max gene-z i7 won't load bios - err 34 - windows hangs after minutes

[harly]

Hi!

Have a maximus gene-z rev 2 with an i7 2600k and two 8g ram sticks.
for a long time now it has not been possible to get into the bios, it gives an error 34 ( post CPU memory initialisation), but has booted into windows fine and has been a fantastic gaming machine for months.

Now though windows is crashing a couple minutes after boot. generally, the mouse stops moving, it starts shutting down, tries to do a memory dump and bluescreens with a 0x000000f4.

So far I've tried:

resetting cmos, both button and battery removal.
reseating CPU
tried with just 1 DIMM in each slot. Tried with the other DIMM.

I think this is either a CPU or board problem for a particular memory pin, although i'm curious why the same thing happens in all four dimm slots. What I imagine is it would only happen for one of them.

Any suggestions on what to try next?

[harly]

well tiny bit of an update.

he seems to have a hijacking virus, which was discovered when chrome warned google wasn't going to google. That is extremely tightly correlated to the appearance of the windows hanging. The bios not loading for error 34 has been around a long time.

Now. when windows "hangs" (wrong word, it breaks) and tries to do a memory dump that bluescreens. So *maybe* the windows instability is because of the virus, and the odd error 34 is only getting in the way in windows because of a memory dump. And as for error 34 he has been remarkably lucky that it doesn;t get in the way of day to day operating.

So going to focus on:
hardware test from usb
reinstalling windows
see if that gets him back to a gameable state.

then there's still the error 34 issue, which as I said, previously wasn;t actually getting in the way of gaming.

[harly]

right ok. another update.

despite having two monitors plugged in to the nvidia card neither was showing any activity after going into bios. at that time it showed 34.

Now. with just the primary monitor plugged in to display slot 1 on the nvidia, the bios is actually showing, and it still shows 34 on the display. So now thinking there's no bios problem, and it's normal to display 34 while in the bios???

So. looks like just a virus problem and no hadware issue. Going to run some usb hardware diags first to be sure, but yeah, i smell virus.

[Zka17]

Remove your storage drives, have the memory modules (hopefully from a single kit and not mixing) in the DIMM slots recommended by the manufacturer - and run memtest86+...

First try at BIOS defaults, then try at XMP settings... if it passes at least 4 cycles, then you can boot into OS...

If you have suspicion of viruses, best is to reformat the whole drive... and start with a fresh OS install...

[harly]

cheers Zka17!

Did that and it passed memtest. Here's the full story:

not being able to get into the bios and seeing 34 on the lcd display was not a board error, but a display error. For whatever reason, the samsung tv he had plugged into display 1 on the nvidia simply did not work from the bios screen, only from within windows. Unplugging all monitors and putting a PC monitor into display 1 revealed that the bios was indeed loading, and the display of 34 on the LCD was just showing the last stage that was ran.

tl;dr bios memory error: red herring

the virus suspicion was based on chrome giving a hijack warning. After running mem test we ran HD tests to reveal the SSD was failing. Testing it on estat2 instead of esata3 (to isolate out estat3 chip controller) showed the same problems, and then putting it into my pc (to isolate all his hardware!) with no issues revealed HD hang when accessing specific top-level directories. Also reveals that the bluescreen when writing memory was not a memory issue, but a HD issue.

tl;dr virus was a red herring; supporting memory failure evidence was actually broken SSD evidence.

Pretty sure the only problem is a broken SSD, corsair forceGS. We've bought a new 500gb samsung evo840 and are currently reinstalling, and the forceGS has been submitted for an RMA through the retailer.

Only reason I came here was because I thought bios wasn't loading /becasue/ of the 34 LCD display, but that turns out to simply be an unsupported monitor via bios. Fun eh?