Sager NP9377 unable to boot (sometimes)

Sorry, this will be long winded, but I wanted to mention everything I've tried to save time. I've exhausted about all the things I can think of and am hoping not to have to do an RMA with an intermittent problem, those tend not to go well, especially when they get it back and say it all works well (which it does for a while but the problem always comes back for me).

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I have been trying to figure one irritating issue since I got this machine. The symptom is, occasionally when I do a cold boot it will not go in to windows, but stop at a blank screen after the Blue windows 8 window icon shows up (the next thing I normally see is the desktop). One time it even did a constant reboot and I could not even get into BIOS before it rebooted again(this may be biggest clue to a motherboard issue, at this point I was still blaming it on bad drives maybe pulling too much current or something)

When it decides to do this this blank screen boot I usually end up rebooting a bunch of times (holding power button down) and eventually get into windows again. Windows start up repair never has found any issues. After I do this I can run all day long, play games, temps are great, even when overclocked they were always very low. The problem tends to show up again the next day when I come home from work and boot the machine to this issue again. I can do driver updates, reboots, install programs etc and never have an issue, its always during a cold boot.

My config is a clean install (I've done several clean installs and this always happens) of Win 8.1 using the Sager CD from scratch. I am running raid 0 (2x) msata 1tb ssd's, and raid 0 (2x) 2TB 2.5" HD's. I was initially getting Intel Rapid Storage Technology errors about my raid 0 2 TB HD's, which I tried swapping and got the same error on the other drive (folowed port 0 on motherboard). I was thinking I was making progress but after removing the drive completely on port 0 and only using the other HD in non raid mode for a couple days, the problem came back again tonight.

I then removed the 2nd HD (no HD's at this point, only the dual SSD's) and it still does it. I unplugged all accessories and it does the same thing even on battery with nothing connected.

I've tried all sorts of disk scans and SMART error checks since the problem seemed to be around my drives, but I cannot believe all 4 of my drives are bad. One yes I could, 2 would be unlikely, but all 4 I find unrealistic, especially when I can run for days and days with zero issues, until I shutdown and cold boot again.

I have set my CPU back to all defaults with XTU (this one seemed most logical with the weird issues I am having).
I've removed the 2 HD's because initially all the errors seemed to be related to them, but tonight it's doing it even without either installed at all.
Blaming the IRST drivers, on this last reinstall I never installed them, but unfortunately the problem came back so its not that.

I find it hard to believe my CPU or GPUs have any problems as they run so good and cool.

My final things to try are:
1) Removing hwinfo64 and RTSS from startup, maybe the realtime programs are causing an issue on cold start? I really don't think its even getting that far into starting windows though.
2) Seems unlikely, but this time in particular the last thing I did the night before was update my intel wireless drivers because my wireless would disconnect occasionally. I can try to roll back those drivers (I absolutely hate every single 7260 card I've ever owned, and I've had a ton of them, on multiple routers...)
3) I could try running my msata off a single drive for a while, with no other drives in the system and see if it comes back again
4) Bios upgrade maybe? I cannot find the official sager BIOS anywhere online, maybe there havent been any updates in a long while? I found all the drivers, just no BIOS.
5) Maybe another one of my programs or games is causing some weird issue, but it would have to be on initial windows starting as its failing before any errors can even be logged at all. I have 200 games installed so no idea where to even start with that issue.
6) Send in for bad motherboard

Other than the junky 7260 intel wireless card, and this cold boot issue, the machine has been great. Temps low and overclocks very well. Games great!

If anyone has any ideas I'm all ears, I'm getting tired of doing clean installs, taking a week to get all my stuff installed and working again, and then having to start over and do it yet again making no apparent progress. Help please!

 

Turn off split EFI. Windows 8.x only

Something in the BIOS doesnt like your video card mod. Flash it from Windows or just use EFI.


Just read your issue. Its an EFI or die thanks to the Intel Management Engine (ME) that you flashed. Also if you have custom vbios..... its EFI only

 

Have you had a look at your boot settings and CSM?

 

Wanna see what a stock 9377 with dual 980M AND NO CORE OVERCLOCKING (with 4.1GHz OC) can do?

http://www.3dmark.com/3dm/5729659?

 

Thanks for the replies.

Ethrem, I don't quite understand what you're saying. I am not using any BIOS/VBIOS mods, and it does it at stock CPU/GPU settings if you meant to say overclocking/undervolt etc.

About "split?" EFI, I assume you mean UEFI? I have ran with it off (legacy) most of the time but I'm pretty sure it came with it enabled when this all started. There are very very few options in the BIOS, and as I said earlier I cannot find any updated BIOS. I don't know what CSM is but I think I've seen that in the BIOS on some of my previous laptops.

