwing it down the side of the mountain a couple of meters down the road, just for the satisfaction of giving it a reason not to work.


But back on track, would the experts here reckon that the symptoms describe a classic MB failure? If you say yes, I'm ordering a replacement right now.
 
Before pulling the trigger on a new board did you test your power supply with a digital multimeter?

Did you run any diagnostics on your hard drive or did you change out the SATA cable?

Did you try a different CMOS battery? Have you tried setting your motherboard's BIOS to default settings?
 
Hi Route44


Thanks for the reply, in summary:

- Swapped out the SATA cable, tried a different SATA port, no difference.
- Tried setting the BIOS to default
- Tried flashing the BIOS with a newer version
- Tried securing any and all add-ons (RAM, checked power plugs in drives etc.)

I haven't checked my PSU with a multimeter as I don't have one unfortunately. From what I could tell though, it looks like it's still going OK.
Also haven't changed the CMOS battery, but the BIOS settings seem to stay in place even throughout the multiple soft and hard reboots I've performed recently.

I suppose it could be the RAM as well, though I would've expected the symptoms to be slightly different than what I've seen so far.
 
You can pick up a good digital multimeter for $20-25. I have a Sears Craftsman that goes for $22 and it has proved to be a good investment. Radio Shack also has some nice ones.

It wouldn't hurt to a) run Memtest and b) see what happens if you try booting up with less RAM installed.

I think you are correct in leaning towards the mobo but it never hurts to check for a less expensive possibility. :)
 
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