*FIXED* Could not get to Win10 after POST w-recently added LSI controller

[Cam The Music Man]

So, quick story.  A few days ago I added an LSI 9211-8I PCIE expansion card into my custom system (on the older side but still works great).  I was able to get to windows flawlessly after swapping around a couple of extra storage hard drives onto the expansion card's sata ports in order to put two SSD's onto the motherboard's Sata ports.  Original system config is as follows:

Mobo: Asus p6x58d premium
CPU: Intel Core i7-980x Extreme Edition 3.33ghz 6-core (Gulftown I believe).
CPU Cooler: Corsair H100i V2 AIO
RAM:  G.Skill Ripjaws 1x16gb (4x4gb) DDR3-1600 & G.Skill Ripjaws 1x8GB (2x4gb) DDR3-1600

Storage:

• C: OS - Samsung 850 Evo 500gb
• D: Apps - Samsung 850 Evo 500gb
• E: Games/media/cache - WD 2tb Black
• F: Projects - WD 4tb Red
• G: Sample Libraries - WD 10tb Gold
• H: Repository - WD 2tb Black
• I: Libraries - WD 2tb Black
• J: Optical - LG BD-RE drive

GFX:  EVGA GeForce GTX970 SSC ACX 2.0+

PSU:  Corsair 1000w 80+ platinum modular ATX

Soundcard:  Creative Labs Soundblaster X-Fi Fatality Platinum Edition

 

While the Asus board is old and antiquated BIOS, It's been updated to latest revision 1501.  Recently replaced CMOS battery beginning of the year.  Have the storage controllers set to AHCI and has been working stable in the current configuration @ 1600mhz, with Intel Speed-step turned off in Bios, and Full-phase power enabled (do not want turbo any stepping to occur because of real-time audio application performance losses with this).  Long story short, I needed more space and wanted to optimize my storage solution for better performance while still keeping as much data local as possible.

 

What changed:

1. Added LSI 9211-8i 8port SAS sata host controller card in PCIE slot at bottom of Mobo (GFX would get suffocated if trying to utlize slot directly beneath).
2. Migrated the H: Repository & I: Libraries drives onto the SAS Controller's first port and correctly labelled breakout SATA cable connections.
3. Added in a new Samsung 860 Evo 1tb SSD (already initialized and formatted on another system and manually assigned the drive letter "O"), which I connected to the original SATA port that H: Repository was connected to.
4. Added an intel 120gb Sata III SSD I had recovered from another system that was no longer being used, cleanly formatted & manually assigned drive letter "K", which I connected ot the original SATA port that I: Libraries was connected to.

Simply booted and headed straight into windows without problems, and operated fine for a solid 24hours.  Went to put PC to sleep & noticed it woke up on it's own (quite common with my system) when I woke up mid way through my sleep schedule.  I let it stay awake (backblaze still has plenty of data to sync anyway) & went back to sleep myself.  When I woke up, I noticed my PC was completely powered off.

 

Tried several times to power it on and it would immediately go dark, and fearing the worst, not wanting to cause any further potential damage to what i suspected had been a hardware failure of the Power supply, or Mobo/CPU - I proceeded to call local PC shops in area to take it in for proper hardware diagnostic.

Next town over had free simple diagnostic, so I took it in &  left it there for maybe 20 minutes.  They called me up while I was out and about, and said they managed to get it to boot & into windows without problems.  Bewildered, I asked if they had done anything.  They said that they DID manage to get it to POST but that it spit out an overclocking error (I don't use any OC profiles nor manually overclock).  They did a BIOS restore & factory defaults were re-applied.  I asked several questions about their methods & what they did step by step to even get it to power on, since I had told them I feared it was the power supply going bad.  They didn't even do any voltage tests on the PSU to ensure the PSU was working properly.  This is where my troubles began.

When I finally get the PC back home, it would post, but would not boot into the OS. I didn't touch anything yet from the configuration they last got it to boot with.  I went back into the BIOS, and Storage was set back to IDE mode, so I flipped that to AHCI, my clock was back to 1333 so I manually set that back up to 1600mhz, and turned off Speed-step again, went into the Onboard devices configuration and turned back off the 1394 controller, as well as set the Marvel controller from IDE back to AHCI (the first two Sata ports on the mobo are Marvel's with the remaining 6 on a different controller).  Saved changes & restarted... same problem: POSTS but no OS.

I get the same black screen with the blinking underscore cursor no matter what I've tried to do configuration wise.  I've ensured my boot order was properly configured to have the OS SSD the very first in the list.  I've even gone in to the LSI's own configuration table and tried to set it there (for some odd reason, just to see if that changed anything)...  It's worth noting that the POST sequence would always go in this fashion:

1. BIOS
2. Initializing LSI
3. Displaying Marvel controller devices
4. Flashing the first BIOS screen briefly
5. Blank screen with flashing underscore.  Can CTRL+ALT+DEL here and restart system.

Finally I resorted to unplugging all but the C drive, and viola... it boots into windows fine!  Plug in ANY other drive and try booting?  Nope.  I literally tested one at a time and the same result.  Furthermore, I even switched back to IDE mode on all the motherboard controllers (not an option for LSI).  I also removed the LSI controller and with ANY other drive besides my OS drive connected, OS does not load..

It seems I've backpedaled here somewhere.  I triple checked my boot order yet again.  Illogically.. even without the LSI card hooked up, I swapped the order from

1. Port 0: Samsung SSD (holding my OS)
2. Port 1: Samsung SSD (holding my apps)

so that Port 1 actually was first on the list...  I can confirm which SSD is which by going to the Asus EZ Flash utility and attempting to load a profile from one of the drives, which will provide me with the drive's label and a tree directory of the drive's contents. 

Oddly, the system booted into safe mode!  Okay... Progress.  I hook up all the drives and LSI controller and go for broke.  Windows boots, but ALLLLL the drive letters have been re-assigned..  Thank god for hot-swap.  I unplug them and manually start re-assigning proper drive letters one-by-one as I reconnect and windows detects just fine. 

I'm finally back to fully operational.  But now it has me curious... How would a port assignment like Port 0 on the motherboard change when I've never, EVER physically swapped cables from the boot drive?  Why would logical address of the boot order change?  Am I overlooking something obvious?  I'd also like to know how exactly they got the system to power on at all when it kept shutting off for me immediately when trying to power it...

Hopefully this helps someone else in the future from wasting $$$ on a bench fee and being more thorough themselves!