Can anyone help with a curious boot issue please?

[InAmberClad]

Hey all,

I haven't posted before but have lurked for goodness knows how long over the course of my last decade or so of pc building and always found the discussions and advice here helpful and insightful. Luck had been with me thus far and I'd never had an issue I couldn't solve on my own but my latest build has thrown me a curveball that I can't work out so I thought I would throw it out there for someone with more knowledge to peruse.

I built my new machine back in March in anticipation of the newly releasing 1080ti (upgrading from a tired 2500k GTX950 build). I built the machine without the card as it was a preorder, but I went ahead and put the rest together anyway. All was fine, I used the pc as a general internet machine etc and played a few levels of dark forces and other such ancient delights. The point is... everything was hunky dory.

Fast forward to last week when my 1080ti arrived and I eagerly stuck it in the case. Everything works a treat, my games are all playing beautifully at 1440p and 4k and I'm a totally happy camper. Except for the fact that on maybe 1 in 3 boots... the pc won't start. I'm on a ROG STRIX mobo... when I boot the PC it shows me the paused boot screen thing that allows you time to get into the BIOS. Then the ROG logo that usually pops up for a second with a loading circle underneath. After that it SHOULD load windows, but on this bad boot it goes black then pops up a pink bar across the screen then goes dead. The fans etc are all still running but nothing else happens. At that point if I press the reset button it boots absolutely fine in seconds. Once it's into windows it runs like a dream the whole time. I can't narrow it down to any specific scenario... Sometimes it will happily boot after two days of downtime. Other times it won't boot even if I only just switched it off. It doesn't seem to be particularly related to cold booting.

Here is a picture of the display when the error occurs :

It's the same exact pattern every time.

I have scoured the web and people suggest a variety of things from bad gfx to bad overclocks to insufficient power supply. I used all the calculators I could find when I chose the PSU so I'm hoping that's not the problem but I'm willing to bow to superior knowledge on this one if anyone has any thoughts. The overclock on the cpu was running fine before I put the 1080ti in. I stress tested the heck out of it and didn't have any issues at all. The issue only presented when the Graphics card was installed.

The build is as follows :
CPU - Intel 7700K - running at 4.9GHz (overclocked using the ROG DIP5 software, 1.375v)
CPU cooler - ID Cooling Frostflow 240L closed loop
MOBO - Asus ROG Strix Z270G
RAM - 16GB Corsair Vengeance 3000MHZ (2x8GB)
GFX - Zotac 1080ti Amp edition (not extreme)
PSU - Corsair RM650X - 650W
HDD - Boot drive - Samsung 850 Evo 250GB, Storage - 2TB regular WD blue
CASE - Corsair Carbide 88R
ACCESORIES - (other things which draw power from the psu in other words) 3 x120mm Riing case fans, 4x 8inch led strips on molex connectors, 1 xbox one controller, 1 usb headset.
OS - Windows 10 Home 64bit

Huge thanks in advance to anyone who has any ideas that I might try!

 

[Quartz]

A couple of things to check:

Do you have the latest BIOS for your motherboard?
Do you get the problem if the GPU is in the second x16 slot?

 

[InAmberClad]

Hi Quartz,

Thanks for the help.

Yes I have the latest BIOS. I updated it once when I first setup the machine and then again the day before putting the 1080ti in as there was a new update and I had seen people saying online that their PCs weren't playing nicely with the ti's without a BIOS update.

I haven't tried moving the card to the other slot. The manual for my mobo says that the second slot is a x8 slot rather than a x16. Would this matter for a single card? The specs said it had 2 x16 slots but the manual suggests the second one is only a x8. If that isn't an issue then I'll switch it over and see.

It will be hard to find an instant answer to whether it has stopped unfortunately... today it hasn't done it at all, but yesterday it did it twice.

 

[Quartz]

I haven't tried moving the card to the other slot. The manual for my mobo says that the second slot is a x8 slot rather than a x16. Would this matter for a single card?

You will see no difference in performance.

The specs said it had 2 x16 slots but the manual suggests the second one is only a x8. If that isn't an issue then I'll switch it over and see.

There will be two slots that are physically x16; the second will be physically x16 but electrically x8.

