Trouble with booting AsRock Z68 pro3 MBO

[Pikka]

Recently I've asked for help on building a computer, and kind people from the community helped me alot.

I've bought:
CPU: i5 2400
MBO AsRock Z68 Pro3
RAM: 2x2GB Corsair 9-9-9-24 1600MHz
SSD Corsair Force3 SATA 6GB/s 90GB
Old: VGA Radeon HD 4870
PSU: Corsair 430W
Some midi case, no name

First of all, the system boots up fine and I get to Windows. But it's *how* it boots up.

When I boot up the system, I get nothing (black screen, monitor says no input) for about 6-7 seconds, then screen with memory / MBO data for about a second or less (really fast, can't read the thing properly) with the weird second line that says: "Error! System cannot locate HECI protocol!", and after that I get "Starting Windows" and a few seconds later I'm inside Win. The thing that's bothering me are the first 6-7 seconds when there's nothing happening, and the strange HECI protocol thing. I've tried looking for it but no answer on the internet, and definitely nothing about it in the MBO user manual.

Is there something I can setup in the UEFI BIOS that can result in boot being more normal? There's an option for "Boot Failure Guard", could that be it? I've looked around the BIOS and found nothing similar to HECI protocol or boot protocol... Only thing I've changed is the RAM speed from 1333 to 1600, I've read somewhere that MBO usually doesn't set it up to the right speed, and they were right.

Anyways, any thoughts on the boot? Is that normal or can I do something about it? Thanks in advance.

[bubblinya]

Quickly googling "Error! System cannot locate HECI protocol" i found alot of people asking the same questions as you and getting no answers. All on AsRock Z68. may or may not have been the exact same model i dont remember. but it seems to be a problem with the asrocks mb's with the Z68 chips so id consider calling up customer support. Maybe a simple fix or maybe a need for a replacement. But from what you have said its clearly a MB issue and not a OS issue so id check for a bios update aswell, whatever the problem is may have been fixed already.

I assume you have installed the cpu software on the disc that would of came with the MB already? one of the other similar "issues" i read, the guy was having the exact same problem+ his computer was telling him it wasnt able to install the cpu software

[Trailertrash]

Try to hard reset the CMOS, it has been said to fix the issue for some.

[Pikka]

1. BIOS version is 1.60, that's the newest as said on AsRock page
2. Yup, installed the software from the CD
3. I cleared CMOS, unfortunately nothing new happened.

One would think with time companies would make solid MBOs without illnesses like this

Reading bubblinya's post I figure it's a longshot I'll repair it myself, but if anyone has any new ideas they're more than welcomed.

[Arachnan]

(It's called a UEFI now, not a BIOS or a UEFI BIOS)

After reading up on HECI (Host Embedded Controller Interface) I doubt it's something that can be solved trough software.
If you are really annoyed by it, you can try to RMA it, but seeing it DOES function, I don't know how that will go.

[Pikka]

I contacted AsRock support and they told me to pull out the MBO battery, wait for 10mins and put it back in - and it worked!

Thanks for all the replies, I guess this problem is solved.

[Trailertrash]

I contacted AsRock support and they told me to pull out the MBO battery, wait for 10mins and put it back in - and it worked!

Thanks for all the replies, I guess this problem is solved.

That is what I suggested when i said 'hard reset'. Anyways, good to hear it's working now.