Z370 Gaming K6: UEFI Randomly Resets Itself

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   I have the Z370 Fatal1ty Gaming K6 motherboard paired with the i7-8086K (not overclocked), with 4x16 GB G.Skill memory (Trident Z RGB 32GB, F4-3200C14D-32GTZ) and an AIO liquid cooler (Thermaltake Floe Dual Ring RGB 240 TT).  I have also updated the motherboard to the latest firmware (3.10), which I think I did before this started happening (cannot confirm).

I've been noticing lately that sometimes that the motherboard fails to boot a couple times, and then it resets itself.  I have XMP turned on for the memory as well (DDR4 3200, CL=14).  I think it happens whenever my OS (Win 10 Pro x64) has a longer than normal shutdown.  For instance if I installed a bunch of programs and Win 10 takes a while to shutdown (about 3-4 min.), then I turn it on after a few seconds of being off.  I also had 5 external disk drives connected during that shutdown, not sure if that's the cause.  Or another time I installed a bunch (like 20-30) windows updates (MS Office in this case), and I click shutdown so Windows is finishing update installation after logout.  The same thing also happened 2-3 times before, but those times I was messing with some other things, so I didn't think the UEFI resetting itself was a separate problem.

In both cases above, the following happens when I turn on my machine after I had just shut it down.  I hear the fans/HDDs turn on, then about 1 second later the computer turns off.  Then it turns on again for less than 1 second, then off.  It repeats this a total of 2-3 times.  Then the machine turns on, I see a black screen for a while, and then the boot screen (where it says "ASRock") is on for a while, then more black screen, then the boot screen again, and then it finally says "UEFI failed to load the past few boots, UEFI settings have been reset, would you like to set UEFI settings again or continue boot?"  (Rough paraphrasing here).  I would then go into UEFI again and all of my settings have been reset.  The memory is also reset back to 2133 MHz, but after re-loading the XMP profile and rebooting again the memory is back at 3200.  I've done extensive memory tests (2x MemTest86+, 4x MemTest86) so I'm pretty sure my memory is fine.  I've also done an Intel Burn Test (similar to Prime95) for 3 hours a few days ago, no problems during that.

However if I boot up and shut down without doing anything significant while in Win 10, everything works fine.  I was able to successfully power cycle my computer 5 times in a row if I do nearly nothing in Win 10.

Someone please help!!  Did I get a faulty motherboard or something?  I leave most of my UEFI settings at default, and nothing is overclocked at the moment.

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theinfinitypoint Members Profile Send Private Message Find Members Posts Add to Buddy List Newbie Joined: 10 Aug 2018 Status: Offline Points: 14	Post Options Post Reply Quote theinfinitypoint Report Post Thanks(0) Quote Reply Topic: Z370 Gaming K6: UEFI Randomly Resets Itself Posted: 16 Aug 2018 at 7:29am
	I have the Z370 Fatal1ty Gaming K6 motherboard paired with the i7-8086K (not overclocked), with 4x16 GB G.Skill memory (Trident Z RGB 32GB, F4-3200C14D-32GTZ) and an AIO liquid cooler (Thermaltake Floe Dual Ring RGB 240 TT). I have also updated the motherboard to the latest firmware (3.10), which I think I did before this started happening (cannot confirm). I've been noticing lately that sometimes that the motherboard fails to boot a couple times, and then it resets itself. I have XMP turned on for the memory as well (DDR4 3200, CL=14). I think it happens whenever my OS (Win 10 Pro x64) has a longer than normal shutdown. For instance if I installed a bunch of programs and Win 10 takes a while to shutdown (about 3-4 min.), then I turn it on after a few seconds of being off. I also had 5 external disk drives connected during that shutdown, not sure if that's the cause. Or another time I installed a bunch (like 20-30) windows updates (MS Office in this case), and I click shutdown so Windows is finishing update installation after logout. The same thing also happened 2-3 times before, but those times I was messing with some other things, so I didn't think the UEFI resetting itself was a separate problem. In both cases above, the following happens when I turn on my machine after I had just shut it down. I hear the fans/HDDs turn on, then about 1 second later the computer turns off. Then it turns on again for less than 1 second, then off. It repeats this a total of 2-3 times. Then the machine turns on, I see a black screen for a while, and then the boot screen (where it says "ASRock") is on for a while, then more black screen, then the boot screen again, and then it finally says "UEFI failed to load the past few boots, UEFI settings have been reset, would you like to set UEFI settings again or continue boot?" (Rough paraphrasing here). I would then go into UEFI again and all of my settings have been reset. The memory is also reset back to 2133 MHz, but after re-loading the XMP profile and rebooting again the memory is back at 3200. I've done extensive memory tests (2x MemTest86+, 4x MemTest86) so I'm pretty sure my memory is fine. I've also done an Intel Burn Test (similar to Prime95) for 3 hours a few days ago, no problems during that. However if I boot up and shut down without doing anything significant while in Win 10, everything works fine. I was able to successfully power cycle my computer 5 times in a row if I do nearly nothing in Win 10. Someone please help!! Did I get a faulty motherboard or something? I leave most of my UEFI settings at default, and nothing is overclocked at the moment.

