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  #1  
Old October 22nd 20, 03:07 PM posted to alt.comp.hardware
bad sector
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Posts: 32
Default press 4 to unlock core


Having 'increasing' probs with my 8-core AMD destktop.
The board is an asus-xhair-IV

Boot often doesn't even begin and pops the subject
error message which includes "or F.. to load defaults"
and words of this nature.

CPU temps never above 50c.

BIOS should come up by touching "Del" but it takes a dozen
attempts for that to work with my new usb gaming keyboard.

This morning bios just would not detect 2 of my data drives
in sata slots 3 & 4 (using a 5-bay rack with 1-4 sata reserved).

After I don't know how many reboots bios still wasn't detecting
but "fdisk -l" finally picked one of them up.

On the last boot bios detected it too, got it mounted, and
it's presently taking 1tb of backups.

I would just like some ballpark hunches to start with, what
do symptoms like this suggest? Mobo, rack, bios?

  #2  
Old October 22nd 20, 04:52 PM posted to alt.comp.hardware
bad sector
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Posts: 32
Default press 4 to unlock core

On 2020-10-22 11:40, KenW wrote:
On Thu, 22 Oct 2020 10:07:15 -0400, bad sector
wrote:


Having 'increasing' probs with my 8-core AMD destktop.
The board is an asus-xhair-IV

Boot often doesn't even begin and pops the subject
error message which includes "or F.. to load defaults"
and words of this nature.

CPU temps never above 50c.

BIOS should come up by touching "Del" but it takes a dozen
attempts for that to work with my new usb gaming keyboard.

This morning bios just would not detect 2 of my data drives
in sata slots 3 & 4 (using a 5-bay rack with 1-4 sata reserved).

After I don't know how many reboots bios still wasn't detecting
but "fdisk -l" finally picked one of them up.

On the last boot bios detected it too, got it mounted, and
it's presently taking 1tb of backups.

I would just like some ballpark hunches to start with, what
do symptoms like this suggest? Mobo, rack, bios?


Battery cr-2032 could be going bad (low voltage)


KenW


thanks, I forgot them buggers are not rechargeable!

gonna check it out





  #3  
Old October 22nd 20, 05:53 PM posted to alt.comp.hardware
Paul[_28_]
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Posts: 1,467
Default press 4 to unlock core

KenW wrote:
On Thu, 22 Oct 2020 10:07:15 -0400, bad sector
wrote:

Having 'increasing' probs with my 8-core AMD destktop.
The board is an asus-xhair-IV

Boot often doesn't even begin and pops the subject
error message which includes "or F.. to load defaults"
and words of this nature.

CPU temps never above 50c.

BIOS should come up by touching "Del" but it takes a dozen
attempts for that to work with my new usb gaming keyboard.

This morning bios just would not detect 2 of my data drives
in sata slots 3 & 4 (using a 5-bay rack with 1-4 sata reserved).

After I don't know how many reboots bios still wasn't detecting
but "fdisk -l" finally picked one of them up.

On the last boot bios detected it too, got it mounted, and
it's presently taking 1tb of backups.

I would just like some ballpark hunches to start with, what
do symptoms like this suggest? Mobo, rack, bios?


Battery cr-2032 could be going bad (low voltage)


KenW


Making note of any special settings, before replacement.
As you'd have to put back the settings afterwards.

Sometimes taking digital camera pictures of the BIOS
screen in advance, is a good enough method.

Some Asus motherboards are famous for their bad
defaults choices in the BIOS, requiring things to be
corrected over and over again.

Later Asus boards have a "profile manager" and you can
load a saved profile after a battery replacement. My
newest system has that feature, and I have two profiles
saved in it. The interface in the BIOS screen for that,
is less than intuitive (you can't tell what you're
supposed to do).

If you have a multimeter, you can take a voltage
reading off the top of the CR2032, using any I/O mounting
screw as an alligator-clip ground. If 2.3V or less, replace.
When brand new, they can be in the 3.1V range.

If you unplug a computer with brand new battery, and
leave it in the junk room, the battery lasts for three years.

Paul
  #4  
Old October 22nd 20, 08:41 PM posted to alt.comp.hardware
VanguardLH[_2_]
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Posts: 1,453
Default press 4 to unlock core

bad sector wrote:

Having 'increasing' probs with my 8-core AMD destktop.
The board is an asus-xhair-IV

/
No, it's "Crosshair" --- but which model is unspecified.

If you want to severely narrow down the responses to only those that
have this product to know you meant crosshair instead of x then don't
use abbreviations that would be uncertain to other users. In order for
other users (not of this particular motherboard) to be able to lookup
the product to know what it is to help you, don't make them guess as to
what you have.

