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Maximus V not booting with mPCIe card plugged in? Try these tricks

X-ROG
Level 15
Situation: Your Maximus V stubbornly refuses to boot when your mPCIe card is plugged in. You unplug it, it works, plug it in, nothing.

The likelihood is that it's shorting to something or the connection is not correct, so try these:

- check you've absolutely aligned the pins to the socket correctly. Unfortunately the keying doesn't really help prevent it.
- check there is nothing in any of the mPCIe holes. In very rare cases it could have a bit of solder flux, or perhaps some fluff caught on the motherboard pins was pushed into a hole on a previous attempt.
- Even if you don't use the screw, take it off and push it down all the way. Preferably speaking - use the screw to hold it down! 😉
- If you've inserted an mSATA SSD, take it out for now and see if it boots without it. No need to do this with the pre-bundled WiFi card as this is a test for compatibility.
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21 REPLIES 21

Roosevelt_Nettl
Level 7
Do you have any other suggestions if none of the steps you mentioned worked?

X-ROG
Level 15
Try calling the US support number and explainng the mPCIe card is preventing the PC from booting and you've tried the tricks above. They may just be able to send you a replacement module.

I just finished building a Maxiumus V Extreme with an ADATA 256 GB mSata card which I bought from Newegg.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820211664

Three things I learned are:

1) Install the mSata card and mini PCIe onto the mother board first than mount the motherboard in the case. If you follow along with the basic install instructions, the mSata and mini PCie installation is towards the end of the basic instructions. It should have been mentioned first.

2) Because the mini PCIe has to mount along side of the I/O shield for the WIFI antenna connectors it is possible to knock the mSata card out of alignment in its socket. Carefully inspect the mSata card after you first install it than again after you mount the motherboard into the case than one more time after you are finished installing the WIFI antenna connectors.

3) My ADATA mSata card was recognized immediately upon the first boot of the Maximux V Extreme. However, Windows 7 64 did not want to install to it and I was getting a hex code error message. After spending 15 minutes with the partion manager under advanced options in Windows 7 installer, I realized that I was not going to win the battle of creating and deleting a primary partion to solve the problem. But I did create a primary volume spanning the full size of the mSata card.

To solve the problem I went into the UEFI bios and I did a boot override to the mSata card. If I remember correctly, it was under advanced -> Sata -> boot options at the bottom of the page. The next reboot with the Windows 7 installation DVD, I was able to install Windows 7 directly to the mSata card.

I hope this helps everyone.

Thanks, I called tech support and explained the situation. The support guy didnt really sound like he knew much about the board. He told me that he would send an email up to a higher level of support (engineer support I think he said) and would email me back once he heard back from them. I am hoping that I can just get replacement module instead of them suggesting that I RMA the whole board.

If you do everything mentioned in the original post and your computer STILL WONT BOOT UP. Then try this (I actually think this is the MAIN reason why this is happening to a lot of MVF owners)

Take the BRACKET OFF of the mPCIe card and reinstall the card without the bracket and watch it boot up 🙂

It turns out that this bracket is whats shorting it (or the screw?).

I was really stressed out when I was able to fix it myself and I didn't care to troubleshoot the exact reason why this was happening. The only thing that i tried was putting the bracket back on and reseating it without it screwed onto the MB and it would boot. But once I put the bottom screw on the MB it just wouldn't post. At this point I had lost all my patience and just finished the rig and left the bracket off. My wireless works perfect (I don't have any Bluetooth devices so I cant check if that works or not).

If you end up using the card without the bracket then make sure you IGNORE the steps that the manual gives to install the mPCIe card. Its better to attach the antennas before installing it on the MB and angle the leads towards each other and OVER the plastic bracket that wraps around the mPCIe card. DON'T route the wires under the plastic bracket because it actually PINCHES the wires. From here, install it on the motherboard and go ahead and put it into the case then just route them to the I/O shield.

Heres some pics. Hope this helps!

1147711479

Your post is just what I needed. I took that screw and bracket off and it boots just fine. Thanks from saving me from having to explain this to another person in tech support. You have saved me from at least 30 more minutes of trying to explain what doesnt work and what I have done to try and fix it.

What Q-Code what it shows you, when it fails to Boot?
Mine is "72 - PCH devices initialization".
Also sometimes the left LED on the Combo Card does not lit up full.
I also attached the antennas before installing it and both leads to one site(down), rest like user guide describes.
I am afraid that I can build everything apart to get it i have water cooling and everything very closely. damned !:mad:

Update: After I removed the combo card still the same error.
But BIOS Flashback saved me :D(I did it before but on wrong USB Port).
So I don't know if it was the combo card. Last thing i did was installing win 8 on a eSATA drive but it failed.
Nevertheless i take the bracket and plastic off so precaution is better. THX

I bought a ASUS MAXIMUS EXTREME V, an Intel Core i7-3770K and memory modules Corsair Vengeance DDR3 - 16GB - (4x4GB) - 2133 [CMZ16GX3M4A2133C11B]. The problem is that the system does not start, and the Q-LED shows the code "55" whenever I tried all combinations of the four modules in the memory slots, but there is no way to start, does not even start BIOS. The q-code 55 means "memory not installed", but I tried all options, 4 GB, 8, 12, 16, DIMM A_1 / A_2 / B_1 / B_2 and nothing, always the same. I wonder if anyone has any idea why I did not detect the memory modules, even when installed. SYSTEM: Corsair H100 - 2x GIGABYTE GTX 460 SOC 1 GDDR5 - 2 x COOLER MASTER 600W. Please ask for help, I invested a lot of money and I can not make it work. Sorry for my English.