MSI Z97 Gaming 7 Motherboard-Not Booting

[Yawanathan]

Hello,

I was wondering if anyone has had issues with the MSI Gaming 7 motherboards not booting after a month of usage. I bought 2 of these boards, One is in my Machine ( still working) and the other was in my wife's computer ( no longer booting). We noticed that her system would take several times of pressing the power button before it would finally come on. Today it finally just gave a black screen with no bios post at all.

Things it would do on boot
1. No bios screen at all
2. Would give the following codes-62,97,10,36
3. after 20 sec it would go into a reboot loop, each time it would give the above codes at different times, However , black screen no post at all, No MSI boot screen


Now here is some troubleshooting steps I could do, minus flashing the bios as it would not recognized any peripherals due to not posting in the first place.

1. Switched to backup bios, No post, black screen after 20sec reboot loop
2. Checked all pheripheral connections, Everything seemed fine.
3. Checked onboard video, using display port as well as HDMI, black screen, no post, reboot loop
4. Can't flash bios as there is no bios post
5. Only kdb,mouse, power cord and HDMI connection connected, outside of a single 2TB internal drive, No post, Black screen, reboot loop
6. Push the button to reset bios to default, even though it would not post, just to take that off list of things to do.

So we went out and bought a Gigabyte Gaming 7 board, switched out the mem, cpu and placed it in the case. System booted and is running perfect. I know that in most RMA processes they will try and come off with bad memory, or cpu, However the same mem and cpu are working fine. The mem is corsair vengence 8gig low profile 32gigs and the cpu is i7-4790K. Both my wife's system and mine are in the same case Corsair graphite 760 and outside of hard drives and mem config, They are close to same.

Funny thing is her board was bought 1 day later than mine and mine has had no problems. Is there anyone who has been able to resolve this issue? If not, and you had to RMA what was your experience with MSI on that process?


Thanks for your time! By the way, from what I am seeing, The Gigabyte gaming 7 seems to be the better board anyway, although they seem to be the same board without the added MSI sound boost and MSI badging.

Thanks
Yawanathan

 

[trents]

It happens sometimes to motherboards of all makes. Make sure you mention in the RMA description that the same CPU, memory and PSU worked when used with a similar board. MSI motherboards do not have a good reputation among AMD users but they seem to be okay on the Intel side.

 

[EarthDog]

Did you look up code 36? If it hangs there and reboots, that may tell you something.

 

[Yawanathan]

Hello,

I just wanted to let everyone know that I RMA'd the board, and put all the TS steps I did in the RMA. Within a hour they gave me a RMA number, I shipped the board to them on the 24th of June via UPS ground. I received the replacement board on 7/3. They sent me emails of the progress of the RMA and it was even easy to see the progress via the support site for MSI.

Overall I would have to rate their RMA service, at least in my case as 4star support. At no time did they give me any hassles with the replacement.

For those who may have issues when doing a RMA, my suggestion is to make sure that you list clearly what the problem is, Then list the steps you took to troubleshoot in simple 1,2, 3 type steps. Also be very specific if you give any room for doubt, depending on the company and the tech that handles the case they will exploit that to the fullest if they are not credible and have no ethics. Being that I have been in the tech industry for over 20yrs, it's hard for any tech to lie to me about a issue and the resolution. If they try I let them know very clearly that I'm not one for you to lie to me and think I won't call you on it. I hate techs who lie to customers thinking they are so smart and the customer is stupid. Anyway MSI took care of business.