S2600CP doesn't go on with post, hang at code B7h 'DXE Configuration Reset'

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rampage666

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Nov 18, 2016
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Hi, I have a S2600CP4 board, bought brand new.
It runs well for several days (windows/debian), already has the latest BIOS.

I tried to reinstall the windows, it finised installing and was rebooting/posting, I took out the USB drive with setup files, then
it output obvious warning kind of beep sound.

Now it will not go on with post, after the first post screen, it stops there.
The dignostic LED passed the 4Fh Dxe IPL started and stopped at the B7h DXE Configuration Reset.
This is before the next post screen so there's no beep sound at all.

Have tried to clear the COMOS settings by following the guide twice, did not help.

Have removed any PCIE cards there.
Remove ram module does gives warning no ram.

What does B7h 'DXE Configuration Reset' means and any idea how to solve it?

Best Regards,
 

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Terry Kennedy

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The dignostic LED passed the 4Fh Dxe IPL started and stopped at the B7h DXE Configuration Reset.
This is before the next post screen so there's beep sound at all.

What does B7h 'DXE Configuration Reset' means and any idea how to solve it?
DXE is the {U}EFI Driver Execution Environment - component device vendors can supply a driver which is executed from flash when the system is re-started. From an Intel document you definitely don't want to read:

"The Driver Execution Environment (DXE) phase is where most of the system initialization is performed. Pre-EFI Initialization (PEI), the phase prior to DXE, is responsible for initializing permanent memory in the platform so that the DXE phase can be loaded and executed. The state of the system at the end of the PEI phase is passed to the DXE phase through a list of position-independent data structures called Hand-Off Blocks (HOBs). HOBs are described in detail in the Intel® Platform InnovationFramework for EFI Hand-Off Block (HOB) Specification."
I tried to reinstall the windows, it finised installing and was rebooting/posting, I took out the USB drive with setup files, then it output obvious warning kind of beep sound.
Are you sure it wasn't copying DXE components from the USB drive to the flash when you pulled the USB drive?

I don't think I can help more than that. I loathe {U}EFI, though that's probably due mostly to my initial experiences on the Itanic. But the ability for an operating system to directly access / modify the flash filesystem seems to be a bad idea to me.
 

Tom5051

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Check the bios boot settings to make sure it is set to boot from the Windows EFI partition or disk. Maybe it was treating the USB drive as disk 1.
Try resetting the bios settings, usually there is a jumper on the motherboard.
 

rampage666

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Check the bios boot settings to make sure it is set to boot from the Windows EFI partition or disk. Maybe it was treating the USB drive as disk 1.
Try resetting the bios settings, usually there is a jumper on the motherboard.

Yep have tried to clear the bios settings multiple times but doesnt help.

It hangs before you can access the BIOS
 

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Terry Kennedy

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Thanks for the information. Why would the system want to write DXE or whatever to the flash drive while initializing itself?
Because Windows? Seriously, that may be the only way (either for real or what the OS programmers thought) to perform whatever task they were trying to accomplish. Remember, there are enough variations out there that the "obvious" assumptions don't apply. Some less-expensive systems have a 32-bit UEFI, which makes callbacks from the OS level with a 64-bit OS problematic. Windows has to support as many possible configurations as it can without checking a set of special-case rules for each piece of hardware. Non-Windows OS programmers may never have seen a specific piece of hardware and don't even know that there is a special case.

This is not new with {U}EFI - legacy BIOS systems often used a "magic footprints" method for BIOS updates under Windows - the flash "utility" just loaded the BIOS into RAM and left magic footprints before calling the reboot function. The BIOS would always scan for magic footprints at boot time and if it found a BIOS, says "attempting to update BIOS" and tries to write it to flash. Before firmware was signed, it was trivially easy to brick systems like that simply by setting the magic footprints to point to the new "BIOS", which was either binary garbage or a piece of code that went "Ha-hah! You've been pwned!". {U}EFI is more of the same, but vastly more complex. This is one of the reasons you see firmware signing, the Intel ME firmware integrity checks, and so on. They don't catch everything, though - for example, someone found an exploitable binary signed with Microsoft's Secure Boot master key. Game over...
 

rampage666

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I hate UEFI, always.

So it sounds like I accidentally bricked the board by unplug the flash drive while it is trying to read/write to it at the initializing stage. Remembers me the days people using flash drive to jailbreak their PS3 console.

Would try to recovery/reflash the BIOS be my choice?
Since I can not access the bios and clear the bios settings doesn't help
 

Tom5051

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Jan 18, 2017
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I hate UEFI, always.

So it sounds like I accidentally bricked the board by unplug the flash drive while it is trying to read/write to it at the initializing stage. Remembers me the days people using flash drive to jailbreak their PS3 console.

Would try to recovery/reflash the BIOS be my choice?
Since I can not access the bios and clear the bios settings doesn't help
As I said, clear the bios settings with the motherboard jumper or switch. There is usually a manual way to clear bois / cmos, check your motherboard manual.
 

Tom5051

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Sometimes I find it also helps to pull the cmos battery out when doing a reset, just to make sure.
 

Terry Kennedy

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Would try to recovery/reflash the BIOS be my choice?
Since I can not access the bios and clear the bios settings doesn't help
There may be some emergency recovery mode, since the BIOS is getting far enough to show you some video. You'll probably need to talk to Intel support about it, which shouldn't be a problem if you bought the board as new, recently.

Hopefully the recovery method is something useful - a lot of the big companies licensed BIOSes (BIOI?) a long time ago and have been maintaining them locally. I once had a Dell server where the AMI part of the BIOS was so old that it wanted to load the emergency recovery BIOS image from a floppy. Of course, Dell hadn't put floppy controllers on their server motherboards for a few years at the time that system was released. :oops:
 

rampage666

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Yep no drive or add on device or pcie cards connected;
have tried taken the battery off the board while clear the comos.

ii'm afraid the problem happens before the system hands the control to the BIOS, since clear comos doesn't work and it hangs before you can access the bios. So recover/re-flash the bios might doesn't help either.

Something made it gone crazy.
I tried to install Windows in none 'UEFI Optimized boot' mode,
though on this board it lists all the none UEFI booatable and UEFI bootable devices,
might call this legacy boot compatible mode UEFI?
Could be the UEFI itself gets really confused
 

rampage666

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There may be some emergency recovery mode, since the BIOS is getting far enough to show you some video. You'll probably need to talk to Intel support about it, which shouldn't be a problem if you bought the board as new, recently.

Hopefully the recovery method is something useful - a lot of the big companies licensed BIOSes (BIOI?) a long time ago and have been maintaining them locally. I once had a Dell server where the AMI part of the BIOS was so old that it wanted to load the emergency recovery BIOS image from a floppy. Of course, Dell hadn't put floppy controllers on their server motherboards for a few years at the time that system was released. :oops:
Thanks. Yep it does have emergency recovery, hope it will work, will try sometime later.
It shows the first booting up screen but can not pass it.
Have submitted a support request to Intel, let's see what they say about this problem.
Maybe they have better idea on this.
 

Tom5051

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That's weird, it doesn't sound like a UEFI issue. Does that board have any embedded drives or internal usb ports that might have something in it?
 

rampage666

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That's weird, it doesn't sound like a UEFI issue. Does that board have any embedded drives or internal usb ports that might have something in it?
nothing attached, only two processors, one ram module, several fans at the moment, that's all.
kind of minimum system.