GA-EG31M-S2, dead after bios flash?

ekoostick

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Oct 25, 2008
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Hey everyone, have been using a Gigabyte GA-EG31M-S2 board with Intel e7200 for the past couple of months. I was using the F1 bios, which worked fine, but with the release of a new bios (F2), I decided to change to that (opened up some functionality with DES). I flashed the bios with Qflash and everyone seemed to work fine. I changed the bios settings to optimized defaults and it booted up into XP. Once everything was up I noticed it was trying to install new hardware. It seems that it caused my Realtek ALC888 audio chip to not be recognized (worked fine in the past). I installed new drivers and it worked but would not work with 5.1.

So I decided to flash back to the original bios (F1). I downloaded it off the site, restarted went into Qflash, flashed the bios with the F1 bios. The progress bar finished and said "Bios was flashed successfully". I restarted the computer and the display didn't work. All the fans spin up and it sounds like the CDROM is reading different bootable cds I put in but there is no display. There are no beeps and the lights on the memory sticks indicate it is not using any memory. I tried clearing the CMOS, taking out the battery and waiting 24 hours but still nothing. I am hoping someone here can help.

I have tried using the onboard video, my 8600gt card, an old TI4200 and none of them will give me a display. I hope there is someway to get this fixed without having to go through an RMA process.

Here are my specs
Gigabyte GA-EG31M-S2 (rev. 1)
Intel e7200
2gb (2x1gb) Crucial Ballistix Tracer
SATA 500gb WD Green drive
SATA Liteon Burner
Nvidia 8600gt
 

arson94

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Apr 18, 2008
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It's not using memory or giving you a display because it's not getting into BIOS. If you take out the memory, are there beeps then? Before you do that though, try to power cycle the motherboard. Pull the power cable from the back of the PSU and hit the power button on your case a couple of times. All the lights on your motherboard should go out, indicating that all power has been consumed or flushed out of your motherboard. Plug it back up and try to turn it on again, see what happens.

If it doesn't boot still, see if you get beeps with no memory installed. Try booting with just one stick of RAM installed at a time, try both sticks one at a time. If you have a spare CPU, try it. If you're not getting jack still, then maybe the BIOS flash didn't really work. Let me know if anything happens.
 

ekoostick

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Oct 25, 2008
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Thanks for helping!

Alright, gave that a shot. I unplugged the PSU and pushed the power button to make sure it was all through. Plugged it back in and still nothing. I took both memory sticks out and fired it up. No beeps. The computer acts the same with or without memory. I tried one stick at a time in both slots and still nothing. I don't have a spare CPU that will fit. It was all working well til last night.
 

arson94

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Apr 18, 2008
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Do you have a friend with a computer with compatible parts? If so, ask them to try your CPU and RAM in their computer and see if they work, one at a time of course. You only want to change one variable per test. If your CPU and RAM work in another computer, then I'd assume it's your board. You can try your video card too just for good measure. If you have no way to test your parts in another computer at all, then I'd assume it's your board anyway since the problem started immediately following a BIOS flash, even though it claimed it was successful.