Frozen Time Clock in UEFI - The Fix

[Raja]

Is your motherboard suffering from the malady of a frozen time clock in UEFI?

If so try the following:

1) Reflash the latest UEFI, using EZ Flash 2 or USB BIOS flashback.

2) When the system POSTs, enter UEFI. Once in UEFI power down the motherboard. Keep the PSU attached and "on". Only the motherboard is powered off and in "standby". You will see the MB standby lights on (boards with start buttons onboard will be lit). Standby does not mean the board is actually running, standby means the board has power, but you have not pressed the power button to turn it on. Make sure the board is off before you go to the next step in this list. You will know if it is off because if you leave it for 5 seconds it should not POST~BOOT - this means it is in standby.



3) Clear CMOS (Clear RTC) for 10 seconds. This will clear the Management Engine.

4) Power up the system, enter UEFI, set the clock and then save and exit.

5) Update MEI driver to Version 9.5.14.1724 in the OS.









6 )Carry on using the system as normal.

The above steps should fix the issue.

-Raja

[virge]

It would seem that Asus is putting the responsibility on the customers who bought these motherboards in good faith, and spent a lot of
money on them. Now Asus wants to offload their responsibility to resolve this issue, and claim it is the customer's fault, because no one wants to be without their computer while Asus supposedly checks for a fix. I for one to NOT believe that Asus has not encountered this problem,
because I also have this very same issue with my Maximus VI Formula motherboard. I have read through this thread, and it is appalling, and
pitiful that all these customers including myself are so poorly thought of by Asus. Let me be clear. Asus is a big company, who have been
resting on their laurels for too long. It's about time Asus acts like a responsible company and shoulders all the costs for swapping out these
boards. There have been too many bad boards reported for Asus not to have encountered this problem. I believe it is a case of very poor
quality control, or indifference by Asus. Asus in my opinion is NOT the company they used to be.

[WeelyTM]

I believe Asus really does want to help us out and to fix the issue permanently if possible. But, I really don't see Asus prioritizing this. It comes down to 3 simple things:
1) It is an annoyance; not harming anyone or risking life or property (not even data loss).
2) There are quick and simple workarounds that everyone can do to get up and running again.
3) Relatively few people have returned to complain of recurrence after fixing it once.

So Asus will work diligently on the issue and fix it when the problem is tracked down... when they can repro it and have an engineer debug it directly.
But consider how many boards they sell, and consider how long it took before any one system has the issue (mine was ~ 3 weeks from first setup, some have said months). They could replicate the most common setups, get notes on what each person remembers doing around the time of first repro, and dedicate a group of people to fiddle with the machines for weeks or months just trying to get a single repro. That is costly and inefficient... so they ask for boards already with the issue.
The opposite side to this is we, the consumer. Being that the fix is safe and quick, how many people are willing to be without their setup for at least a few days, if not a week or more (and that's with security deposit and cross-shipping, add a week or two without that)? Then there is the risk that comes with completely disassembling a system and reassembling on a new board. Anyone can bend a pin removing or placing their CPU if they aren't extremely careful. Add to that the cost (not too much, but its still $5-20) for new thermal paste, plus the hassle of cleaning off the old gunk. And I don't know about you, but a board swap for me means a clean install... not gonna even try to convince Windows that everything is okay even though I swapped the mobo. That is way more than I am willing to do when a simple BIOS flash, driver update (and with Iscariah's steps, a very worthwhile firmware upgrade to the Intel M.E.) got me back up in 5 minutes.

[virge]

You forgot the most important reason in your explanation. It has NOT affected their bottom line so far. Nothing moves a company faster then a threat to their bottom line, no matter how small the problem may be. I for one do NOT believe the problem is as small as they claim it to be.

[Gianpiero]

Hi,

Italian guy in Chile here. I've got a Maximus Hero VI, without any major change or overclock right now. I am experiencing such problem, and I just found this forum's topic; I will try every solution suggested and I'll come back to you asap.

[virge]

What I find ridiculous about the claim that this problem is small, is the fact that it appears in all the Asus Z87 boards, and in every country
that these motherboards are sold in. If one is to believe their story that this problem is so small that they never came across it, then I got a
bridge for sale. I have the same problem, and I live in Canada. One last thing I would like to add. Has anyone wasted their time with Asus
customer support, or what Asus claims is customer support. LOL

[virge]