 

[InAmberClad]

Interesting, thanks. I'll switch it over and see if it makes a difference.

 

[Brizzles]

It is caused by the latest Windows 10 Creators update.

I had exactly the same issue as your photo shows.

Try turning GameMode off in the windows settings ( if you have it enabled ).

It only effects certain boot-ups and doesn't cause any harm, apart from the annoyance.

 

[InAmberClad]

Well this has been a frustrating evening so far!

I can't get the graphics card out of the motherboard! The heatsink on the card has pinned the little release catch in place and it's a lever action one rather than a slide. It's crazy tight in the case now that the card is installed so I think to stand a chance of getting it out I would have to take everything out of the case and start from scratch. Is the PCI-E slot a likely candidate? or is it just a routine check type thing?

It's funny how even after twenty years computers can still throw something new in your way isn't it!

Also I noticed, on the subject of slots... that if I installed the card in the second slot the fans will be completely blocked by the PSU.

Brizzles... thanks for this. That was a ray of hope! I just turned off GameMode and rebooted... and unfortunately it did the error for the first time today . If windows 10 is the cause I wonder if it takes more than one reboot to properly shake out? I went to settings/Gaming/GameMode and slid the slider to off. Is there more I should do?

The three things that occurred just prior to this issue were (in order) 1) New BIOS installed using the ASUS ez update thing (and subsequent reset of the overclock on the cpu because the bios wiped it) 2)Windows 10 creators update, 3)1080ti Installation.

 

[Brizzles]

Brizzles... thanks for this. That was a ray of hope! I just turned off GameMode and rebooted... and unfortunately it did the error for the first time today . If windows 10 is the cause I wonder if it takes more than one reboot to properly shake out? I went to settings/Gaming/GameMode and slid the slider to off. Is there more I should do?

Yes, just move the slider.

I had the graphical line you pictured once after the Creators update, followed by a really long boot..

Since then i have no problems, the occasional slow boot up, but it seems to iron itself out.

I wouldn't worry or spend too much time on it.

 

[Chris Anata]

It's better to bring it to a local tech. motherboard issue i think

 

[Plec]

>snip<

Have you tried running it without the ROG DIP5 clock for a few days?

If you haven't it would be useful to eliminate the clock as a factor.

But, the Windows Creator update is causing issues everywhere - e.g. my laptop is borked because of it but waiting for updates to fix.

 

[InAmberClad]

Thanks again to everyone helping. I really appreciate it.

I've put all the BIOS settings and the DIP5 settings back to defaults. It's still doing it at the moment but I'll give it a few days with that and the game mode deactivation to see if anything changes.

I can pretty reliably cause the error by turning off the PSU power switch, unplugging the power cord, waiting about 2 minutes and then plugging back in, switching on and booting. It's not a 100% guarantee that it will do it, but it's almost every time. Once it's booted once f I just sit here and turn it off and on again over and over it boots reliably the majority of the time.

I left it sat on the pink line today. It goes black afterwards and all the fans keep spinning. Eventually after another thirty seconds or so it silently reboots itself and then goes into windows normally the same way it does if I hit the reset button myself.

 

[ibpalle]

This is an issue with the Nvidia driver. Update to the one released today and it will go away. 382.05 did it for me - it's even mentioned in the release notes as an issue from cold boot. Possibly it's a combination of creators update and Nvidia driver.

 

[InAmberClad]

Thanks to everyone who chimed in on this.

I'm pretty sure that ibpalle was right about the driver, I updated it on release day last week and since then it hasn't happened once no matter what I do with the power etc.

I'm just glad it wasn't the power supply etc! Now I can relax and enjoy the new machine.

Thanks again!

 

[primeshooter3]

Thank you for this thread! I also had the issue and have just updated the driver, funny it usually downloads it and warns me there is an update but it'd been sitting there a week whilst I got annoyed with this daft issue.

 

[Plec]

Thank you for this thread! I also had the issue and have just updated the driver, funny it usually downloads it and warns me there is an update but it'd been sitting there a week whilst I got annoyed with this daft issue.

Primeshooter3, post the solution of your problem in your original thread too as it will help others identify similar issues when searching the forums.

Glad the link worked for you.

 

[primeshooter3]

Will Do!