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NVMe Issues After Power Outage

MrSmitty
Level 7
  • ASUS ROG Maximus Z790 Hero (2202 BIOS)
  • i9-12900KS
  • Corsair Dominator DDR5 6400 2x16GB
  • 4080 Super FE
  • 990 Pro 1TB NVMe - OS drive
  • 2 x 990 Pro 2TB NVMe in RAID 0
  • 3 x 870 Evo (500GB, 1TB, 2TB)
  • Win 11 Pro with latest updates
 
Everything had ran fine for the past few months leading up to this. PC was plugged into a new APC surge protector. High winds caused some power outages on Wednesday, flickering power then it was out for about an hour. Went to use the PC on Thursday, it was off which was odd, it usually boots back up after an outage. Powered it on and the keyboard wasn’t responding at the login screen. Restarted and it was stuck in the ‘Preparing Automatic Repair’ loop. Could not start in safe mode and couldn’t repair the installation with Windows USB.
 
Unplugged all USB cables, same issue. All drives could be seen in diskpart at this time. Reseated RAM, disconnected extra drives (besides NVMe RAID), same issue. Checked BIOS settings (CSM, etc.) and everything was good. Plugged in clone backup drive (SATA) and was able to boot. NVMe drives could be seen in Windows. Wiped the original OS NVMe drive and cloned the SATA OS drive to it thinking I just had a corrupt Windows install. Tried to boot from that and got the Recovery error code screen, could not do anything from there. No F1 or F8, it would cycle back to the same screen. Tried to boot from the backup SATA drive again and got the Recovery screen this time with it now. Diskpart would not see anything and neither would the Windows install drive selection screen if I booted from USB. After a few power cycles the BIOS would not see any drives either.
 
Cleared CMOS, same issue. Flashed BIOS to 2202 again, same issue but the BIOS would see the drives again now. Flashed BIOS to the latest one (2301 yesterday), same issue. Plugged in old SATA drive that I had laying around and I was able to install windows on that and boot just fine. Could not see the NVMe drives on the MB in Windows though. Tried cloning that windows installation to the original NVMe drive via a USB adapter and I would get the recovery error code screen again when I would try to boot from it when installed back in the motherboard.
 
Both the backup SATA drive that stopped working and the original NVMe drive are accessible and appear to be fine when I plug them into my other PC via USB adapters. I’m guessing the power outage screwed the motherboard and now something to do with the NVMe slots is toast? Could cloning from that backup SATA OS drive to the NVMe drive cause some sort of corruption to the SATA drive that would’ve caused it to stop booting properly? 
 
Has anyone ever seen anything like this? Sort of at a loss here now with what do next.
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2 REPLIES 2

Phenomnomnom
Level 8

I had a similar issue a while back, and it turned out to be a blown capacitor around the cpu socket. Check all the capacitors, and even do a smell test to see if you can detect something. If you don't find anything, you may try getting an external NVME dock and plug them into another pc to verify.  Good luck dude.

I appreciate the reply, thanks for the heads up. I’ll see if I can see anything like that. I’ve plugged the OS NVMe into another PC with a USB adapter and it showed up fine. I was able to format and everything on there, that’s why I’m leaning toward this being a MB issue. I’ll do more troubleshooting this week then try to open a ticket with ASUS and start the dreaded RMA process.