After several weeks of running good, it started to crap out again and I decided to give Windows 7 a try. It would not install with UEFI enabled (would freeze when starting setup, I read that may be due to it seeing the Windows 8 key in BIOS and causing an issue?) so I went back to legacy again and got it installed fine. It was going good, some updates done, steam installed, clean device manager (all drivers installed). All was fine, everything working great up to this point. I did another batch of windows updates and got a black screen after windows animation (just like windows 8 was doing). After waiting 30 mins I had force a shutdown holding the power button. Upon restart I went into safe mode, where it would automatically say removing failed updates or something like that. Then it would boot fine again.

I tried to single out if it was a particular update, but it didn't matter what single update I picked, upon reboot I would have to go through this process again.

Uhg. Other than maybe my P35x, I 've never seen so many issues with clean installs before. At this point I'm planning to go back to win 8 again, as it lasted for weeks rather than less than a day. I was going to try breaking my msata RAID, and installing on just a single msata. That is one thing I hadn't tried yet. I will probably try going back to UEFI enabled and using fast boot since I originally thought that was causing issues, well obviously it isn't since I hadn't used it on my last few installs. I miss the fast bootup time espeically since I'm rebooting a lot more due to these issues.

I still cannot believe there is a hardware issue, since I can run games, surf, benchmark, and use the laptop all day long, possibly for weeks, only to have a problem on startup. I still think it 's software, but not sure where to start. This last windows 7 install, literally the only programs I installed were steam and uplay and a few games. No real time monitoring, no tweaking of any kind.

 

You may have a hardware issue somewhere as the machine should cope with windows 7 or 8 in either legacy or UEFI mode without issue.

 

Can you try turning on UEFI and "fast boot" in the BIOS? If you do this, you shouldn't even see the Windows 8 startup logo; on the Sager logo it should start booting windows (you'll need to start tapping F2 before your screen even powers on to get into BIOS if you boot/reboot once this is set). Let me know if this helps. I and Ethrem had a problem where Intel XTU was causing our machines to "off" after the boot logo and reboot itself until we pulled out our AC cords and booted on battery then re-plugged in our AC cords, but fast boot negates this issue.

I hope this helps; it's the only thing I can think of. If that does not help (also try booting on battery without AC plugged in and see if it cold boots that way) and you can't fix it, you may need to RMA it.

 

The last few installs UEFI and fastboot were disabled, that was my first thought as well. I did try running from battery, and disconnecting everything to see if it would ever come up.

After trying Windows 7 a couple times (which didn't help) I went back to Windows 8 again last night. This time I am trying no RAID at all, keeping the 4 drives separate and using AHCI in the BIOS. I'm running out of ideas.

If I do RMA what would I report the problem as? Boots to blank screen occasionally, which can be from a few hours to several weeks? I'm fairly confident it's not anything I'm installing as these last couple attempts only had a couple games installed and little else. That still doesn't rule out some odd windows issue or driver causing issues.

The really odd thing is it runs perfectly, great temps and great performance (I have the firestrike record for my CPU/GPU combo the last time I checked ). No lockups of any kind while I'm in Windows or during initial install, setup, reboots from installing drivers and software. Then later, I can sometimes "force" the issue by rebooting a few times until it finally does it. I'm half tempted to just avoid rebooting as much as possible, but sooner or later I will have to reboot and eventually it will catch up with me. I think that is what happened when i had it running for several weeks, I just rarely rebooted.

 

Record the issue and use that as proof. If you send the system as-is and they can force it to hang on rebooting by constantly rebooting it after a couple days, bing! They must fix. If they cannot force it, it might be a power issue in your place, of all things. And again, make sure hybrid boot is disabled

 

It happened again this morning and I put some effort into looking at the issue. It sat at the blank screen for a few minutes while I was getting ready, and eventually it did reboot on it's own, and went straight into windows.

It looks like it does start to go into windows but the display never initializes. I got an "event 14 from source nvlddmkm" and about 8 mins later (I am guessing that was during the blank screen) it came in again, and the next entry was after the reboot, where it said it wasn't properly shut down.

I was using 344.80 drivers for a long while and now (after dropping overclocking completely until I figure this out) I am on the latest 347.25.

I'm not sure how realistic it could be that drivers are causing an issue but I may roll back to an older one just for testing purposes and see if it still does it.

One more oddity, I fell asleep watching a movie last night, the system went to sleep. A few hours later it turned back on for a second and then turned back off on it's own. I remember hearing it, and I can see in the logs when this happened. It says it went from sleep to hibernate. Only one error, "Faulting application name: svchost.exe_WbioSrvc" which I think it part of my fingerprint reader. Ironically I never messed with it before, and just this one time installed the software and enrolled my fingerprint.

Maybe I will disable hibernate, and also try different nvidia drivers (I am almost certain I've tried both those before though).