From what I found in searches, the product's name could be:

ASUS Crosshair IV Formula
or
ASUS Crosshair IV Extreme

Didn't know which to pick, so I first picked the Formula product. That
was introduced around April 2010. Then I checked on the Extreme model
which looks like it came out around November 2010. From forum posts,
looks like both were discontinued around 2014 (replaced by Rampage).
You didn't say how old is whichever one that you have. At 10 years old,
that is way too long for the CMOS battery. Even at 6 years, CMOS
batteries go weak or die by then. I replace mine about every 3-4 years.

During boot, the settings from the battery-powered CMOS table are used,
if usable, but if corrupt then the BIOS will try to retrieve the
defaults stored in the EEPROM chip(s).

It's a cheap troubleshooting step for an old computer exhibiting boot
problems: buy a CR-2032 coin cell battery, and replace the old and
likely dead one in the computer on the motherboard. Since both the
Formula and Extreme models are motherboards for desktop PCs, replacing
the CMOS battery is easy. Laptops are a bitch.

Boot often doesn't even begin and pops the subject
error message which includes "or F.. to load defaults"
and words of this nature.


The CMOS battery is probably dead. It cannot maintain the contents of
the CMOS table, so the contents of that table are corrupt or invalid
forcing the BIOS to load the defaults from the EEPROMs. Replace the
CMOS battery, reset the BIOS (use a jumper to short the 2-pin header on
the motherboard) to ensure the defaults get loaded into the CMOS table,
and retest.

I would just like some ballpark hunches to start with, what
do symptoms like this suggest? Mobo, rack, bios?


Most likely needs a new CR-2032 battery. I get a bunch of them at a
time for cheap at eBay, but make sure you aren't buying counterfeits
there. Ask the seller if the pic they show in their auction is of the
product, or a stock photo. If a pic of the actual product for sale,
often the packaging will indicate authentic or counterfeit (and there
are sites showing you pics of authentic vs counterfeit packaging). I
have lots of devices using the CR-2032 batteries, so I buy a bunch to
replace them all or have spares on hand when they die off. At Walmart,
it'll cost more (~$5), but you only need the 1 for the mobo for another
4 to 6 years before needing to replace it again. I usually stick with
Sony for the coin cell batteries.
  #5  
Old October 22nd 20, 10:39 PM posted to alt.comp.hardware
bad sector
external usenet poster
 
Posts: 32
Default press 4 to unlock core

On 2020-10-22 15:41, VanguardLH wrote:
bad sector wrote:

Having 'increasing' probs with my 8-core AMD destktop.
The board is an asus-xhair-IV

/
No, it's "Crosshair" --- but which model is unspecified.

If you want to severely narrow down the responses to only those that
have this product to know you meant crosshair instead of x then don't
use abbreviations that would be uncertain to other users. In order for
other users (not of this particular motherboard) to be able to lookup
the product to know what it is to help you, don't make them guess as to
what you have.


Noted, my sincere apologies.

From what I found in searches, the product's name could be:

ASUS Crosshair IV Formula
or
ASUS Crosshair IV Extreme


it's Crosshair IV Formula


The CMOS battery is probably dead. It cannot maintain the contents of
the CMOS table, so the contents of that table are corrupt or invalid
forcing the BIOS to load the defaults from the EEPROMs. Replace the
CMOS battery, reset the BIOS (use a jumper to short the 2-pin header on
the motherboard) to ensure the defaults get loaded into the CMOS table,
and retest.


I put a new one in it, no cigar, same problems


  #6  
Old October 22nd 20, 11:05 PM posted to alt.comp.hardware
bad sector
external usenet poster
 
Posts: 32
Default press 4 to unlock core

On 2020-10-22 12:53, Paul wrote:

Sometimes taking digital camera pictures of the BIOS screen in
advance, is a good enough method.

Some Asus motherboards are famous for their bad defaults choices in
the BIOS, requiring things to be corrected over and over again.


new battery

I do take pictures of the monitor when hot
onto something but for now I'm still poking
around in the dark and there seem to be multiple
issues involved

For starters i bought this DURGOD usb gaming keyboard
and 2 out of 10 boots I have to cycle it into another
usb port or I don't get to see BIOS with 'Del' nor get
to select anything from the frozen boot menu. Another
solution is to immediately plug in my old keyboard to
bypass this issue. I don't know if it's a keyboard
or a mobo fault.

