EEPC has been corrupted; PC does not boot and only goes into bios

[luismenendez]

Hi there,

I think this is the first time i have had this problem after building and repairing more than 50 computers in my 20 years of aficionado!

I have been having problems with my W11 for a few weeks but i didn't want the pain to reinstall Windows 11. The PC was working but I had the occasional crash.

Today, I went to boot the PC and it didn't boot properly but i could see Windows after keying my password. I noticed that windows didn't load properly so I rebooted.

After a bit of thinking the PC went into the bios. I checked the settings and all seemed normal and rebooted again.

To my surprise, I got the message EEPC has been corrupted in a back screen. I don't have any antivirus etc. After unsuccessfully trying to boot into Windows a couple of times, I loaded the bios default settings, and again the same message of EEPC corrupted. I checked bios again and I couldn't see my boot drive (Corsair 1TB PCIe 4) but I could see my 2 SATA drives.

I was thinking of performing a Windows repair using a USB pen but my bios can't see the Corsair M2 boot drive; it has disappeared from the bios!

I tried safeboot but didn't work as again the bios cannot see my boot drive

I guess I could try to move the Corsair PCIe drive into another slot and see what happens (likely the same EEPC corruption message!) but that means taking apart the PC as the motherboard has a metal shield covering all PCIe slots.

Any ideas guys?

I think I might have to remove the M2 Corsair drive and replace it by a new one and reinstall all (hoping the mobo is fine!).

Many thanks overclockers!

 

[Deleted member 266365]

From superuser forums:

After several days i managed to solve this.
I understand this boot memory thing is probably related to the type of boot bios process so i tried to change in the bios the setting that tell BIOS how to boot.
My old setting was on Legacy and UEFI boot process.I assumed the new UEFI will probably have more memory for what the bootloader was trying to do so i changed it to "UEFI only" - it worked and everything booted fine.
After booting up windows (and creating a recovery usb drive) i went through event logs to try and see what caused this and the only clues led to windows defender (as i said before i do not have mcafee).
These are messages from the event log from the last time the computer was ok before the error:

The start type of the Windows Defender Antivirus Boot Driver service was changed from demand start to boot start.

The start type of the Windows Defender Antivirus Mini-Filter Driver service was changed from demand start to boot start.

The start type of the Windows Defender Antivirus Service service was changed from demand start to auto start.

DCOM got error "1115" attempting to start the service wuauserv with arguments "Unavailable" in order to run the server:{E60687F7-01A1-40AA-86AC-DB1CBF673334}

I have no idea what windows defender tried to do with the MBR and bootloader but i am happy this was solved easily.

 

[luismenendez]

Thanks for that but I already had legacy disabled and UEFI only. I changed it to legacy after the problem but didn't make any difference. I might change it back to UEFI only.

 

[luismenendez]

I installed a new M2 instead of the Corsair and it is seen in the mobo but still getting the message of EEPC corrupted!

Wondering if a bios flash would recover the EEPC or clear the message.

I cleared the bios but the message didn't disappear.

 

[eeii]

Might be worth taking the battery out the mother board for a few hours to see if that clears it. The only other option would be a bios update.

 

[luismenendez]

thanks eell, i will remove the battery overnight and see what happens

 

[luismenendez]

battery off didn't work, flash bios didn't work also so still getting the EEPC corrupted message.

I guess is time to get in touch with ASRock!