Not sure if my mobo is dead or not...

[bill52600]

Alright, hopefully this won't be too long because I'm already very, very exhausted.

 

Last night:

 

I attempted to overclock my EVGA GTX 750 Ti FTW for the first time. My attempts were unsuccessful. This brought my core clock to ~400Mhz instead of the ~1300Mhz it should be. I restarted my computer. Hung at A2 at post. Restarted again, GPU core clock back to normal.

 

Next day (today):

 

Was playing some CS:GO when I got a BAD_POOL_HEADER BSOD on Win10 for some apparent reason. Memtest86 returned no issues or errors. Booted back up, returned to normal routine. Opened up a YouTube video, same BSOD again. Attempted to reboot, hung at A2. Which brings me to what's next...

 

My experience being stuck at A2 at boot:

 

Every 6 months or so I get hung at A2 for no apparent reason on boot. I have always been able to resolve the issue. Last time I was able to fix it by simply resetting the CMOS. This time that didn't really work. I've reset my CMOS about 10 times today but to no avail. Initially, I was able to boot at first but I accidentally left my Memtest86 USB in. After exiting that, it simply no longer booted into anything. Every time I reset my CMOS it would bring me to the screen showing me information regarding what's connected and the likes, but from there I couldn't continue or enter the setup.

So, here's a rundown of what I've tried so far:

• Reset CMOS (x10)
• Changed SATA ports of HDD and Optical Drive
• Unplugged HDD and Optical Drive
• Removed GPU (plugged monitor into mobo)
• Switched current HDD with another HDD
• Booted with only monitor & power plugged in (leads to blank, black screen)

In a previous post here (on the same A2 issue) someone suggested that my mobo could be dead. Is this likely the case here?

Here are my PC specifications:

CPU: Intel i5 4670k

GPU: EVGA 750 Ti FTW

HDD: WD Caviar Blue 1TB @ 7200RPM

Mobo: MSI Z87-G45 Gaming Motherboard

Optical Drive: Generic Asus

 

Any and all help is appreciated at this point.

[shadowbyte]

have you tried to flash your BIOS with the latest from MSI?

[bill52600]

8 minutes ago, shadowbyte said:

have you tried to flash your BIOS with the latest from MSI?

Not even sure if I can or how.  MSI includes some kind of BIOS flashing tool in their BIOS software, but I can't actually access it because of the hang at A2.

[shadowbyte]

1 minute ago, bill52600 said:

Not even sure if I can or how.  MSI includes some kind of BIOS flashing tool in their BIOS software, but I can't actually access it because of the hang at A2.

that's not good

I had a similar issue w/ my Z97 MATE, but at a different code. I just spammed reset until it let me in.

If you can't get in, rip in panini

[bill52600]

2 minutes ago, shadowbyte said:

that's not good

I had a similar issue w/ my Z97 MATE, but at a different code. I just spammed reset until it let me in.

If you can't get in, rip in panini

For the sake of it (and since I'm willing to try anything at this point), I'll attempt to spam reset as well.

[bill52600]

Nope, didn't work.

[Clixias]

If I recall correctly A2 is related to SATA. Since you have already tried to switch hard drives, that clearly is not the issue. Do you have any other SATA cables lying around? Hanging out of your PSU or in it's box(if its modular) so that you could test if it's a faulty cable? If that doesn't help try booting from a CD using any LINUX based recovery and backup tool and see if that recognizes your SATA ports correctly. If it doesn't maybe the SATA headers or the motherboard itself is really dead. Then there's not much you could do... In the meantime check for any anomalies in your board, like water stains or any trails that look ''wrong'' or different when compared to the others.