Gigabyte GA-A75m-UD2H/AMD A8-3850 graphics issue

[rabbit_rebozo]

New build, GA-A75m-UD2H motherboard
A8-3850 (integrated Radeon HD6550D
8 gb Corsair Vengeance RAM

System boots initially following installation of Windows 7 64-bit on standard VGA drivers.

Install ATI Radeon graphics drivers from CD. System will boot as far as the 'starting windows' screen and then go blank.

System will boot fully in Safe Mode (using standard VGA drivers, of course).

If you uninstall the Radeon HD6550d display adapter from Device Manager in Safe Mode (but do not delete the drivers), system will reboot (again, on standard drivers), auto-detect the HD6550d and reinstall drivers. This install reports as having completed successfully, but the AMD Vision Engine Control Center will not run, reporting that there is no AMD display adapter installed, or that the drivers are out of date or damaged.

Rebooting the system from this state (with the AMD drivers installed and enabled) will result again in the blank screen.

If, in Safe Mode, you uninstall the Radeon adapter AND delete the driver, the system will boot in normal mode, as standard VGA, and apparently function quite happily for as long as you like.

Bottom line: System runs fine if AMD drivers are not used. System will not boot if AMD drivers ARE used.

Same results with a) the driver package included on the CD with the motherboard; b) the newer driver package downloaded from Gigabyte's web site; c) the driver package recomended and downloaded from AMD's website; and d) the driver package that comes from Windows Update.

To stress: there are no errors, no beeps, no BSODs, no core dumps, no logs, nothing. You see the 'starting windows' screen and then blank. After you reboot (manually) the Windows bootloader will report that the system was previously unable to boot and offer to repair the installation. If you say yes, it will think for a few moments and then report that it can't find anything it can fix, and offer to restore. If you say yes here it will then boot up fine, after, of course, the restore has removed the AMD drivers.

If past experience is any guide, I won't hear from Gigabyte's 24-hour tech support response line for at least another 70 hours, and the AMD website appears to offer nothing.

An oddity: Windows will only recognize the HD6650d if the drivers happen to be present on the system. Otherwise a hardware scan shows it only as a standard VGA adapter. A side effect of embedding the GPU on the processor die?

Anybody seen anything similar or can offer any suggestions on where to go next?

Thanks.

 

[NC37]

Bat forwarded me your situation so I made an account here. Have you tried contacting Gigabyte over the phone?

One thing that comes to mind is, have you checked your bios revision? I remember some of the early FM1 boards had bios issues.

I built one of these for a relative and so I dug through information and made sure I had stuff updated to avoid issues. Pretty sure it was the same board you used and I know it was the same APU.

Gigabyte has an @bios program that can update it for you. Pretty painless.

Other ideas...you could try clearing the CMOS and leaving it unplugged for a bit. I've had issues with boards get resolved with simple methods like this.

I'm sure Gigabyte will ask you right away what Bios it is so that would be a good place to start. If that doesn't resolve it then I'd do an RMA on that board. Might want to talk with AMD too about the APU before you do that. See what they say. Hesitate to say it is a bad APU but I'd be sure to rule it out.

This stuff happens sometimes. No company is immune to bad boards getting out there with good ones. I generally have good results with Gigabyte and more issues with their competitors, but I've seen others have the opposite.

 

[rabbit_rebozo]

Thanks for the reply. Issue turned out to be memory configuration... getting the RAM modules into the right slots. The memory did work in the incorrect configuration... it was causing POST errors, which I didn't realize, but the system did boot with and recognize all the RAM.

With that resolved, this is striking me as a pretty good momboard. I like all the features, it seems to be built pretty solid and, unlike the system I'm replacing, it's able to run for more than 6 hours without spontaneously rebooting.

 

[ldpfeifer]

New build, GA-A75m-UD2H motherboard
A8-3850 (integrated Radeon HD6550D
16 gb Corsair Vengeance RAM
I have XP on it, due to my sons external hard ware. I am having all the issues you have. I checked and updated the BIOS before hand. I even tried to use a PCI ASUS ENGT 430 card and XP tells me in device manager that the device cannot start. I get the board or drivers installed, but the YELLOW exclamation point.