MSI GT80 SLI motherboard going bad - 20 minute boots

I have 20 minute cold boots with my GT80S SLI.

I called the MSI tech-support, they suggested upgrading the BIOS, which I did, I was 2 revisions behind.

It hasn't helped the problem. Cold boots still take between 15 and 20 minutes.

Reboots are very fast at 30 seconds. A full boot after a full shutdown takes 1 minute. But let it seat overnight and it's back to 20 minutes, which to me suggests a bad capacitor in the motherboard.

MSI told me it's out of warranty and even if it wasn't, doesn't matter since they have no parts to repair it with.
MSI actually told me to take it to a motherboard repair shop.

stay away from MSI, at the very least from the GT80 model, such an expensive machine is pure junk AND they refuse to take ownership of the problem. It's very clearly a factory defect. I am afraid to turn it off now as it seems to degrade with time. It waits for 20 minutes *before* hitting the disk, getting to the BIOS or anything else (DEL or F11 keys). So it not a Windows issue, once it hits the disk it boots in under 30 seconds.

Scan online/youtube and it's full of "Stuck at MSI logo" boot issues.

 

Its from 2016 and its a low sales volume laptop, normal that they dont have parts anymore..

It sounds like its a corrupted ME image, go to win-raid forums, download the ME firmware update tools and the latest ME firmware that your chipset can run, upgrade it and the re-start the ME Engine with the apropriated commands.

 

Imho it's indeed a cap or a solder joint somewhere but try ruling out any potential firmware issue first.
These things (and most high end gaming laptops) don't have a long life, maybe 3-5 years max due to power draw and heat.

 

I have never gamed with it and never overheated it. The fan doesn't turn on due to overheating.

The "Stuck at the MSI logo" boot problem seems to be common with various MSI models, not just GT80.

 

would they have firmware for the MSI Titan GT80 SLI? Link?

I can try to reinstall the firmware from the official site.

I undid the RAID 0 it came with. The SSDs are no longer in the RAID0 configuration. I have one primary SSD that's the Win10 boot disk and the other is just in standby mode for cloning to it.

The BIOS I already upgraded to the latest-greatest to no avail.

 

You need to find what ME firmware version you are running.
With HWInfo64 go to the Motherboard "tab", then click on Intel ME, take a screenshot and post here.

 

Okay. will do that.

Meanwhile, reading this thread. I wonder if there is a similiar flash for GT80S SLI. It seems to have fixed his problem.

http://forum.notebookreview.com/thr...nto-bios-or-stuck-at-msi-screen.789775/page-3

 

The fact that reboots are very fast suggest to me it's not a hardware issue?

It's the cold boots that are the issue and only when it has been sitting for a while, overnight.

 

Thats what leads me to corrupt ME..

I have flashed lots of BIOS when I worked repairing laptop boards and corrupted ME regions either lead to no boot, or slow cold boots, but without a know good dump, or a factory FULL image and an hardware programmer it isn't straight forward to repair the ME region, but its possible, and if it wasn't corrupted to start with, you dont break anything flashing it over..

 

What is the "ME region"?

 

The Intel Management Engine (ME), also known as the Manageability Engine, is an autonomous subsystem that has been incorporated in virtually all of Intel's processor chipsets since 2008. It is located in the Platform Controller Hub of modern Intel motherboards. It is a part of Intel Active Management Technology, which allows system administrators to perform tasks on the machine remotely. System administrators can use it to turn the computer on and off, and they can login remotely into the computer regardless of whether or not an operating system is installed.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intel_Management_Engine

 

Long time ago, at Barton's age, I had a motherboard with same problem. Cold boot took very long time, 10 minutes maybe.
Then a friend of mine with a solder iron and a multimeter came and look at my capacitors. Three of them were faulty.
I bought the same brand new capacitors and he swapped them.
After that, my computer worked like brand new.

You should at least see if any capacitor is leaking, if you don't have the hardware to check.