One other little problem with an Asus Maximus VI Formula motherboard, and that is when it comes to changing the battery. Some here will not believe this. They will think I am making this stuff up. Any person who has a Maximus VI Formula certainly knows what I am talking about. Considering the current issue with the Z87 chipset boards, imagine when it is required to change out the battery. Every other motherboard it is an easy task, but NOT for the Formula VI board. OH! No. In order to change out that little battery, you must TOTALLY dismantle your system, so that you can REMOVE the motherboard. The reason for this is because Asus decided to cover up the battery with their ARMOR. So after you remove all the cables, the fan headers connections, the water cooling loop, the video card, your memory, you must then remove the board so you can remove the ARMOR that covers both the front, and back of the board in order to get to that tiny little battery. Talk about a design screw up. Who designed this board? Must have been some new employee still in training, or maybe it was the janitor. You will notice however, with the introduction of the new Z97 chipset, I suggest everyone take a look at what Asus did. They quietly redesigned their screw up by repositioning the battery on their Sabertooth motherboard so that the armor does NOT cover access to it. So where does that leave us with Maximus VI Formula boards? I'll tell you where it leaves us, and that is screwed. As far Asus is concerned, we are just acceptable collateral damage. The joke is on us I guess. Asus quietly carries on, ignores us, probably deletes this post, as they already have previously according to another poster, and just carry on as though nothing has happened. This way their screw ups are hidden, and the illusion of perfection continues.

[PerpetualCycle]

You can forget them ever fixing this. Congratulate them on avoiding this until the new boards are out and show how you feel in where you spend your money.

If the company was any good, they would sweeten the pot and offer to replace the board with the new VII series, get some faulty boards and find the issue. But I don't think they are interested.

A company is only as good as it stands behind its products. And blaming the customers is not standing behind it.

[virge]

Yes they are avoiding this thread like the plague. Hoping we will eventually just leave, which will be good as far as they are concerned. It is hard to argue against the facts, and they realize this. Instead they quietly make changes to their screw ups on the newer motherboards in regards to the battery placement, which in some ways is a worse problem then the frozen clock issue. I have the unfortunate luck to have BOTH problems. As much as they say otherwise, they should do the right thing, and give everyone affected a new motherboard free of the problems, but the chance of that happening is nil. I or anyone else would have a better chance at winning the lottery numerous times, as well as getting hit by lightning two or three times. I guess they are much like Intel in some ways, who produced a sub-par CPU, and are coming out with what they call an enhanced version of the 4770K CPU. So instead of admitting their screw up, they continue producing this sub par CPU, and later try to sell us on enhanced version of a CPU that should never have pushed out the in the first place, but of course we all know why this happened. It is always the money. The customer always takes it on the chin. Until these companies feel the pain in the wallet, NOTHING will change, no matter what they say to the contrary.

[solomonshv]

geneo wrote:
You can forget them ever fixing this. Congratulate them on avoiding this until the new boards are out and show how you feel in where you spend your money.

If the company was any good, they would sweeten the pot and offer to replace the board with the new VII series, get some faulty boards and find the issue. But I don't think they are interested.

A company is only as good as it stands behind its products. And blaming the customers is not standing behind it.

agreed. between this clock thing. the drivers glitch that prevents your computer from shutting down, and an Asus R9 290 Direct CU II (dumped on fleabay) that had over heating problems, I don't have a reason to spend my money with Asus ever again.

and another thing, which idiot decided to put the one single full time powered USB port ON THE BACK of the motherboard on the VI Hero? what good is it there? other companies give you full time power USB ports in the back and the front.

Well, adios. as soon as the Z97 lands I'm abandoning ship.

[Tokens210]

solomonshv wrote:
agreed. between this clock thing. the drivers glitch that prevents your computer from shutting down, and an Asus R9 290 Direct CU II (dumped on fleabay) that had over heating problems, I don't have a reason to spend my money with Asus ever again.

and another thing, which idiot decided to put the one single full time powered USB port ON THE BACK of the motherboard on the VI Hero? what good is it there? other companies give you full time power USB ports in the back and the front.

Well, adios. as soon as the Z97 lands I'm abandoning ship.

I was curious to how hot the 290 was getting as almost all videos I've watched said the cards are designed to run at 95c by default, and that's from and not Asus

Also the USB issue I'm guessing is just you or a few boards, when the PC shuts off anything plugged into USB should shut off, anything plugged in after that that draws power such as a cell phone charger should still work but possibly not it if was pplugged in before shutdown, u may have to replug it in to make it work

The USB your talking about tho is like that on every single ROG board, if you noticed it should say ROG connect it something under the USB, its cause that USB is the one that allows you to upgrade the bios without having ram or anything like that attached yet


I also have the issue sometimes where selecting shut down just restarts the PC but being as reboot times like 13 seconds and when I hit shutdown that time it actually shuts down its not really an issue for me, altho it does make me wonder where it came from as it literally just started to happen the last week and I've not updated or anything like that, I have a guess its actually a windows setting messing with the board





Also a PS. To the ppl posting here, a few pages back the Asus ppl here, at least one of them, posted they went going to answer or come by this thread anymore cause no one seemed interested in them assisting, many also seemed to show the massive disrespect so I don't blame them at all, so most likely Asus themselves were never actually here just qualified Asus techs and support, but now this thread at least is most likely just users now