Double booting, double hard booting

Intel-Chip on MSI mainboards reduces service life of connected PC-components by about half.

Description of the error: double booting, double hard booting

With every hard booting (= after electrical power to the PC / PSU is switched off for more than 15 seconds and the PC has been disconnected from the mains) there will be a double booting.
I.e.: The PC-system will be activated for about 5-10 seconds. Then it will be shut down abruptly. And after a break of about another 5 seconds the system will be initiated again so that the PC will boot hard for a second time.
This double booting affects all components, which receive their power from the mainboard, e.g.: M.2-SSD, RAM, and CPU, fans for the cooling system of the CPU, M.2-SSD-cooling fans, as well as all circuits and components on the mainboard.
When performing a soft booting / restart (i.e. without taking the PC off the mains / without pulling the plug) this bug will not occur.
There are videos showing this bug with the light of the PC power-on-switch as well as fans on the mainboard.
- The AVI-videos can be watched using VLC.
- On the first video showing the LED on the PC power-on-switch you can easily check the timing of the on and off periods.
- On the second video showing the fans, the inertia of the fans delays the power-on as well as the power-off periods, as the fans start slowly and stop with a delay. If you listen carefully, you will still be able to hear the clicks of the hard power-on and power-off of the relays etc.

Consequences of this bug

All components of the hardware, which get their current directly by the mainboard, will receive a shock therapy by being switched on and off and on again within a few seconds.
This puts a completely useless extreme stress on the electronic components.
The service life of these components will drastically be reduced.
This particularly applies to valuable and sensitive units like M.2-SSD, RAM, CPU, cooler as well as all mainboard circuits and mainboard components.
Possibly, all other components of the PC system - especially the graphics card - might momentarily also receive hard control signals and thus might be stressed unnecessarily.
To prevent these negative effects, it is necessary to have the whole PC continuously connected to the mains. That is unacceptable in the light of today's environmental requirements with respect of the permanent consumption of electricity of such a system. Furthermore, you even cannot protect your PC against common hazards such as lightning during thunderstorms.
The Intel chipset as well as the MSI mainboard are both expensive, supposedly high-quality products. Thus, such errors must not occur.

Widely spread bug

This is a general bug at least with some MSI mainboards. MSI knows about this. And the bug occurs regardless of other hardware and software used with those mainboards.
Members in Bulletin boards claim that this bug can be found on other MSI mainboards as well. - Possibly, it can be found on further mainboards produced by other manufacturers as well, as far as they use the Intel X99-Chipset.
Source e.g.: ZobRombie 16.09.2015, 18:06 - Re: Double booting with Mainboard MSI X99S SLI Plus
I owned and tested several MSI Boards. Every single one showed this hard-boot-phenomenon. I could even demonstrate it with other mainboard-manufacturers. (The originally German text was translated by me.)

Hardware

In my case, it affects hardware as follows:

Mainboard / Motherboard: MSI X99S SLI Plus (link to the manufacturer MSI)
CPU: Intel Core i7-5820K, 6x 3.30GHz (link to the manufacturer Intel)

Drivers

All drivers have regularly been updated.
All different versions of the BIOS did not affect the double booting. Versions 1.8 and 1.96 of the MSI-BIOS only offered improved M.2-SSD support.
As can be seen in the videos, the bug occurs before loading any drivers or even the operating system. - Thus, imho it is not relevant which version any software-driver has, that might be launched long after the bug had occurred.

Test results

Since acquiring my MSI mainboard in July 2015, I have now been testing the system for 5 months:

The rest of the hardware and software has no influence on the bug (double booting) of the mainboard.
The double booting has been reoccurring without any exception since the beginning / purchase of the new mainboard in July 2015.
It does not matter whether you connect further or other external hardware to your PC.
E.g., I connected several other monitors, additional USB sticks, and external hard drives for testing. All of them did not show any influence on the bug.
Reducing the number of RAM modules, or repositioning the RAM modules did not change the double booting.
Even changing the operating system has no influence on the bug.
It also makes no difference whether you turn off the internal HDD or the internal Blu-ray burner by unplugging them. The bug still remains.
Several other tested keyboards and mice did not fix the bug.
Furthermore, it is completely irrelevant whether one operates the system in the normal configuration or overclocked. The bug persists.
You can easily prove the double booting of the M.2-SSD by using software like Crystal Diskinfo. The double booting is counted properly as 2 booting instances for the M.2-SSD, which is mounted on the mainboard.
On the other hand, HDDs (hard discs - internally as well as externally mounted) are credited only one booting instance.
All components (like HDD hard discs), that are indirectly connected to the PC / mainboard, and which receive their power directly by the transformer / Power Supply Unit (PSU), are not affected by this bug, as they boot only once.