Another problem might revolve around the sata
rack with mobile drawers for the drives. The last
dozen or so attempts I could not get any drive
plugged into the #4 slot detected. Suspecting the
drive that usually goes in there I plugged it in bybassing
the rack and then it got detected although I also
wondered if its 22,000 hours could be a factor.
When I initially posted this drive was taking a backup,
now recognised OK on a direct sata cable fdisk
showed it as a dos drive with no partition. Gdisk
showed the gpt table and the only partition but
on mounting it it was empty. When I plug this
drive into its usual #4 slot it doesn't get detected,
if I plug it into the #3 swapping with the one in there
then neither #3 nor #4 ger detected. A lot of this is
way over my head.

The boot drive is a brand new ssd and booting one
of the installations on it I got a filesystem error,
yet fsck from another installation proved it 'clean'.
This was a Suse-Leap partition, and subsequent
boots on it went without any problems.

So I'm like exhausted for right but will next connect
all drives directly bypassing the mobile tray setup
and using the old keyboard.

Later









  #7  
Old October 23rd 20, 12:40 AM posted to alt.comp.hardware
Paul[_28_]
external usenet poster
 
Posts: 1,467
Default press 4 to unlock core

bad sector wrote:
On 2020-10-22 12:53, Paul wrote:

Sometimes taking digital camera pictures of the BIOS screen in
advance, is a good enough method.

Some Asus motherboards are famous for their bad defaults choices in
the BIOS, requiring things to be corrected over and over again.


new battery

I do take pictures of the monitor when hot
onto something but for now I'm still poking
around in the dark and there seem to be multiple
issues involved

For starters i bought this DURGOD usb gaming keyboard
and 2 out of 10 boots I have to cycle it into another
usb port or I don't get to see BIOS with 'Del' nor get
to select anything from the frozen boot menu. Another
solution is to immediately plug in my old keyboard to
bypass this issue. I don't know if it's a keyboard
or a mobo fault.

Another problem might revolve around the sata
rack with mobile drawers for the drives. The last
dozen or so attempts I could not get any drive
plugged into the #4 slot detected. Suspecting the
drive that usually goes in there I plugged it in bybassing
the rack and then it got detected although I also
wondered if its 22,000 hours could be a factor.
When I initially posted this drive was taking a backup,
now recognised OK on a direct sata cable fdisk
showed it as a dos drive with no partition. Gdisk
showed the gpt table and the only partition but
on mounting it it was empty. When I plug this
drive into its usual #4 slot it doesn't get detected,
if I plug it into the #3 swapping with the one in there
then neither #3 nor #4 ger detected. A lot of this is
way over my head.

The boot drive is a brand new ssd and booting one
of the installations on it I got a filesystem error,
yet fsck from another installation proved it 'clean'.
This was a Suse-Leap partition, and subsequent
boots on it went without any problems.

So I'm like exhausted for right but will next connect
all drives directly bypassing the mobile tray setup
and using the old keyboard.

Later


I have had a Western Digital drive damage a SATA port
on my Southbridge. My Typing Machine only has five working
Southbridge SATA ports at the moment. The sixth port is
dead. The hard drive that did this is "retired" and is
not used as a spare for OS installs either.

The SATA interface has a limit on common mode voltage
range. I don't know if a SATA driver on one hardware,
can manage to create enough voltage to damage the
receiver interface on a second device. It really
should not be able to do that. Yet... I have a dead
port.

Paul
  #8  
Old October 23rd 20, 12:41 AM posted to alt.comp.hardware
VanguardLH[_2_]
external usenet poster
 
Posts: 1,453
Default press 4 to unlock core

bad sector wrote:

BIOS should come up by touching "Del" but it takes a dozen
attempts for that to work with my new usb gaming keyboard.


USB is a polled interface. PS/2 is an interrupt-driven interface. If
the computer gets super busy, the USB device may not get its chance at
the next polling interval, and why USB keyboards can lag in video games
compared to PS/2 keyboards. Just because a product says "gamer" in its
product name doesn't mean it really qualifies for that type of use.

Did the keyboard come with a USB-to-PS/2 adapter? If so, the keyboard
has the logic to switch between the different hardware protocols. If
your computer has a PS/2 port then I'd use that for the keyboard.
Gamers prefer PS/2 to USB because there is less delay or lag on
keypresses with PS/2, and PS/2 supports more concurrent keypresses than
USB. That's why some gamer mobos still come with a PS/2 port. Also, no
reason to toss the availability of a USB port if a PS/2 port is
available.

