Frozen Time Clock in UEFI - The Fix

[GregH]

Raja has been quiet for a long time. Note that this affects Windows 7 too, not just Windows 8. It can happen while the PC is powered on and in actual use, not only when the system is powered off, in standby etc (or power is cut due power failure).

If you are out there Raja, I will send you my board with pleasure, but only once I receive a like for like replacement board at my door to compensate. I think it is wrong to expect your customers to send a board back to you and be without their PC for weeks, if not months. We already know that the problem resurfaces sometimes after several weeks. You make this entirely your customers problem by expecting that. That's why no one is rushing to assist.

[Praz]

If you are out there Raja, I will send you my board with pleasure

Hello.

For Raja to handle an exchange of boards the person needs to be in the U.S. as he has already stated. If you wish to swap your board you will need to contact ASUS support for your location. Thanks.

[Triplexbeatz]

I have to agree with GregH on this one. I'm in the same boat. And I AM in the US, but this is a KNOWN issue and I think others will agree it requires more than simply a normal RMA. It requires personalized service, advance replacement, or at a bare minimum cross shipping, and I dont even wanna think about shipping costs. Why is it OUR responsibility as customers to bend over backwards for Asus to get to the bottom of a KNOWN issue. My board is 11 days out of its box new. We don't pay to be beta testers after a product release. I understand casual issues exist from time to time, and FW and driver updates are needed to rectify things. Especially on isolated issues, or issues of user error. But THIS, CLEARLY is not THAT.

Further more, Raja specifically ASKED for someone to contact him to submit a board with the defect in place. I posted here AND PM'd Raja directly, and its been 3-4 days with zero response. Here you have two ppl insisting they would submit their bad boards, and you simply assert we must go through the default channels. As if the issue would be handled with the same priority.

So in the meantime, I can either File a normal RMA, perform the fix and cross my fingers the issue does NOT re-appear like it has for 90% of those whom experience it, or return this board and purchase a competitor brand. Hmmm let me think.

[GregH]

It is such a headache to be replacing a MB - literally stripping the PC right down to an empty shell. And then having to go and reinstall OS and all software as changing a MB usually will give endless hassles otherwise. A simple fix by Asus would be preferable. I get the feeling that this is not going to happen. If a MB swap out is ultimately what is being suggested as per Praz, it would make absolutely no sense to get another similar Asus board and risk the same issues.

Is there a way to check a batch number or manufacture date on these things? Perhaps we are all (unlikely) victims of a bad batch. Maybe we should all post our serial numbers here or something?

For every person that registers on the forum and posts, there are probably 50 persons that have the same issue and are just as frustrated.

[Raja@ASUS]

I have to agree with GregH on this one. I'm in the same boat. And I AM in the US, but this is a KNOWN issue and I think others will agree it requires more than simply a normal RMA. It requires personalized service, advance replacement, or at a bare minimum cross shipping, and I dont even wanna think about shipping costs. Why is it OUR responsibility as customers to bend over backwards for Asus to get to the bottom of a KNOWN issue. My board is 11 days out of its box new. We don't pay to be beta testers after a product release. I understand casual issues exist from time to time, and FW and driver updates are needed to rectify things. Especially on isolated issues, or issues of user error. But THIS, CLEARLY is not THAT.

Further more, Raja specifically ASKED for someone to contact him to submit a board with the defect in place. I posted here AND PM'd Raja directly, and its been 3-4 days with zero response. Here you have two ppl insisting they would submit their bad boards, and you simply assert we must go through the default channels. As if the issue would be handled with the same priority.

1) I responded to your PM twice a few days back and never got a response from you to either of them. In the first I said we were okay without your board, but after following up with HQ, they suggested I get a board back to them so I sent you a second PM telling you that.


PM me your board serial number and all address/phone details. I will pass those to the CLM team who will set up the swap. Note in advance no cross-shipping or advance shipping of a board will be made without credit card security. This is where the previous swaps I have tried to arrange fell down. We cannot send a board out to someone without having security down first.

Without such precautions anyone on the forums could request a board from me this way and I'd be sending it into the unknown - hope that makes sense


2) I never stated this would not be a swap of like for like. We would cross-ship a board provided the customer provides credit card info for the x-ship process (for obvious reasons). I never implied we would handle the "swap" in such a poor manner

3) I did state the person needs to be US based which in you case is fine. I cannot do anything for people located in other regions with regards to a swap. Customers from regions outside NA need to take this up with their local service teams. There are no reps from other regions on this forum barring some HQ staff.

-Raja

[GregH]

I'm in deepest darkest Africa, so have to rule myself out but will nevertheless be grateful to anyone that is willing and able to comply with Raja's suggestion. This thing is frustrating the h3ll out of me.

[Triplexbeatz]

1) I responded to your PM twice a few days back and never got a response from you to either of them. In the first I said we were okay without your board, but after following up with HQ, they suggested I get a board back to them so I sent you a second PM telling you that.