RLGL Members Profile Send Private Message Find Members Posts Add to Buddy List Senior Member Joined: 29 Jul 2018 Location: MN Status: Offline Points: 1995	Post Options Post Reply Quote RLGL Report Post Thanks(0) Quote Reply Posted: 16 Aug 2018 at 8:09am
	Is this a fresh install? What is the storage media? What is the partition table set to? If using an M.2 storage device , what is connected to the SATA ports and which port number?

theinfinitypoint Members Profile Send Private Message Find Members Posts Add to Buddy List Newbie Joined: 10 Aug 2018 Status: Offline Points: 14	Post Options Post Reply Quote theinfinitypoint Report Post Thanks(0) Quote Reply Posted: 16 Aug 2018 at 9:06am
	Yes this is a fresh install of Win 10 Pro x64. My boot disk partition table is set to MBR. Storage media is a samsung 850 Pro 512 GB hooked up to SATA_3_0. Not using M.2 storage anywhere, everything is connected up to SATA. I have a total of 6 drives currently attached to the SATA_3_x where (x\|0-5). No drives connected to the 2 ASMedia SATA ports, although I have cables inserted there they're not attached to any drives (makes it easier to add storage in the future). Also, I should list out my peripheral cards: PCIe1 (x1) = empty PCIe2 (x16) = EVGA GTX 970 SC PCIe3 (x1) = SATA3 PCIe expansion card with 4 ports: 2x connected to 2 different optical drives, 2x connected to 2 HDDs PCIe4 (x8) = USB3 expansion card PCIe5 (x1) = empty PCIe6 (x4) = Sound Blaster audio card I would try unplugging these and see if that fixes things, but the problem itself is hard to reproduce. If I find a reproducible way I might try this, if there are no other suggestions. EDIT: Is it possible the motherboard's UEFI doesn't like MBR partition table? Edited by theinfinitypoint - 16 Aug 2018 at 1:45pm

theinfinitypoint Members Profile Send Private Message Find Members Posts Add to Buddy List Newbie Joined: 10 Aug 2018 Status: Offline Points: 14	Post Options Post Reply Quote theinfinitypoint Report Post Thanks(0) Quote Reply Posted: 16 Aug 2018 at 3:37pm
	Ok I have another interesting data point to add. Tonight I tried installing one program (Partition Master) and I tried testing out a feature (create a Windows Preinstallation Environment Disk) that got hung (it never went anywhere, no window popped up). So I exited the program and had to kill the application manually in Task Manager. I went to shut down my computer, and it took about 3-4 minutes before it finally shut down. Windows would appear to log off in a few seconds, the screen goes black, and the computer remains on for 3-4 minutes. Thinking for sure the UEFI would reset, I took a video of me turning on the computer, but somehow it didn't reset. When it logged me on (I have no password set) I could not move my mouse. I unplugged and plugged it back into the same USB 2 black plate that connects directly into the motherboard's USB2 slots and it works fine. I've had this problem earlier but I thought it went away. Is this possibly related? Or something else?? Maybe the UEFI update I did to 3.10 was faulty?

