[G75VW] AHCI stopped working

[SHADOW-XIII]

I have 750 GB HDD in my laptop from the day of purchase.

One day I came back home and switch on my laptop and I was taken to BIOS.
After some investigation I noticed that the is no drives were recognized (not even DVD) in SATA Controllers.

So I have continued investigation and found out that the problem is when the mode is set to AHCI.
Again, I have not even moved the notebook since previous shutdown, not changed any setting in bios yet it started to happen from the thin air.

This is what I have done:

1) restored default BIOS settings: not helped
2) turned off and on the computer (hard shutdown and start): randomly works, sometimes 2nd - 3rd time, sometimes not even after 2 hours of attempts
3) quick reset (ctrl+alt+del): never helps
4) changing to controller mode to IDE: drive can be seen but cannot boot into windows (error 0x0000007B [INACCESSABLE_BOOT_DEVICE], guessing from different SATA mode?)
5) discharging by holding power button for 1 minute: not helped
6) removing battery and power supply overnight: not helped
7) changing drive from R to L side (inside the notebook): not helped

So I decided to use a drive for my old notebook (let's call it "old drive" from now on) and then:

😎 in AHCI mode still no drives are recognized, not the drive I just connected, nor DVD drive.
9) in IDE all are recognized (the original drive still doesn't boot as seen in point 4)
10) the "old drive" I've just connected boots fine in IDE mode (it was in IDE on the older computer)
11) when booted the 'old drive' the other drive is seen just fine, no issues found with it (scanned), data is just fine, accessible just fine



At this point, I believe it is motherboard/BIOS as only when SATA is set to AHCI mode it keeps falling, something messed up AHCI.
I changed windows closure to Sleep instead of Shutdown/Hibernation and it seems to not to cause the problem (until I shut the power down, not just quick reboot it)


The issue could be with that I flashed 210 bios around month or two ago (until last week I have seen no problems though)
The flashing was with Win Flash (I have just read on the ROG forum that actually flashing with this is not advised but I was using it as the tool was provided on the download section for this model)


I am thinking that maybe reflashing 207 or 210 bios inside the bios itself could fix it but wondering if that will cause any issues.
Is it possible to downgrade or reflash same bios from easyflash ?

Maybe anyone got some ideas what could be the problem or/and got any tips to continue investigation to see what is the root of the problem?

[rewben]

there are two ways to do that. be extra careful with bios flashing:
1. easyflash way;
2. winflash way.

i find the first one easy, partly also because i don't have winflash installed on my machine.

but i think you should give a bit of time to see if others could help.

[SHADOW-XIII]

Hi rewben

Thanks a lot for help, I will wait few more days and see if I get response from ASUS itself
then I will try going back to older BIOS

By any chance if anyone got some ideas what else I could do with this issue (apart of trying to reflash) feel free to speak

[SHADOW-XIII]

Just wanted to let anyone know about this. I have fixed it by downgrading to 207 (from 210) BIOS (EasyFlash way as rewben gave links above)
The issue was resolved instantly - so this is BIOS (or possible corruption with WinFlash flashing).



Also worth to mention, something corrupted the disk (not sure what/why/when) but it seems all the permissions were gone from one of the drives, booted another windows and restored all the permissions that the other windows had

[dstrakele]

It sounds like you've got a very unique and serious problem with your laptop. I've never read of a case where the BIOS becomes corrupted a month or so after installation. It is also worrisome that multiple reboots would randomly and temporarily fix your issue. And to top it all off you report permissions are corrupted in your account on your HDD. There is some serious unusual underlying problem like power surges or poor grounding or a faulty motherboard causing these problems.

[rewben]

it's a weird case, indeed 😕

[SHADOW-XIII]

I believe the issue with corrupted permissions could be windows internal chkdsk I was running and booting the other windows instance from another drive in IDE mode, so I would not blame permission stuff in on the machine/BIOS.

However broken AHCI recognition was certainly due to the BIOS, not sure if new version was doing something different or just WinFlash messed up something (still would be strange that just AHCI would be broken yet not 100% of the time and nothing else) ...

From what I could see after flashing 210 version the booting to AHCI was less and less successful each time, so after the flashing it was/seemed it was fine, then was deteriorating in the end I couldn't make it run.
I doubt the case would be power surge because as soon as I flashed back 207, without even loading optimized defaults, it picked up the drive in AHCI and was working ever since without a problem, drives as well.

In any way, maybe the topic will help someone in future. I maybe try to update BIOS in future again if I will need to but not looking to play with this again for the time being 😛