Weird CPU/Motherboard Issue... **Actually a Windows 8.1 Issue**

[Tedders]

I have an interesting/frustrating issue with my machine.  I will try to explain this as best I can...

 

System specs are in my signature and everything is up to date within Windows and all drivers/bios for hardware.

 

When I cold boot the machine, whether its been off for days or just a few seconds, the CPU isn't getting detected properly.  Windows task manager detects 1 CPU, 4 cores just like it should.  HOWEVER HWiNFO, CPU-Z and MSI Command Center don't like it.  HWiNFO will not detect the CPU cores properly.  It seems to know they are there, buuuuut not really.  It does detect the different temps for each core though...  Its weird so I've attached a screen shot labeled "bad" so you can see what I mean.

 

When I try to run CPU-Z, it just hangs at the loading screen because it gets stuck while trying to load the details of the CPU.  I've attached a screen shot of that as well.  MSI Command Center also fails to load properly when this is going on.  Both CPU-Z and MSI Command Center have to be killed in task manager.

 

Now, the only way I have found to fix this issue is to restart my machine.  Not shutdown and turn back on but literally just restart.  When the machine comes back up, I hear the "new device detected" sound like when you plug something in and then everything works.  Task manager doesn't look any different, but after that HWiNFO shows everything properly (mainly the Core #X usage).  HWiNFO will also now actually detect the CPU model as well.  MSI Command Center runs properly as well as CPU-Z.

 

I am thoroughly stumped on this one.  Its easy to fix as I just have to restart my machine real quick, but still.  PITA.  I've attached the "good" screen from HWiNFO so you can see the difference between the two.  Does anyone have any ideas on this?  I have restored factory defaults to my motherboard and have looked around to see if there is anything that stands out to me as something that could be confusing my system, but I haven't found anything.

[MasterRaceFanBoy]

try to update the bios, chipset.

[LogicalDrm]

try to update the bios, chipset.

 

+1 for this. I'm suspecting that BIOS battery may be bad also. Does it prompt question about booting with optimal settings when this happens?

[Tedders]

Everything is up to date drivers/bios wise. I get no warnings about bios battery either. It boots normally every time whether its a cold boot or a restart.

Also, I've noticed that when I do a restart and things start working properly, I get the attached event log. That log is present for each CPU core within Windows Event Viewer. However, when I do a cold boot and things are not working properly, those even logs don't show up. I'm baffled!

[Tedders]

I have been doing some looking and this might be related to Windows 8 and its "hybrid shutdown" thingy that it does.  Instead of shutting down the kernel completely, it just hibernates it.  However, it doesn't do this on restarts.  Just shutdowns.  Seems related to my issue at least.  I am going to try turning hybrid shutdown off tonight and test it out...

[Tedders]

That did it!  Turning off the "Turn on fast startup" within the power options in control panel fixed it.