jerryc41 Loc: Catskill Mts of NY

I built a computer last Nocember based on an Asus Z170-A motherboard. Lately, it could take half a dozen attempts to get it to boot into Windows 10. Sometimes it starts right up, and sometimes I have to hit the reset button several times.

Asus support told me to get the latest Windows and Asus updates. That didn't make any difference, so they told me to send it to them for repair or wait till they have some in stock, and they will send me one, and I can do a swap.

I find it hard to believe that a defect in the board would cause this problem. Any ideas?

WayneT Loc: Paris, TN

I've had bad motherboards in the past. They are few and far between but they do occur and are a real pain in the butt because they are very hard to diagnose. Get them to swap it out for you, that's going to be your best bet Jerry.

WayneT Loc: Paris, TN

Asus boards are some of the best but can be temperamental. Because of that I switched over to Gigabyte boards many years ago and have never looked back. The newest one I'm using now is a 2011.3 board and it runs smooth a silk.

jerryc41 Loc: Catskill Mts of NY

jerryc41 Loc: Catskill Mts of NY

Thanks. I built one for my son at the same time, with an Asus Z170-E, and that's working fine. I guess I just got unlucky.

rpena2860

Do you see the BIOS POST screen and it just won't finish booting or just a black screen when it won't start? If no POST, do you hear fans spin-up? Have you checked Power Supply, reseated and checked RAM?

JCam Loc: MD Eastern Shore

Jerry,

How long is it taking to boot up? Time moves very slowly when you are waiting for the computer. I have a similar situation with my 5 year old Lenovo running Win7Pro when starting my Firefox browser in the morning, but if I'm patient--not my greatest virtue --, it does start but those 30 seconds seem like minutes.

Jim

WayneT Loc: Paris, TN

I don't turn my systems off I just put them to sleep. That one action eliminates a boot up time, it just takes a few seconds.

cthahn

You obviously don't understand anything about computers. The company you purchased it from has offered to solve the problem. Just a waste of time and effort thinking some one here is going to solve it.

dcampbell52 Loc: Clearwater Fl

Jerry, I have an Asus MB and it was being difficult. I have 16gb of memory and it was only recognizing 8gb. I called ASUS support and the techy originally tried to tell me that the board only supported 8gb. We discussed this back and forth for 30 minutes or so and I finally got him to read the manual and tech notes for the board. It specifically said that it supported 16gb in 2 banks of memory. I told him that I wanted to speak with a supervisor. I got the supervisor and they shipped me a new MB. (at first, they wanted me to ship the old one to them before they shipped the new one but they changed their tune when I explained that I had a business and that if they wanted to do that then I would bill them for lost revenue while they had me down. The supervisor shipped the replacement board to me, I replaced it and shipped the old one back. My computer now recognizes all 16gb and seems to work fine. Asus is generally a good company but they sometimes forget that there are people outside of their company that deal in computers every day and can also diagnose things.. Stick to your guns with them and if you don't get a response that makes sense then ask for a supervisor. Now, don't get crazy in asking for stuff, be reasonable and they will probably do it. I've used Asus and Gigabyte mother boards (and some others) and have had few issues. And the issues that I've had have been resolved. Only companies that I've ever had trouble with were IBM (back in the day) and Apple.

bamfordr Loc: Campbell CA

Since you rolled your own, I assume you've tried all of the following, but just in case ...

Assuming you're getting power (indicator lights on board) memory is a possible culprit. Can you tell from POST messages where boot is hanging up? If it's in the memory self test you can reseat DIMM(s). If that doesn't work and you have multiple DIMM you could try removing them one at a time.

Another possibility is a bad peripheral - DVD drive, USB device, USB port connector. I have had a bad drive and a bad keyboard hang up a boot in what appeared to be a mystery. (I also had a book pressing a key do the same kind of thing.). Disconnect as much as possible. If problem resolves, reconnect one by one.

markngolf Loc: Bridgewater, NJ

I have an ASUS laptop. It has worked flawlessly since purchase (2 yrs). I had the occasion to Chat with them and found their tech support excellent. Why not have them send you a replacement and see it that resolves the boot issue. While it may not be likely for the MB to be defective, it certainly is possible. You seem to be quite knowledgeable about technology so I imagine you built the PC with the utmost of care.
Good luck Jerry. I know how frustrating PC issues can be.
Mark

jtlareau Loc: Hurst, TX (originally Toledo, OH)

I'm not a big fan of "hibernation" as I have had numerous issues with it on desktops over the years. My favored solution is to change my settings to sleep the monitor instead, and allow the system to always run. You can change other things too, like spinning the hard drives down, without allowing the entire system to sleep. Then just move your mouse and wait a few seconds while the system responds.

Side benefit, you get automatic maintenance of patches and system will automatically reboot if you so choose. With windows 10, I have not had many issues using the system this way. (I also build all my own systems, have used Asus and currently using Gigabyte)

WayneT Loc: Paris, TN

You're not the only one that has had problems with hibernation in the past. It was always a problem for me but with Win 10 "sleep" works like a charm. I have a laptop and 2 desktop computers and I have only had one occurrence in over 2 years where I had to reboot the system because it failed to come up out of sleep on its own.

markngolf Loc: Bridgewater, NJ

Just another idea. I had issues with boot, reboot, ... with my desktop/Intel board. I eventually determined, after many months of frustration, two defective hardware issues.
One was 1 faulty RAM dimm of the 4 x 8GB I had purchased and installed. The other was a faulty network adapter - not causing boot issues, but internet connection after "sleep".I replaced the faulty dimm and installed a new network adapter. No more issues.

Jerry, you may want to run, overnight, Memtest86. I did and it identified memory errors. Then, all I had to do was to determine which dimm (s) were faulty.
http://memtest86.com/. It's worth a try.
Mark