I'm sorry. You are correct. I did not notice the PM's until after my last post, as most forums I frequent send an email when a PM is received(and aren't detected as malware by chrome either, lol). So I had not realized you PM'd me until after my last post. My apologies.

2) I never stated this would not be a swap of like for like. We would cross-ship a board provided the customer provides credit card info for the x-ship process (for obvious reasons). I never implied we would handle the "swap" in such a poor manner

-Raja

Needing a CC# as security measure to perform the swap is completely understandable and I would have no problem with that.
Although, I don't recall insisting that you would handle the swap in a poor manner. Perhaps you are referring to my reply to Praz in which he insisted we simply open a generic service ticket to RMA our boards. I think given the situation and the timeline involved(aug2013 to present) that it qualifies for a more personalized approach. I think you would agree given the fact that you yourself specifically asked for an end user with a frozen clock board to volunteer it for RMA. I merely felt Praz's suggestion was dismissive, and didn't fall in line with what you had previously stated. That's neither here nor there at this point.

A brief update on where I am currently with this...
I never applied the fix outlined earlier in this thread. However, in the time between my last post and your PM's, I did replace the Cmos battery on the board, despite you clearly stating that the issue has nothing to do with the CMOS battery. Well, ironically it DID rectify the issue. I rebooted and the clock was ticking,to my surprise. Thereafter, I attempted to duplicate the issue on my own. I re-installed AI Suite 3, and ran thru the same processes as before, running fan tuning, 4 way optimization, etc. This is what led to the first RTC freeze. Yet I was unable to duplicate the issue.

Again, from a frozen clock state, I simply booted to win7, uninstalled Ai Suite 3, powered down into standby, unplugged the power supply, and swapped the CMOS battery. Powered back up, entered the BIOS, and the clock was ticking away. Obviously this disqualified my board for RMA. However, given the re-occurrence rate users have had with this issue, the 2 weeks I've spent chasing it, and the time I had left to return my board, I decided to go ahead and get my money back. After which, for the first time in 12 years, I purchased a NON ASUS motherboard.
And it works perfectly.

Unfortunately, I have to say this has been my worst experience ever with an Asus product. And I strongly recommend Asus products to my entire customer base(PC repair), as well as my own mother. But mainly, I feel for the users that have this issue, and those who have yet to purchase an affected Asus motherboard and experience the joys of the "Frozen RTC debacle of 2013-2014". I would have liked to help get to the bottom of this, but who has the time or money to squander on an issue I think we can ALL agree has gone far too long without a definitive solution by Asus.

Raja, thanks for trying to help, and guys, good luck with your boards.

[Praz]

Perhaps you are referring to my reply to Praz in which he insisted we simply open a generic service ticket to RMA our boards. I think given the situation and the timeline involved(aug2013 to present) that it qualifies for a more personalized approach. I think you would agree given the fact that you yourself specifically asked for an end user with a frozen clock board to volunteer it for RMA. I merely felt Praz's suggestion was dismissive, and didn't fall in line with what you had previously stated.

Hello

My reply was in response to the post made by Greg inquiring about sending his board to ASUS. As he is not located in the U.S. he needs to go through his local ASUS support system. I quoted Greg's post in my reply so it should have been obvious that is who I was replying to. So contrary to what you state above I did not insist "WE" do anything.

[Triplexbeatz]

Even better! That essentially means you just ignored my post, which was prior to GregH's post. Given the proximity of mine and Gregs reply, along with the amount of headache we've absorbed from this issue, I made the mistake of assuming your reply was a blanket reply to the both of us.
My bad.

But wow, if you guys were as tenacious at really helping those of us with this problem as you appear to be in defense of your every statement, maybe this issue wouldn't be 8 months old and collecting dust.

[Nicholas Steel]

My assumption was that updating the BIOS is itself the trigger, nothing else is responsible. So those that said it was temporary may have, after fixing it (Jumper pins to reset BIOS settings), updated the BIOS again resulting in the problem re-occurring. To elaborate: They may have not properly tested if the Jumper Pins fixed the issue, so they operated under the assumption that the fault was caused by an improper BIOS flash the first time around and re-flashed the BIOS, re-triggering the problem.

I am unsure if the ME driver in Windows is responsible because I went out of my way to make sure the latest version (From ASUS website) of everything was installed when installing all the drivers and stuff after installing Windows. The problem was present with the latest ME version at that time and resetting the BIOS was what fixed it.

Basically we:
- Configured the BIOS with settings appropriate for our hardware and usage of the machine
- Installed Windows 7 x64
- Installed latest drivers and ME
- Updated BIOS (Updated to 1707)
- Noticed Problem with clock both in Windows and in the BIOS it self
- Researched problem
- Applied fix (Jumper pins)
- Re-configured BIOS to how we like things setup (Still using revision 1707)
- Never had clock issue again (So far)

Eventually I'll flash the BIOS with the most recent BIOS (There were a few new releases since I last updated it iirc) and see if the problem re-occurs. I haven't done it yet because they only add support for new Intel CPU's which is pretty irrelevant to us.