Maximus VII A2 (IDE Detect)

[Krille]

Keep getting this A2 Q code after i start it up, then stops at a screen that gives me the option to go into BIOS by pressing F1. I have searched on google and believe after what I have read, that this is something about having trouble of selecting which boot device to boot from. So i unplugged the HDD so the only devices was my SSD and optical drive. I installed windows 7 again and made sure that my SSD was my first boot priority. After loading up again I get the same screen which tells me to press F1 to enter BIOS. I can choose to override and start up on the SSD, and it starts up normally into windows 7.

I have updated the BIOS to the newest version and all the settings in BIOS is by default. I have read that AHCI should be enabled(it is by default), and also fast boot should be disabled, this has not helped.

This is my first time assembling a new machine so any help is appreciated 🙂

[awesome14]

I have a Maximus VII Ranger, i7-4790K, 32 GB Kingston Fury DDR3 PC-12800, EVO 212 air, (2) Crucial P5 1.0 TB on dual NVME PCIe 3.0 at 8x bifurcation board by Startech, Quadro K4200, Segotep 650W Gold, Pioneer CD/DVD, cpu fan on motherboard header and Linux Debian 11 Bullseye.

The system worked for years. Then, I had to pull the dual NVME PCIe card to install (4) USB2 off mobo to rear panel. I accidentally forgot to reinstall the dual NVME card, and the system has had no video since then, even after reinstalling it. Worrisome is that trying to reinstall BIOS with BIOS Flashback yields less than 1 minute of blinking green flashback LED, and then perpetual solid green.

I believe the mobo LED is supposed to turn off when the BIOS Flashback is complete, and this requires several minutes. I have also heard that the BIOS Flashback should be done only without the cpu installed. I know it will work without a cpu installed, but I've used BIOS Flashback on other boards, with an installed cpu, and it works. I also was not able to confirm it in any documentation.

I'm thinking, after reading about this problem, and several other Q-codes, and having reset the bios, that the BIOS cannot recognize the bifurcation card as a boot device from a fresh reset. Altuough it has in the past without adjusting settings, it wasn't from a reset. I'm reticent to start randomly applying fixes others have found useful, because my lifetime is finite, and I have some other things I might want to do.

The guys on this board have seen so much more than I ever will, I humbly submit my problem to them. I need video back to do anything. I can try to connect to hdmi, using DP presently. Or, a more likely solution would be to pull the boot drive off the dual NVME board, and stick it on a single NVME board. But I have a bootable installation DVD in the optical drive, and the system obviously can't find that.

Based on your experience, what would be my next move? Sorry for necroposting. I didn't want to clutter the forum with new posts. And this one has no replies. I really appreciate the help. I'm open to any ideas. Thanks.