The manufacturers' unacceptable answers

Numerous technically precise and reasoned e-mails to the German support of both companies did neither produce a satisfactory answer nor a solution to the problem.

MSI

MSI knows about this general bug (double booting). At least they reaffirmed it for this mainboard.
The behaviour of the system is normal.
If the unit was unplugged, and you turn it on, it will switch on, and then off again before it starts and then is ready for use. - Email: German MSI support, dating 06th November 2015 (my translation).
The German MSI support puts the blame on Intel.
Regarding that your system starts up twice during a cold start, this is normal. This is due to Intels's X99 chipset. - German MSI support, dating 07th September 2015 (my translation.)
The system will start twice only by hard booting.
We cannot release any detailed information on why the Intel chip does this - German MSI support, dating 08th September 2015 (my translation).

Intel

Intel denies any existence of such behaviour / bug, treats the customer incompetently, and then suddenly stops any service and support.

Although the bug was clearly described several times and documented with a lot of evidence, Intel has categorically been denying it until today.
Instead, the customer is treated like a BDU (brain dead user), and is flooded with numerous questions, completely irrelevant to the problem.
My technically accurate answers have simply been ignored. Instead Intel's support asked the exact questions again.
Intel's support has not been reading my e-mails carefully, nor understood the contents, nor even tried to answer in comprehensible German. Probably, at least parts of the answers had been translated by software from English to German, with brute force.
So, I was informed, that my problem was a user error. - Then, I was asked to only use ASUS components that fit my board and were released by ASUS. - But I use - as having told Intel half dozen times - a MSI mainboard, and all other components had been confirmed in advance to me by MSI as being compatible.
Despite the evidence presented by me, by other users and even by MSI, I then was boldly alleged of being the only customer who had such problems.
My repeated offer to describe the bug in English, to improve communication with the obviously only English-speaking technicians and to conduct all communication in English, was rejected by Intel.
Furthermore, Intel refused my repeated request to communicate with MSI about the bug, which they know about and even confirm.
After that, Intel stopped any support. - Intel quite obviously does not want any further questions about their serious X99-bug.

Configuration of the PC

As all previous tests have shown, the configuration of hardware and software is irrelevant. The bug always occurs with this MSI board with Intel X99 chipset. Yet, I answer the notoriously recurring questions:

I usually run my PC with the following configuration:

Operating system: Windows 10, 64 bit, updated daily.
CPU: Intel Core i7-5820K, 6x 3.30GHz
CPU-Cooling system: Noctua NH-D15
M.2-SSD: Samsung SM951 512GB M.2 AHCI, as Boot-drive C:
HDD: Western Digital 6 TB Western Digital Green 6TB (WD60EZRX)
Mainboard / Motherboard: MSI X99S SLI Plus
DVD/BD-Burner: Asus BW-16D1HT Blu-ray/DVD Single und Dual Layer
Power Supply Unit: Be Quiet Straight Power 10 CM 700 W PC-PSU 700 W ATX
RAM: G.Skill Ripjaws 4 F4-2400C15Q-32GRR (32 GiByte DDR4-2400-RAM)
Case: Fractal Design Define R5 PCGH Edition, tower case
Graphic card: MSI GTX 980 Ti Gaming 6G
Monitor: Dell UP2715K
Additional fan for the SSD: Noctua NF-F12 PWM
Mouse: Roccat Kone XTD, cable-version
Keyboard: Microsoft Natural Ergonomic Keyboard 4000, cable-version

Any other connected hardware and installed software also produces the bug double booting.

Expertise

The author has been working as an IT specialist for more than 30 years with PCs (e.g. as a lecturer at an elite university) and thus understands a bit about the details criticized in this article.

Warning

As long as both companies refuse to recognize the proven bug as such and do not fix it, you should really be careful in buying such products.

Help

Please, check your own hardware with respect to this bug and tell me, whether you can prove it on your PC as well. In this case, I need the manufacturer's name and the name of the mainboard (please, specify the exact type, ideally with a link to the landing page of the manufacturer's product of the mainboard).

Deutsch

Zur deutschen Version Doppeltes Booten - Intel-Chipsatz auf MSI-Motherboards reduziert die Lebensdauer der angeschlossenen PC-Komponenten um ca. die Hälfte

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