The idea to try a complete reflash of the UEFI load came from thinking about how a power surge below the threshold of physical damage might affect the machine. The video subsystem displaying the principal symptoms gave some weight to the possibility of a surge coming from in through the video port.
I know that a PCI slot video adapter can cause all kinds of shenanigans if the manufacturer get the BIOS wrong (c.f., some ATI cards and open-source Linux drivers) or if the onboard BIOS gets corrupted, but I wasn't sure about integrated video since I don't use it and haven't researched it much.
Turns out the first document I looked at outlined the bootstrap routines in the UEFI code that initialize the video subsystem. Some of the data comes from the EDID chip in the monitor and some of it comes from the data stored in the UEFI CMOS memory. If the data in either source gets scrambled by a power spike it could explain the unpredictable behavior your system was showing. Unfortunately, the computer isn't smart enough to perform error checking on the data stored in the CMOS chip at that stage of the boot process.
At that point I recalled that ASUS motherboards are mildly notorious for resetting only the user configurable options when you reset the BIOS//UEFI to default settings from the setup menu. That led me to the possibility that perhaps one or more of the non-user video related settings stored in the CMOS might have been scrambled by a spike. The way you reload those is to reflash the entire BIOS/UEFI package, hence my suggestion.
Plus, it's a relative low-effort and no cost thing to try. Hope it holds.
I see you noticed the cheap-ass USB 3.0 motherboard headers that ASUS used in that vintage of their motherboards. I completely agree with your assessment of their quality, ease of use and potential to cause reliability and assembly problems. More recent motherboards have gone to a completely enclosed socket and keyed connector that does a better job of supporting and retaining the plug and making it impossible to orient the connector the wrong way 'round.
The UEFI CMOS does store some settings that control aspects of the motherboard's USB3 support. So yes, it is very possible that if a spike munged video data it could also have affected USB setup data and that reflashing UEFI package would correct the situation. [Note: When trying to re-flash CMOS with a USB3 flash drive, it wouldn't read two of my USB3 ports; had to try a USB3 port on the back of the case. Thus, the comments about how USB3 may have been affected. Following the CMOS re-flash, the two bad USB3 ports came alive.]
I know that a PCI slot video adapter can cause all kinds of shenanigans if the manufacturer get the BIOS wrong (c.f., some ATI cards and open-source Linux drivers) or if the onboard BIOS gets corrupted, but I wasn't sure about integrated video since I don't use it and haven't researched it much.
Turns out the first document I looked at outlined the bootstrap routines in the UEFI code that initialize the video subsystem. Some of the data comes from the EDID chip in the monitor and some of it comes from the data stored in the UEFI CMOS memory. If the data in either source gets scrambled by a power spike it could explain the unpredictable behavior your system was showing. Unfortunately, the computer isn't smart enough to perform error checking on the data stored in the CMOS chip at that stage of the boot process.
At that point I recalled that ASUS motherboards are mildly notorious for resetting only the user configurable options when you reset the BIOS//UEFI to default settings from the setup menu. That led me to the possibility that perhaps one or more of the non-user video related settings stored in the CMOS might have been scrambled by a spike. The way you reload those is to reflash the entire BIOS/UEFI package, hence my suggestion.
Plus, it's a relative low-effort and no cost thing to try. Hope it holds.
I see you noticed the cheap-ass USB 3.0 motherboard headers that ASUS used in that vintage of their motherboards. I completely agree with your assessment of their quality, ease of use and potential to cause reliability and assembly problems. More recent motherboards have gone to a completely enclosed socket and keyed connector that does a better job of supporting and retaining the plug and making it impossible to orient the connector the wrong way 'round.
The UEFI CMOS does store some settings that control aspects of the motherboard's USB3 support. So yes, it is very possible that if a spike munged video data it could also have affected USB setup data and that reflashing UEFI package would correct the situation. [Note: When trying to re-flash CMOS with a USB3 flash drive, it wouldn't read two of my USB3 ports; had to try a USB3 port on the back of the case. Thus, the comments about how USB3 may have been affected. Following the CMOS re-flash, the two bad USB3 ports came alive.]
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