My system has been working perfectly for a couple of months. I've noticed an unknown driver in the device manager for a while. I googled it's Hardware ID and had found out that it belongs to Intel Smart Connect Driver.
I downloaded the latest driver from Intel, installed it and it had asked me to reboot. I rebooted and it won't go past POST. I unplugged all USB ports, PCI sound card and all SATA Drives. I've also disconnected all hard drives from PSU.
The only thing that is plugged in to the machine is the following setup.
- DarkPower 650 Watt PSU
- GA-Z77-D3H v1.1
- Intel Xeon E3-1230 V2 3.30Ghz
- ADATA DDR3 1600GC4G9-DG2 4GBX2
- ATI Radeon HD 6950
- USB Mouse, USB Keyboard
- LCD Monitor to HD 6950
I've cleared the CMOS by removing the battery for 2 minutes, and tried to boot the system and it still carried on boot looping. I've tried clearing the CMOS by removing the battery 3 more attempts and it then gave me the option to
- Load Optimized Defaults and Boot
- Load Optimized Defaults and Reboot
- Enter BIOS
I chose Load Optimized Defaults and Reboot but unfortunately it continued with the boot loop.
I have since tried booting with 1x4GB Memory module after resetting the BIOS but I'm still experiencing the boot loop.
The boot loop is similar to this action
'your system will boot once, power down for a second, attempt to boot again, reset without the power down, attempt to boot yet again, power down - rinse, lather, repeat!'
continuously until I pull the plug.
I'm assuming this is a faulty motherboard so I can start the procedure of an RMA but if anyone knows how to resolve this or you have experienced this before and know how to resolve it. Also I'd like a second opinion if you think this is a faulty board and you think that I should RMA the board.
Thanks
