Greetings Intel Community:
Before I discuss the issue at hand, I do want to say that my current Intel motherboard is by far the best I have ever used in all my adventures in building PCs. It supports GNU/Linux exceptionally well and the AMT and vPro capabilities are second to none. That being said, I do have this annoying issue which requires me to employ inconvenient workarounds to mitigate the issue. What happens is that I cannot boot from any USB-connected flash drive or external hard drive without causing the motherboard to enter an infinite reboot cycle when the Intel Desktop Board logo appears at power on. Normally this wouldn't be a problem, except that I need to boot off USB for installing operating systems and whatnot.
I did discover a discussion from early last year that mentioned this software defect for booting off USB on the DQ77MK and that Intel was aware of the problem and working towards a solution (https://communities.intel.com/message/189032). Sadly, as of the latest revision of the BIOS (0064) from October 2013, which I happen to have installed at the moment, I still encounter the endless shutdown and restart loops every time I plug in a USB drive to boot off of. Since this motherboard is covered under Intel's eXtended Life Program, is there going to be an actual fix coming soon? For an otherwise stellar motherboard to have this bug is rather inexcusable, since working with USB drives at the BIOS/EFI level should be a bug-free experience.
Thank you for your attention to this matter.