BIOS Corrupt?

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   I have an interesting issue that feels like BIOS corruption, but what is interesting is that unlike most of the posts relating to this MB behaviour, I was NOT flashing BIOS which resulted in this behaviour.
I am running Windows 7 on a Z97 Extreme 4, Intel i5 4670.  The system has been running fine for about 1.5 years, but recently I noticed the system has been randomly crashing/restarting.  

The other day I encountered just a black screen.   Hard Powered down and the thing wouldn't POST, no text, nothing.  I switched from BIOS A to BIOS B and things booted up instantly.  Great....  except I had a RAID 5 configured in BIOS A which was obviously not part of the config in BIOS B.   Windows saw the disks presented up and somehow initialized these disks, resulting in my RAID being blow away with data loss.

My question is has anyone ever heard of BIOS going corrupt outside of a flash?  The BIOS has NEVER been upgraded on this system, still factory from box.  I am wondering if there is a MOBO HW issue.....  not sure how I can trust this thing after this happened.

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braggsx Members Profile Send Private Message Find Members Posts Add to Buddy List Newbie Joined: 29 Feb 2016 Location: Boston Status: Offline Points: 3	Post Options Post Reply Quote braggsx Report Post Thanks(0) Quote Reply Topic: BIOS Corrupt? Posted: 29 Feb 2016 at 7:54am
	I have an interesting issue that feels like BIOS corruption, but what is interesting is that unlike most of the posts relating to this MB behaviour, I was NOT flashing BIOS which resulted in this behaviour. I am running Windows 7 on a Z97 Extreme 4, Intel i5 4670. The system has been running fine for about 1.5 years, but recently I noticed the system has been randomly crashing/restarting. The other day I encountered just a black screen. Hard Powered down and the thing wouldn't POST, no text, nothing. I switched from BIOS A to BIOS B and things booted up instantly. Great.... except I had a RAID 5 configured in BIOS A which was obviously not part of the config in BIOS B. Windows saw the disks presented up and somehow initialized these disks, resulting in my RAID being blow away with data loss. My question is has anyone ever heard of BIOS going corrupt outside of a flash? The BIOS has NEVER been upgraded on this system, still factory from box. I am wondering if there is a MOBO HW issue..... not sure how I can trust this thing after this happened.

Xaltar Members Profile Send Private Message Find Members Posts Add to Buddy List Moderator Group Joined: 16 May 2015 Location: Europe Status: Online Points: 25073	Post Options Post Reply Quote Xaltar Report Post Thanks(0) Quote Reply Posted: 29 Feb 2016 at 2:22pm
	UEFI information can be corrupted for any number of reasons, the most common being power loss/improper shutdown. Unlike with the old legacy BIOS systems the UEFI allows access to the OS and this can be another source of corruption. I have only recently started to become aware of just how much influence the OS has on the UEFI myself. In my case a bad OS install caused my system to not shut down correctly with the system powering off for 5 seconds then turning back on and restarting. I spent hours trying to identify the problem and was about to swap out the motherboard when I had the idea of using a live linux USB drive to test the system one last time and lo and behold it shut down from linux without any issues at all. A reinstall of windows later and all is well. While my example may seem unrelated it does illustrate that the OS clearly writes data to the UEFI, frequently. I would follow the procedures in your user manual to restore BIOS "A" using BIOS "B" and maybe make a point of clearing CMOS every time you perform maintenance on the PC. I would imagine in your case you were unlucky that you experienced corruption to that extent. In all likelihood the initial freezes that prompted hard reboot or power down exacerbated the problem. To be on the safe side I would put the system through some stress testing to ensure stability.