GA-Z68XP-UD3-iSSD "loading operating system"

[ddrueding]

Interesting problem. System posts normally, detects all the drives, then displays "Loading Operating System ..." and sits there for about 5 minutes before continuing on without issue. I've made sure I'm on the latest BIOS, reset the defaults, and had this issue even with all the drives disconnected.

 

[BingBangBop]

Check your boot order and remove any unnecessary devices. Perhaps, you have a device like a floppy or network booting enabled that is unnecessary and taking lots of time to detect and reject.

 

[Bozo]

I've had similar boot problems when the OS is looking for a network connection that's missing.

 

[ddrueding]

Removed everything but the onboard SSD (that I actually want to boot to). I did disable the onboard NIC, as there is an Intel 2x1GbE card in the machine.

Sorry for posting and running, but I won't be able to look at this again until tomorrow

 

[Mercutio]

Usually I run into that when there's something stupid like a printer with a built in card reader plugged in.

 

[ddrueding]

Yeah, the problem I think is the onboard mSATA SSD. I want to believe that they simply stole one of the SATA ports from the northbridge and didn't do anything silly, but I'm beginning to doubt it.

 

[Mercutio]

Did you not get a 20GB SSD with the board?

 

[ddrueding]

I did get a 20GB SSD, and it is being detected correctly. I even have another Intel mSATA SSD that I've tested. It displays as just another drive in the BIOS, but I don't know what tricks they did to it. I would love to just install ESXi or FreeNAS straight onto it and leave the drive bays for storage disks.

 

[ddrueding]

Disabled all the boot options but the one I'm trying, and have individually tried a single HDD (both the onboard mSATA and a SATA SSD) or a USB stick, or a USB CD-ROM. It isn't even trying to boot (the device shows no activity, regardless of device or position).

 

[ddrueding]

Interesting. When I press F12 to enter the boot selection screen it shows all the right options. When I select a valid option it then goes into "Loading Operating System ..." for 5 minutes without accessing the device, then accesses the device and boots normally.

 

[ddrueding]

The plot thickens. As soon as I have a Windows install on a drive other then the onboard SSD it boots almost immediately, even to devices that stalled out before.

Sounds like the BIOS is trying to do some housekeeping on the onboard SSD before passing on the boot order?

 

[Mercutio]

FreeNAS doesn't even really install. When I stuck it on a drive I just used dd to write an image of it to a drive. I don't know what's going on with your stuff but as I recall there's an Intel toolkit that lets you check the drive and there might be a firmware update for your drive like there was for mine.

 

[Bozo]

I chased a boot/video problem on a Supermicro board yesterday. It wouldn't recognize an add-in video card. When I removed the video card, the motherboard video worked fine, but it took a long time to boot.
I flashed the BIOS with the version that was already installed and everything worked fine.