ASUS Maximus VII Hero corrupt UEFI?

[ATi_Express]

Hi all,

I'm having some issues with my ASUS Maximus VII Hero and am I'm not sure what to try next.

My machine was working fine until the system just powered it'self off completely then after a couple of seconds it powered it'self back on. Now I am unable to boot windows or access the BIOS. The system posts fine I get the ASUS splash screen "press F2 or Del for setup" however when I do I get either nothing but a black screen or random lines down the screen like an artifacting GPU. While in this state If i press any key the system reboots it's self.

If I don't press F2 or Del to enter the BIOS the system fails to boot displaying and error "BIInitalizeLibrary failed 0xc000003f" then it reboots. I have tried a my nVme drive a SATA HDD, SATA SSD and a USB with a windows 10 setup on it and every time I get the same message.

I have cleared the CMOS, (removed the battery pressed CLR_CMOS button etc) at which point it says that the defaults are loaded press F1 for set up then i get the same black screen or random lines.
I have also tried using the BIOS flash back feature with multiple different BIOS versions including the one that was already on the system but it still behaves the same. i've also pulled out the GPUs and tried on-board but still no go.

I suspect the UEFI firmware could be corrupt, is it possible to re flash this similar to the BIOS or is my board stuffed? Seems so weird as it POSTs fine.

Anyone seen anything like this before? any input would be greatly appreciated. Thanks.

System specs:
i7 4790K
16GB Corsair Vengence DDR3 1600
nVidia GTX970 SLI
ASUS MAXIMUS VII HERO
Intel 760P 512GB

 

[Caring1]

BIOS is borked, good news is your Motherboard has a replaceable Winbond BIOS chip.
If replacing that doesn't work, the Windows instal may have a corrupt boot section.

 

[ATi_Express]

BIOS is borked, good news is your Motherboard has a replaceable Winbond BIOS chip.
If replacing that doesn't work, the Windows instal may have a corrupt boot section.

Thanks for your response. That's good that the chip is replaceable, sounds like it's the best next step to try. So the UEFI part is stored on that same chip?
I've found a site "bios-chip24" that has replacement chips, I'll try getting a new one.

Asus Maximus VII Hero

Bios chip for Asus Maximus VII Hero motherboard. The Bios chip is programmed and verified with the latest bios.

www.bios-chip24.com

I'm pretty confident it's not a windows problem as it will not even boot off a flash drive with win10 setup (tested the USB which works on another machine). However, while waiting for a new BIOS chip I might try install windows on a spare HDD in another PC and drop it in and see if it will boot. Cheers.

 

[ATi_Express]

Hi All,

Just a quick update, I managed to source another motherboard the exact same model locally to test swapping the BIOS chip. It ended up doing the exact same thing, even using the whole other board. So I then swapped in a different CPU (i5 4570), it fired up and went straight into the BIOS and booted into windows no issues at all.

So sadly it looks like my 4790K is toast, but at least my machine is up and running for now

Cheers.