Maximus VIII Hero: Computer will sometimes fail to shutdown

[m33ts4k0z]

Hello,

about a month ago I purchased this motherboard and I'm very happy with its performance. I have no other issues and in fact my PC performs great even on the most demanding games.

However this issue is quite silly and irritating. I've read a lot about people having this issue and I also tried almost everything except RMAing the board because I don't really believe this issue can be resolved with another identical board.

So to elaborate a bit... When shuting down the computer from the Win 10 start menu then sometimes (not always) the monitor will go on standby but the computer fans and LEDs will remain powered. I can then restart it by just pressing the case restart button or power it off by holding the case power button till it switches off.

My rig:

• Windows 10 Pro
  
• Intel Core i7 6700k stock - no overclock
  
• 16GB Corsair Vengeance XMPed to 3200MHz
  
• 4x HDDs
  
• 1x Samsung Nand Evo 950 PRO m.2 SSD
  
• 2x EVGA GeForce 980 Ti Superclocked+
  
• Asus Xonar Phoebus Solo 7.1 Sound Card
  
• Fractal Design 1000W Platinum PSU
  

Things I've tried:

• Formated and reinstalled my drive with Windows 10 Pro.
  
• Removed the AISuite 3 software.
  
• Disabled fastboot in Windows 10 Power Options.
  
• Tried about 5 different versions of Intel Management Engine drivers as suggested in other threads with similar problems.
  
• Disabled all intel services through msconfig as suggested in a thread.
  
• Started the computer with everything non-essential unplugged.
  
• Removed and put back the RAM.
  
• Tried another PSU.
  
• Removed the XMP setting from the BIOS.
  
• Cleared CMOS several times.
  
• Removed the battery several times.
  
• Tried different BIOS versions.
  

Note: The boards Qcode panel displays either 40 or A0 during the shutdown which I read are fine.

Solution: Following d4nYz3r0's solution helped me solve this odd behaviour. Here is what I exactly did:

Used the Flashback BIOS feature to flash the latest BIOS.
Unplugged the computer.
Removed the battery and kept the Clear CMOS button pressed for about 10 seconds.
Started the computer and in BIOS settings, I chose Load Optimized Defaults.

Someone on the Internet might find this useful.

[Code_Frenzy]

Please perform a simple test for me. Start the PC in Windows safe mode and then see if it will shutdown correctly. This will help to identify if it is a service or application that is preventing a proper shutdown as safe mode only runs the bare minimum.

[TheRiwen]

My keyboard did that on my hero. I just moved it to another usb and it was gone.

[m33ts4k0z]

Code_Frenzy wrote:
Please perform a simple test for me. Start the PC in Windows safe mode and then see if it will shutdown correctly. This will help to identify if it is a service or application that is preventing a proper shutdown as safe mode only runs the bare minimum.

TheRiwen wrote:
My keyboard did that on my hero. I just moved it to another usb and it was gone.

Thanks for your answers guys. I actually followed a new post made some hours ago by someone in this forum who is using a VII Ranger and was told by Asus support to follow a specific procedure and it seems that after doing so, it solved my problem! I have like 7 successful shutdowns in a row now.

The procedure is as follows:

• Used the Flashback BIOS feature to flash the latest BIOS.
  
• Unplugged the computer.
  
• Removed the battery and kept the Clear CMOS button pressed for about 10 seconds.
  
• Started the computer and in BIOS settings, I chose Load Optimized Defaults.
  

After that, I made several successful shutdowns but my memory was not clocked @ 3200MHz through XMP so I just loaded the profile through BIOS and I'm still good with the shutdowns so far.

I will update this thread if something comes up.

[brkkab123]

This isn't the motherboard. This is a Microsoft issue in Windows 8, 8.1 and 10. If you click on shutdown from the desktop it's designed not to actually shut your pc off. It instead puts it in hybrid sleep, I think it is.They did this mostly for smartphones and tablets.
The way you have to fully shutoff your pc is to click restart on the desktop and when it get's on the login screen, click the power icon at the bottom right and then clickon shutdown.
This was posted by numerous computer magazines a few years ago after Windows 8 came out.

[m33ts4k0z]

brkkab123 wrote:
This isn't the motherboard. This is a Microsoft issue in Windows 8, 8.1 and 10. If you click on shutdown from the desktop it's designed not to actually shut your pc off. It instead puts it in hybrid sleep, I think it is.They did this mostly for smartphones and tablets.
The way you have to fully shutoff your pc is to click restart on the desktop and when it get's on the login screen, click the power icon at the bottom right and then clickon shutdown.
This was posted by numerous computer magazines a few years ago after Windows 8 came out.

Thanks but I have already deactivated the Hybrid Shutdown through the power options. But even if that was the case, the computer wouldn't be unresponsive. While hibernating, we must be able to restore it with a keystroke or by pressing the power button. In my case only pressing the restart button worked.

No matter, I'm on the 15ish shutdown in a row now and no problem so far. Before that, my record was like 2 shutdowns in a row. Let's see if this is going to hold.

[Code_Frenzy]

Thanks for coming back to report the solution, it will hopefully help others in a similar situation.

[Dave500]

I sometimes get a similar issue, but i'm running Win7 SP1 , my findings are that the Gigabyte OC guru Ii GPU utiliy appears to cause the shutdown/restart operation to hang mid way, signal to monitor stopped, hdd activity led shows only a regular short blink all mobo and GPU led's remain illuminated ,fans spinning

I also have all that hibernation guff disabled

And occasionally it will hang during boot. usually after the bios screen but before windows loads

[m33ts4k0z]

Dave500 wrote:
I sometimes get a similar issue, but i'm running Win7 SP1 , my findings are that the Gigabyte OC guru Ii GPU utiliy appears to cause the shutdown/restart operation to hang mid way, signal to monitor stopped, hdd activity led shows only a regular short blink all mobo and GPU led's remain illuminated ,fans spinning

I also have all that hibernation guff disabled

And occasionally it will hang during boot. usually after the bios screen but before windows loads

I have no boot up issues. Still after following the procedure above I have great success with my shutdowns. Having installed Asus AI Suite 3 and the latest IME driver.

The only thing that caused a shutdown hang recently was enabling the ERP settings in BIOS. After I turned them off again it worked.

[d4nYz3r0]

Hi m33ts4k0z,

Are you referring to my post?

Are you able to change any settings like OC etc? I figured out, if I change some settings (I'm not 100% sure which are ok and which not) I need to re-flash the BIOS while others work perfectly fine
For example ErP and overclocking with undervolting are two settings where the shutdown problem happens again.

ASUS support is not really helpfull, they just say I should check several things that I already checked the first time they asked me to and I should send an RMA. But I think it's no hardware problem since the board works perfectly fine with default settings
And waiting 3+ weeks just for nothing is not really helpfull