Freezing and hanging issues with Maximus VIII Formula +950 Pro+7700k+WIN10

[tkeysiv]

Greetings ROG community!

This is my first post, and unfortunately, it's because I can't seem to get my newly built system working without serious freezing issues.

Here are the specs: M8F, i7 7700k, Corsair Dominator Platinum 3ghz (32gb - 2x16), samsung 950 pro nvme 256gb, 2xROG Strix gtx1070

I tried the latest non-beta bios (2202) but my 2nd video wasn't recognized and boot would fail with xmp enabled, so I flashed to 3101. Boot seems fine - everything recognized (although no gpu temps show in bios - but whatever)...

Problem now is in windows 10. I installed win 10 from usb stick to the 950 pro - and no matter what I do I can't seem to get it to run for more than 20 min to an hour without completely freezing ... usually with the disk utilization jumping to 100% and staying there.

I've been all over the internet looking for solutions ... most symptoms have pointed me in the direction of there being an issue with pci express power managment. I've been trying all different combinations of bios settings for native power management and IRST vs. AHCI storage and PCI bus speeds (auto or gen3 pretty much cause immediate failures with the event log flooding with whea-logger warnings).

Setting the PCI bus speed to gen 2 gives much more stable results, with an occassional whea-logger warning in the event log, but the drive utilization still jumps to 100% after some time and the system freezes.

With other combinations of settings (I can't remember which) the system periodically freezes while logging "Reset to device, \Device\RaidPort0, was issued" (or RaidPort1 ... keep in mind I'm using a single drive, not in raid, but I'm trying all kinds of options to see what I can get to work.

I've tried with and without installing the IRST software, I've tried the registry tweaks to display the ahci power options in the power settings, I've set it to performance power settings (not balanced), I've done the registry change to disable msi on the sata controllers (which were using windows drivers btw, not intels)....

I'm pretty much at my wits end trying to figure out what in the world is the issue with this system. I never thought, after 20 years of building pc's, that the most expensive and up-to-date and supposedly highest quality build I've ever done would be plagued so bad right out the gate.

Has anyone built a comparable system, and have you had these issues? Anyone had these issues and resolved them????

Thanks in advance.

[Buellersdayoff]

Initially don't connect to Internet yet, install drivers from asus support, Samsung nvme driver, nvidia driver. Then allow windows updates
From your previous question, macrium reflect is a nice free software for drive image

[tkeysiv]

Buellersdayoff wrote:
Initially don't connect to Internet yet, install drivers from asus support, Samsung nvme driver, nvidia driver. Then allow windows updates
From your previous question, macrium reflect is a nice free software for drive image

Hey Buellersdayoff, thanks .... I might do all this again from scratch - I had to take a break from this and be a productive adult for a while. But the last thing I did was reboot the system and after reboot I got some stornvme (129, Reset to device, \Device\RaidPort1, was issued) errors in the event logs accompanied by periodic 100% disk utilization and hanging ... .it's also been really sketchy about recognizing the m.2 drive on boot - sometimes it doesn't seem to see it at all after going into the bios, until you reboot a couple times. I let it get online and I started installing drivers, but it just seems I'm back to where I started now.

I'll give an update when I've had a chance to go through these steps again and see if things are stable to the point where I can do an offline driver install as you recommend.

Thanks

[Buellersdayoff]

I don't trust win10, when I do an install I like to have all of the drivers ready on usb. Starting driver installation with chipset, intel, Samsung nvme, audio, gfx, then allow Internet and Windows updates. Not happy with the way win10 handles drivers, I rolled back gfx driver to attempt to fix a bug only to have windows update the driver silently without my knowledge, at least it was a hotfix/bug fix driver and my problem was fixed.
I've had too many (minor) issues with asus software so I don't use them anymore. This forum is full of many others also

[tkeysiv]

Hi everyone .... I think I finally have this thing stable. I didn't go through another install ... I noticed the problem seemed to consistently be the secnvme reset to device warnings in the event log. Did some research on that, came across this - so I followed the suggested remedy from there. I also followed these steps to disable MSI on the storage controllers. Plus I set my PCIe speed to Gen2 in the bios and I think I set PCH ASPM to AUTO - not sure if I'll get probs if I set the speed it back to auto.

After doing all that, everything seems to be normal - none of the errors anymore, I was able to get through running updates, installing nvidia geforce drivers, and the system ran all night without a single hiccup. By the way, I also came across some information stating that there are a lot of bugs in consumer firmware for active state power mgmt.

Fingers crossed it stays this way. Thanks again to everyone for your help.

[Nate152]

Awesome, great to hear you got it sorted and working.

Be sure to check device manager for any yellow triangles.

Give us an update anytime. 🙂

[tkeysiv]

Sorry for the delay, been out of town and sick and haven't actually used the PC that much. I have been getting consistent clean boots and none of the previous problems - although I am a bit bothered that my bios remains having the pcie speed limited to Gen2. Playing around with ASPM settings trying to find a combination of settings that will give me full speed and stability.

[JustinThyme]

When you see your drive getting thrashed like that its pretty much 100% software related. Some new installs of AV programs will thrash it or indexint service until it levels out.

[tkeysiv]

So after being unable to get things stable with the full pci speeds ... and seeing that my benchmark numbers were way off, and thinking through all the headache I was going through to try to get this working when other people didn't seem to be having the same issues, I just gave up and said it must be the drive.

I ran out and picked up a 960 EVO and what do you know - not a single issue, ...none. I haven't had to do ANY of the troubleshooting I was doing before, and the system is running perfectly.

Lessons learned? - don't buy "open box" hard drives, even if it does say "tested good" .

Thanks everyone for all the advice and troubleshooting help!