I found:

https://www.asus.com/us/Motherboards...pecifications/

where it mentions one PS/2 port (for keyboard). If your USB gaming
keyboard came with a PS/2 adapter then it supports both USB and PS/2
hardware protocols (internal logic has it switch between them). If the
keyboard did not include a PS/2 adapter, it is a USB-only keyboard. You
cannot simply plug a USB-only keyboard into a PS/2 adapter since the
USB-only keyboard doesn't support the PS/2 hardware protocol. You can
get an active hub that converts from USB to PS/2 to let you connect a
USB-only keyboard to a PS/2 port, but those are more costly than just
getting a USB+PS/2 or PS/2 keyboard.

It has been a long time since I've seen this, but some old BIOSes must
be configured in their settings to "Support legacy devices" which
includes the PS/2 ports. If you see that setting in the BIOS then
enable it should you decide to get a PS/2 keyboard or get a USB+PS/2
keyboard and use the USB-to-PS/2 adapter.

Which USB "gamer" keyboard do you have?
  #9  
Old October 23rd 20, 12:45 AM posted to alt.comp.hardware
VanguardLH[_2_]
external usenet poster
 
Posts: 1,453
Default press 4 to unlock core

bad sector wrote:

After I don't know how many reboots bios still wasn't detecting
but "fdisk -l" finally picked one of them up.


fdisk? I haven't see that available since the ancient MS/IBM-DOS days,
or in Linux. What OS are you running on this computer?

I'm not sure the OS is important since the problems you describe are
accessing the BIOS or its POST screen not listing all your devices. The
POST screen presents its findings before any OS gets loaded.

Do you even see the POST screen? Or is the BIOS configured to display
some ad banner, like "Hey, you're using ASUS"? I'd get rid of any ad
banner display during boot up, and have the BIOS show its POST screen.
The ad banner is worthless. The POST screen shows valuable information.
  #10  
Old October 23rd 20, 01:33 AM posted to alt.comp.hardware
bad sector
external usenet poster
 
Posts: 32
Default press 4 to unlock core

On 2020-10-22 19:40, Paul wrote:
bad sector wrote:
On 2020-10-22 12:53, Paul wrote:

Sometimes taking digital camera pictures of the BIOS screen in
advance, is a good enough method.


Some Asus motherboards are famous for their bad defaults choices
in the BIOS, requiring things to be corrected over and over
again.


new battery

I do take pictures of the monitor when hot

onto something but for now I'm still poking around in the dark and
there seem to be multiple

issues involved


For starters i bought this DURGOD usb gaming keyboard

and 2 out of 10 boots I have to cycle it into another usb port or I
don't get to see BIOS with 'Del' nor get to select anything from
the frozen boot menu. Another solution is to immediately plug in my
old keyboard to bypass this issue. I don't know if it's a keyboard


or a mobo fault.

Another problem might revolve around the sata

rack with mobile drawers for the drives. The last

dozen or so attempts I could not get any drive plugged into the #4
slot detected. Suspecting the drive that usually goes in there I
plugged it in bybassing the rack and then it got detected although
I also wondered if its 22,000 hours could be a factor. When I
initially posted this drive was taking a backup, now recognised OK
on a direct sata cable fdisk showed it as a dos drive with no
partition. Gdisk showed the gpt table and the only partition but

on mounting it it was empty. When I plug this drive into its usual
#4 slot it doesn't get detected, if I plug it into the #3 swapping
with the one in there then neither #3 nor #4 ger detected. A lot
of this is way over my head.


The boot drive is a brand new ssd and booting one of the
installations on it I got a filesystem error, yet fsck from another
installation proved it 'clean'.

This was a Suse-Leap partition, and subsequent

boots on it went without any problems.

So I'm like exhausted for right but will next connect all drives
directly bypassing the mobile tray setup and using the old
keyboard.

Later


I have had a Western Digital drive damage a SATA port on my
Southbridge. My Typing Machine only has five working Southbridge SATA
ports at the moment. The sixth port is dead. The hard drive that did
this is "retired" and is not used as a spare for OS installs
either.

The SATA interface has a limit on common mode voltage range. I don't
know if a SATA driver on one hardware, can manage to create enough
voltage to damage the

receiver interface on a second device. It really should not be able
to do that. Yet... I have a dead port.


While trying to connect the sata cable into it I broke
the high-time drive's SATA connector... I guess the
gods spared me a lot of useless grief minutes before
the debate

With this drive now out of it, I placed it into slot #4
leaving #3 empty, bios picked it up no problem so that
clears the sata circuit including the disk rack

I still get the 'press 4' stuff and complaints about
no overclocking, I answer the keyboard issue in
another answer, plus I have a strictly OS issue
that I will take to the suse group. Soooooo, it
looks like still a multiple-cause issue with ONE culprit
down, the old WD spinner.




















 




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