New PCIe Card not Recognized on Cold Boot, Works Perfect on Restarts.

Need some help figuring this out. I have a Startech PEXUSB3S400 PCI Express USB 3.0 Card StarTech.com that will not be recognized on cold boots. It is recognized no problem on any restart and works fine until the next cold start. Using the latest driver for the Renesas/NEC uPD720202 chip. MB has the latest FH bios and the latest chipset drivers v9.4.0.1017.

The Card works perfect in a 32 bit XP machine so I am doubting it is defective. I am getting really tired of having to restart every time I turn the machine on. Anyone have an idea where to start looking for the problem?

This is a new build. Thanks in advance.

Win7 64, I7 960 Bloomfield 3.2GHZ, GA-X58A-UD3R rev2, 12gb (3x4gb) triple channel kit of Corsair Vengeance Ram 1600mhz, Gigabyte GTX 550 TI Graphics card, Intel 520 240gb SSD.

I have included the following info from a discussion on another site for more insight. No solution yet.


Upon a cold boot DM is clear of any warnings or unknown devices. The USB Controller section just doesn't show the new card controllers. Since I have my DM set to be able to show "Hidden Devices" (devices that are no longer installed) when I tick that option the new card controllers do show in the section grayed out as they would if the card was pulled which I think is normal and not a problem in this case.

After a restart the DM controller section shows the new cards controllers as it should and the card works fine until the next cold boot.
Also On cold boot, if I go into bios first, card is recognized as in a restart.

Here are some thoughts that someone may have an answer to:
1. Since the card does work fine on restarts I would think that means the card and the slot it's in are not defective plus the card operates normally in an XP machine.

2. What is different from the cards point of view between a cold boot and a restart? Does the bios or windows recognize/treat a card different depending on whether it is a cold boot or restart?

3. Why would a bios not present a card to the OS during a cold boot but do it on restarts?

4. I flashed to the latest FH bios before installing the card. The only thing I changed from the optimized settings after reflash was turn on AHCI mode, set the memory to XMP profile 1 as recommend by Corsair, set the boot order I wanted and disabled the Marvell 9128 run GSATA controller which operates 2 MB Sata connectors which I am never going to use.

I did not install any raid drivers(Intel RST or the gigabyte sata raid drivers) since I'm not using raid. I have 2 DVD drives hooked to the 2 Gigabyte MB sata connectors operating in IDE mode.

To bad I didn't try the card before flashing to the new bios but it was successfully installed. If the new bios had a problem wouldn't other problems show up besides just a PCIe card recognize problem especially considering the video card is PCIe and works fine?

A suggestion from another forum--- Quick boot is not enabled, tried 5 sec HDD delay but no cigar. Good Idea to try though.

I did clean the driver stack and reinstalled the card driver as well as clear the DM of all old uninstalled devices, in other words did a fresh install of the card but no cigar there either.

Go back in your BIOS and re-enable the Marvell SATA controller you disabled and see what happens.

Thanks for the replys TVeblen and bassfisher.

Well did a CMOS clear and only changed to AHCI mode before rebooting. No change, same as before.

Guess I'll go back to my custom bios settings for best performance.

I now agree that drivers are not the fault, thanks for your explanation on that.

The XP is on a completely different machine with an older AMD Gigabyte MB. My new machine has no Power on by PCI-e Devices or APM Configuration in the Power Management section of the bios so I can't try that. I never had any other cards in that slot. I will compare the bios settings asap and let you know.

Some have suggested completely re-flashing the bios but I think that would be a waste of time. I already flashed it to the latest bios and it said successful, everything else works fine. I did use @bios instead of Qflash because Qflash won't work with a larger bios size. Now I could reflash the bios with Q now since the bios's would be the same size but I don't think it would be worth the flash risk. What is your opinion??

I am in the process of doing the dance with the card mfg and gigabyte but that could take a while.

Any other tings to try in the meantime?

I have one of these cards Welcome to Koutech System Inc. That I could try in the slot to see if it is recognized. It is only a X1 instead of a X4 so I don't know if the test would be valid and or worth it. What say you?

TVeblen said:

I agree that playing with the BIOS versions is a waste of time. You've got the most recent one. Done.

I think you are on the right track regarding contacting the manufacturers. There is something screwy with the communication between the card and board. If you can't find a reason in the BIOS settings then it may be that those 2 parts just will not play nice together. Maybe there is a firmware update for the card.

If you have time then testing to see if the slot is good is not a bad idea. Just make a System Restore point before you start so that after you uninstall it you can clean up the registry in one step.

Update: I tried a koutech USB 3 card and it is recognized properly in the slot although it uses a different chip and is a X1 instead of a X4.

Layback Bear said:

Something to try. Have something plugged into your PCI USB card on a cold boot and see if it is picked up.

Thanks for the reply. Yes tried that but no cigar. See my update below.