Intermittent failure to boot with green Q-LED on (ROG STRIX Z690-F GAMING)

[3Shirts]

Hello all. I have a strange intermittent problem

My PC specs:

ASUS ROG Strix Z690-F Gaming WiFi Motherboard
Intel i7 12700k | NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3080 [KFA2 ]
2x16GB CORSAIR VENGEANCE RGB DDR5 RAM 6000MHz CL30
2x16GB Kingston DDR5-5600MHZ CL40 FURY BEAST
Corsair CP-9020187-UK 750 W RM750x ATX Power Supply
WD_BLACK SN850 1TB NVMe Internal Gaming SSD

BIOS Version: 2802

Problem:
SOMETIMES. After a boot I am greeted with UEFI - Enter BIOS screen without way to enter it. It just freezes. Green Q-LED light stays on. I believe this is a problem of not finding the boot device but it happens intermittently and I don't know why I can't get into the BIOS when it happens. Surely you can do that even with no boot device?!

Often it happens when rebooting from a fully functioning session so I don't know why it's "losing" the boot device. The frequency of the issue varies from 2-10 boots and once it happens, it can be many reboots or just a lot of time until it works again with no rhymoe or reason as to why it does. Full power cycles (cable out) etc don't help.

I've tried:

• Reinstalling Windows and formatting the main boot drive
• Disconnecting the secondary SATA SSD
• Disabling fast boot
• Clearing CMOS
• Reseating the NVME drive

It's on the latest BIOS version. I'm pulling my hair out. Please help

[3Shirts]

Ran a full hour test and no problems at all. I've also done a couple of reboots with the drive temp higher (~48c) after gaming but it was fine so that's another theory out the window.

I'm really stumped here.

[Nate152]

Does all look good in device manager?

You can run the system file checker, if there are any missing or corrupted files, it should fix them.

Open Command Prompt as an administrator, type in sfc /scannow and hit enter. (Put a space between c and /)

[3Shirts]

Nope all good. 

[Nate152]

Is it possible a usb device is causing the freezing? Disconnect all usb devices except for your mouse and keyboard.

Since your hardware all checks out, it could be software/windows related, you could try reinstalling windows with only the boot drive connected.

[3Shirts]

No I've tried it with everything disconnected and it made no difference. I really don't want to reinstall the whole OS. Especially since it's intermittent. I don't understand what would cause it to fail sometimes

[Nate152]

In the bios on the boot tab, check the first boot device shows "Windows Boot Manager". This is what you want to see and shows you've done a windows UEFI install.

On the boot tab, you can try disabling CSM and set Secure Boot to "Other Os".

[rulik006]

I had 690-F with the same problem, also Z690-A strix D4 has this
it's just defective Asus boards

[3Shirts]

Well I am out of ideas on this. I feel like I've tried everything. It seems to have been better behaved recently but I don't know why.

[Nate152]

Ok, so your hardware all checks out.

Have you checked your drive for errors? You can do this by opening command prompt as an administrator, type in chkdsk and hit enter. You may need to select Y for yes and reboot.