 

Mine has been doing something similar and looking for some guidance. It will occasionally wake from sleep and the WiFi card will not register and not work. Upon shutdown and power up, it will get stuck at the MSI splash screen and not take any input or go to BIOS, but the turbo fan button will still function properly. I have found that unplugging the AC power will allow it to boot after a few minutes on battery power, then say repairing drive “xxxx”. After that, it will run and function like nothing is wrong, go through many sleep cycles and not skip a beat, until the next time the WiFi doesn’t come up. I avoid shutting it down often due to the fact it may not come back up, and I use the machine for work often. Recently I had the orange flashing battery light come on as well, but did battery calibration and it went away after 2 cycles of that. Sorry kind of long winded but trying to get to the bottom of this thing.

 

Open a admin powershell window.
Type exactly this
FIXBOOT
Hit enter
Reboot
Come back and be sayin thanx and stuff

 

Tried,

Powershell says: the term “FIXBOOT” is not recognized as the name of cmdlet, function, script....

 

I guess that shows how long it's been since I've had to use that command.....grr.
I guess the *new* revised command line is
bootrec /fixboot

Just remember that you have to do it as admin.
I miss the old days when it was fdisk/mbr

{edit}
Gawd, it seems Microshaft has locked out even that.
Seems like the even newer way is to do a repair install with command line and THEN do the bootrec /fixboot.
I really don't like win10 and the way they think they have a better way for your (or my) computer to run.

I'm off to search up some kind of app or plugin that actually allows a real command line interface.
Wish me freakin luck on that one.

{edit2}
It seems MicroMiniShaft has a new "terminal" program that allegedly offers linux like command line interface (honestly from reading about it it seems colors and background were higher priority than function) but it is in beta stage for now.
It's only available thru microweinershaft store....great.
I'm currently running Win10 enterprise LTSC that isn't compatible with store.
This is so ironically pathetically microshaft that it isn't even funny.

tldr:
I'd like to help you guys and am certain it's either a corrupted master boot record ... or ... possibly a bios reset.
Dunno how to help at this point, sorry.

 

Well I did forget to mention that I have removed the partitioned segment of the C drive and have it all on 1 Samsung 960 Pro 1TB M.2. I don’t know if that would cause any issue though. I called MSI a couple months back and they said it could be a failing MB or video card, but wouldn’t know until I sent it in.

 

Bingo!
Francine, step up here and tell us what MFranks has won....

Kidding.

That first small partition on the drive you boot from is the master boot record (well kinda, it's stored in that partition).
If you mess with it in any way you WILL get mbr errors and have problems just like the ones you've described.

Have a win10 install disk or install flash drive ?

 

I have already done the following and it did repair some files...

2) open administrative command prompt and type or copy and paste:
3) sfc /scannow
4) dism /online /cleanup-image /restorehealth
5) chkdsk /scan

I dont have a win10 install disk or install flash either. However, I did reinstall the OE C Drives and it did not change the boot up at all... which thinking if it was that partition error that it would have booted properly?

 

Not a bad idea, how do I access the motherboard, does that I mean I have to disassemble the entire machine? Where are the capacitors on the motherboard?
The other day a cold boot took 45 minutes. Wow. I think this thing is dying.

The mystery is, why do the _reboots_ take the usual 29 seconds but cold boots take 45 minutes? What happens during a cold boot that doesn't happen during a reboot?

It is a hardware issue.

 

I had a issue with my GT80S where seems similar booting it it would just stay on the MSI splash screen for a long time. One day is just never came off the splash screen. I called MSI and sent them my PC to diagnose they came back with it was a bad BIOS chip. Of course this all started right after my warranty was up. They wanted another 600 to fix it. I told them no and had them ship me the PC back. Not sure if it is the same issue but might be

 

I still recommend you to go over to win-raid forums and ask for help on how to re-flash you ME section, given that its a C236 chipset running ME V11.0 its not as straight forward as older versions, but they can guide you, or at least run the ME tests to rule it out.

 

this is helpful, thank you.