theinfinitypoint Members Profile Send Private Message Find Members Posts Add to Buddy List Newbie Joined: 10 Aug 2018 Status: Offline Points: 14	Post Options Post Reply Quote theinfinitypoint Report Post Thanks(0) Quote Reply Posted: 16 Aug 2018 at 7:16pm
	Updates: [I'm using these posts for notes] I rebooted it again right after the last power cycle, and this time my USB mouse (connected to the USB2 backplate, which connects directly into the motherboard's USB2 pins) didn't work even after unplugging and plugging it back in. I then tried plugging it into a slot in the USB 3 PCIe adapter. This caused Windows to crash giving me the DPC_WATCHDOG_VIOLATION error. I looked into this and I have the iaStorAC.sys driver, and not the iaStor.sys driver some people seem to have issues with (for the SATA AHCI controller). The driver is dated 5/23/2018 so quite recent. I start the PC back up again and right after login Windows (re-?)installed the driver for the USB3 PCIe card, the manufacturer being "Renesas". It's looking like this USB3 hub/card caused the unexpected shutdown. I found some *.dmp files in the directory %windir%\LiveKernelReports\USB3HUB, and using Blue Screen Viewer (program) I didn't find anything that stood out to me. Finally, I looked in the Windows Event Viewer to see what sorts of errors are occurring. A couple of interesting ones popped out at me. The "source" for each failure event are listed on a single line, followed by the description, and any of my own commentary, in chronological order: 8/13: 14x of NTFS ("A corruption was discovered in the filesystem Windows 7"). I have an image of my previous Win 7 installation I'm using to transfer some stuff over, and it's connected via the front USB3 panel. This drive is sometimes connected when I shut down the computer, I don't know if this correlates with any of my issues yet. 8/14: Kernel-Boot ("Windows failed startup with error status 0xC00000D4"), Kernel-Power ("The system has rebooted without cleanly shutting down first. This error could be caused if the system stopped responding, crashed, or lost power unexpectedly"), EventLog ("The previous system shutdown at [such and such time] was unexpected"). These happen a lot in fact, and all 3 are in the same order. I should mention that up until a few days ago I had an IDE drive connected to one of the SATA ports (ASMedia chipset), using an IDE --> SATA adapter. I discovered that once I pulled that out of my system it solved a whole bunch of issues, I didn't lose my mouse on Windows startup, and I was getting less of the UEFI failing to boot issue. And it solved another minoir problem I haven't mentioned yet, that being every time I plug a USB3 device into a USB3 port (any port going to the motherboard) Win 10 would tell me to plug it into a USB 3 port so it'd transfer faster. That adapter caused a lot of corruption for that drive (I had a backup so it's fine). In fact I think that adapter may be the cause of all or nearly all of the issues, and I'm dealing with the residuals of it now. Also unfortunately I could not find any memory dump files, even though Windows Event Viewer claimed it did. I don't even know if these two events are related. Does Windows fast boot save drivers in its prefetch? This may be causing the USB issue, but I'm not sure if that'd cause an issue with booting since that's not a Windows-specific problem. I just tried deleting as much as I could from %windir%\Prefetch. Help!!! :(

RLGL Members Profile Send Private Message Find Members Posts Add to Buddy List Senior Member Joined: 29 Jul 2018 Location: MN Status: Offline Points: 1995	Post Options Post Reply Quote RLGL Report Post Thanks(0) Quote Reply Posted: 16 Aug 2018 at 9:45pm
	Guessing, disconnect the sound blaster and the expansion card, if no help leave disconnected, set the win 7 drive aside for now then test the memory

theinfinitypoint Members Profile Send Private Message Find Members Posts Add to Buddy List Newbie Joined: 10 Aug 2018 Status: Offline Points: 14	Post Options Post Reply Quote theinfinitypoint Report Post Thanks(0) Quote Reply Posted: 05 Oct 2018 at 6:52pm
	I figured I should post here on how I resolved my problem, for anyone else who might be experiencing something similar. Basically I replaced the motherboard with another one and everything has been working fine, even after many many restarts while overclocking my CPU.

RLGL Members Profile Send Private Message Find Members Posts Add to Buddy List Senior Member Joined: 29 Jul 2018 Location: MN Status: Offline Points: 1995	Post Options Post Reply Quote RLGL Report Post Thanks(0) Quote Reply Posted: 05 Oct 2018 at 11:04pm
	[URL=][/URL]EDIT: Is it possible the motherboard's UEFI doesn't like MBR partition table? Yes the boot drive has to be on a GPT. Edited by RLGL - 06 Oct 2018 at 2:25am
	Asrock Z370 Gaming K6,Intel i7 8700K, Asrock x570 Taichi