Issues with ASRock Z77 OC Formula BIOS after mods

BIOS/UEFI Modding BIOS Modding Guides and Problems
1

Having a weird issue with this system that I can’t quite figure out.

ASRock Z77 OC Formula
Intel Core i7-3770K at 4.9 GHz
32 GB DDR3-2400
EVGA Geforce 2060

The BIOS has been modified to support NVMe and microcode has been updated to newest revision. While functional, the PC works exactly as expected. Sometimes when it shuts down, it fails to boot properly. A display (seemingly related to the Intel RAID controller) comes up and gives the option “Press <CTRL+I> to enter Configuration Utility” followed by another screen saying “reboot and select proper boot device or insert boot media in selected Boot device and press a key.”

Rebooting is ineffective at correcting this. Pressing CTRL+I doesn’t appear to do anything. Entering the BIOS fails entirely, as this is the first thing that shows up on boot. It can be corrected for some amount of time by resetting the CMOS, but it eventually comes back.

My boot device is an NVMe drive that does not show up on the initial screen related to the Intel RAID controller. Removing the CPU/memory overclock does not appear to prevent this issue.

2

What is the origin of the mod file?
Or if its your work, beside NVMe and mcodes what else was modded?
Anything touched with AMIBCP?

EDIT: And how did you changed that string, access to USER or did you changed also its value to Enable?
Any disk attached to the Marvell SATA controller?
When the Marvell OpRom displays, did you ever noticed if the bios looses her settings?

3

I modded the BIOS based on build 2.40. I did use AMIBCP to enable Above 4G Decoding, but nothing else was changed.

If you think that caused it, I can rebuild without enabling it.

Also worth mentioning that every reboot doesn’t trigger this behavior. It seems to happen fairly randomly.

4

Access changed to USER. No disks attached to the Marvell controller. It is actually disabled.

5

Then ill not point to AMIBCP changes… for now, some bioses are more sensitive to this changes with the tool.
Curious case, since you reported sometimes blank screen and the OpRom pop-up being disable… it gives clues/similar to platform initialization (PEI->DXE) as issue.
Excluding hw issues, why dont you make just a version of the 2.40 only with the NVMe DXE, and test the system stability for a couple of weeks, just to see if give us any clues.
Good luck.

EDIT: Last thing… chassis to motherboard contact passage/short can lead to similar behaviours.

6

Think its fair to continue to use the new microcode with this? I know that’s technically changing two variables.

Also, on the note of motherboard to case short - wouldn’t I expect some other symptoms? The system never just turns off. The behavior specifically occurs at reboot/power off.

Also, to be clear - the screen doesn’t go blank. I get an OpRom for Intel RAID followed by no boot device. It just so happens that this happens without the normal ASRock splash screen ever showing up and giving me a chance to enter BIOS.

Checking the mounting isn’t too big of a deal though. Thank you!

7

Not understanding…cpu mcode with this, what? The updated mcode on the bios mod?
Not related to the issue here…

Shorts have erratic behaviour…

Well the Intel RAID OpRom pops up if the system has a raid setup, the bios is set as RAID and not AHCI. AHCI is the ideal for NVMe if the user doesnt going to use RAID arrays/disks.
I thought you were talking about the Marvell OpRom… my mistake then.

The mod shouldn’t interfere with the regular splash screen… something is not right.
I would try what i previously suggested… redo the mod only with NVMe.
If its not bios related, worst case… maybe SPI IC is dying or the any issue between the CMOS/IO/PCH of the motherboard, circuit oxidation, accumulated debris on sensitive circuit…

You have a peculiar situation… not rare, but not often.
Out of ideias… without presencial board tests, all the best and good luck.

8

RAID is in use - I have an old SSD acting as a cache for a hard drive. The NVMe SSD is not related to this. I have rebuilt the BIOS with only microcode updates and NVMe support.

Hopefully this works. I found it strange that the OpRom loaded before the standard BIOS splash screen.

Thank you for your help. Hoping this works.

9

Update on this: It appears to be related to a blank PATA device showing up as my primary boot device. It happened again after rebuilding my BIOS, but I was able to get into configuration and catch this. Changing the boot option back to my NVMe drive fixed the issue. I can’t figure out why a PATA device would show up.