ASUS H87I-PLUS immediately powers back on after shutdown (Solved: Intel xHCI Mode)

TrueNAS General
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1

Hardware

  • ASUS H87I-PLUS

  • BIOS 2003

  • TrueNAS SCALE

  • Intel onboard NIC

Problem

Whenever I shut the system down from the TrueNAS web interface, the machine would shut down completely, remain off for about 5 seconds, and then immediately power itself back on.

Things I ruled out

During troubleshooting I tested all of the following:

  • Wake-on-LAN

  • Power On By PCIe

  • Restore AC Power Loss

  • USB wake sources in Linux (/proc/acpi/wakeup)

  • Intel NIC wake events

  • RTC wake alarms

  • Ethernet cable unplugged before shutdown

An interesting observation was that if I entered the BIOS setup and powered the machine off from there, it stayed off normally. The problem only occurred after Linux/TrueNAS had been booted.

Solution

The fix turned out to be a BIOS setting:

Advanced → USB Configuration → Intel xHCI Mode → Disabled

Changing Intel xHCI Mode from Smart Auto to Disabled completely resolved the issue.

The system now shuts down normally and remains powered off.

Hopefully this saves someone else several hours of troubleshooting.

If anyone knows why disabling Intel xHCI Mode fixes this behavior on the H87 platform, I’d be interested in understanding the root cause

2 Likes
2

I guess my first question would be “What USB devices do you have connected?”

But otherwise, I have no clue why this’d be a solution.

3

I found this old discussion, seems related…

Do you have the same behaviour of [smart auto] also with [auto] and [enabled]?

4

The pattern happened even with nothing connected. I agree, it’s strange.

1 Like