X99m Gaming 5 general USB issues

[philw]

Standard x99m with a completely clearn windows 8.1 64 bit install, M2 SSD, several 3TB SATA GPT disks, UEFI/Windows Boot Manager. Standard "safe" default settings and F3 BIOS. Nothing weird, all standard/ factory defaults, all clean stuff. Disks all tested on other machines, no errors anywhere.

If I restart the system with a USB external device plugged in, to the case front ports (off F_USB30_1 and F_USB20_2), then the BIOS goes into some weird boot loop and will not start. I see the BIOS logo multiple times, but it seems that my USB keyboard etc are dead - no caps lock light etc. So I deduce that I'm losing all USB functionality. Once this happens, the only fix is to remove the device, then manually clear the BIOS memory.

There are multiple badly documented settings around these USB ports. There are multiple reports of this kind of problem on the net, but no clear fix.

So what's the deal here, please. There must be some combination of the various settings here which will make this work. Why is the BIOS not starting, and does it write a log to say that somewhere? It looks like it's trying to boot from whatever USB device I plug in the front there - I didn't tell it to do that, so why's that happening?

Any help welcome. I guess I can RMA it and swap it for an Asus, although chances are they have their own issues...

Other thoughts:

• My mouse and keyboard are connected via a USB3 hub in my monitor, would they be better directly plugged into the USB2 headers on the board? Is there something weird about the USB 3 ports?

[digital nomad]

I heard that BIOS's freeze because they can't recognize the USB devices manufacture and product ID's during booting. Some things I've tried such as Microsoft Xbox 360 controllers for PC have no problem. So I'm thinking the more popular the device is, the most likely it will boot connected.   

I have a Fanatec ClubSport wheel. It's got a ON/OFF power switch. If I turn the switch ON and boot, It hangs at the Gigabyte screen. If it's OFF it boots right to the desktop just fine even with the USB cable plugged in. Then I turn it on and it works fine.

I got a bunch of USB gaming controllers that won't boot if their plugged in.

So I bought a external powered USB hub with a ON/OFF power switch and plug game controllers into that and leave it switched off while booting and turn on at the desktop.

[philw]

I think that is the same issue, at root.

Looking at the Device Manager/ block diagram, there are three USB controllers, two on the x99 and one "Ranseas":

• x99 #1
• x99 #2
• Intel USB3.0 eXtensible Host Controller (XHC?)

I'm trying to figure out what is plugged into what, and what the BIOS "route this to that" thing does. At the moment I have everything in Device Manager apparently on the Intel controller, and the external drive at least does not stop every few minutes. So that is some progress. I don't think I can boot with the external drive connected, and I'm having boot issues even with it unplugged. I find it hard to believe my Samson microphone is preventing the machine booting, but perhaps it is!

If you have a hub which you power off whilst rebooting, it makes sense that the devices aren't visible, so they won't cause the issue. I may be able to use that as a work-around, if all else fails.

I'm trying to work out what precisely is causing this. I'm thinking that the BIOS has a bunch of settings, and I've a ton of interface controllers here, so some combination of this will probably work, if only I can figure out what it is.

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Does anyone know precisely what the freamkin' BIOS is doing when it's refusing to boot? Back in the day the POST would actually throw up a log of what precisely it was doing at each step, so at least you could tell where it was hanging. Is there an equivalent here?

[digital nomad]

Looking at the Device Manager/ block diagram, there are three USB controllers, two on the x99 and one "Ranseas":

• x99 #1
• x99 #2
• Intel USB3.0 eXtensible Host Controller (XHC?)

I'm trying to figure out what is plugged into what...

Device Manager... View... Devices by connection

[philw]

Er, that's how I know it's all hanging off the Intel controller.

The issue is more that there seems to be some "re-routing" which is going on, or at least the BIOS seems to think so. Hence what I see in the OS (which I don't need any assistance with) doesn't seem to match the block diagram.

[philw]

More on this. By switching all my USB stuff to the back ports (USB2 and 3) I seem to be able to avoid problems with USB disks disconnecting every few minutes. I've tried tinkering with the chipset routing but that seems to make no difference.

The length of time it takes to boot the system from cold varies depending on precisely what's plugged in where. If I move my mouse (!) from a USB2 port to a USB3 port, it saves around 10 seconds of in-BIOS boot time. That's giving me a 20 second boot instead of 30 seconds. With an M2 SSD I'm not impressed, but I suppose I don't care much as I don't do a lot of rebooting.

Guys, your BIOS isn't great if it's waiting 10 seconds to work out that my mouse is in fact a mouse. Jeez.

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On that, Windows 8.1 kernel snapshot "fast startup" doesn't work on these boards. The problem I think is that although it'll load the image from the M2 SSD, the other disks apparently aren't ready at that point, irrespective of how I tweak the BIOS... the result is that it shuts down with a list of drives (in my case right now one other SSD and one lage SATA disk, all MBR), and then when it starts up... one of those disks is not visible to it there in the BIOS, so it fails the fast startup. The result is that "fast startup" is in fact slow startup. Sure, I can disable it in Windows, but this board is supposed to support Windows.

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And just when you thought it couldn't get any worse...
 - with the F2 BIOS I could achieve XMP1 with my DDR4 memory and a reasonable overclock on the CPU.
 - the F3 BIOS won't boot with either memory or CPU in those same settings.

What did you do to F3 that you're not telling us? It's sort of vaguely useful if you were to provide a list of changes with these things.

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I'm sure your company won't die if I RMA this thing, but a bit of support would vaguely be useful. We buy this stuff with some knowledge it's not perfect, but if you want us to help us fix your broken stuff, then some information would be useful.

[digital nomad]

By switching all my USB stuff to the back ports (USB2 and 3) I seem to be able to avoid problems with USB disks disconnecting every few minutes.

I had 5 Saitek Panels turning off that I had connected through a external hub to a front USB3 port.

Then I found a setting in Windows for the internal hubs under Device Manager/USB Root Hubs/Properties/Power Management > Allow the computer to turn off this device to save power.

After I de-selected it, the Saitek Panels didn't turn off anymore.

Curious if yours is selected on the front port only causing your USB disks to disconnect.

[philw]

USB Issues
Thanks, no I tried that when the problem first came up. I think that was a Windows 8.0 issue (from my original googling), but it made no difference to my issue. I poked about a lot in the Windows logs too and found no evidence of power save stuff in there. Worth a try though.

My latest experiment is to turn off all the legacy stuff in the BIOS. FFS this is the bleeding edge board and I don't have any old **** attached to it, so why would I need that? So I disabled it all, and also turned off all the "route this to that" nonsense for USB. The idea is that I need none of that stuff to boot, so maybe it'll reduce the time if I get rid of it. It seems to do so.

The yellow USB 2.0 ports on the back no longer work, presumably because I'm not "routing" them anywhere good. However why would I want to use those... USB3 is backwards compatible and I'm not short of ports.

Windows 8.1 fast start still fails reliably, but I assume that's because the other disks I have aren't available at UEFI boot time. That needs to remain off.


Overclocking is impossible with F3 - it just won't play at all. I'll need to google around for that I guess.

[philw]

I reverted to F2 and that overclocks just fine.

Gigabyte: the F3 BIOS does not seem to be overclockable.

[Maggpies]

I think I have found a solution for the USB issues. I have been having a lot of disconnects with my USB devices with Win 7 Pro and i have got them to stop. the BIOS version i am using is F3. Go in to BIOS Under peripherals set EHCI hand-off to enabled. Then under chipset set the XHCI mode to enabled not smart auto its not so smart. I hope this helps some of you out.