New motherboard, now boot to blue screen

Why did you replace the motherboard? If there were no problems and this was just an upgrade for the sake of upgrading, I would blame the new board at this point.

I was getting a lot of sata-related errors with my old system. I thought it might be the motherboard (an ASUS M2N), though now I think it was actually a bad hard disk (its confirmed the disk was bad). Anyhow, I thought I'd upgrade a few things to be safe. Ordered a new motherboard, CPU, memory, and a couple new hard disks.

The new Gigabyte motherboard and the other stuff ran well for about a week, then I started getting more & more odd hardware exceptions & errors in the logs. The first of the new hard drives was dying, the second eventually died completely. I RMAd the two disks and the motherboard.

While waiting for the new stuff, I re-installed my old motherboard to use. It worked fine.

I guess this is why I'm a little confused. Why would so much equipment have failed with the Gigabyte? Perhaps the Power Supply? But then why does it work fine withe the ASUS motherboard?

And now the new, RMAd motherboard has immediately failed. It just seems very odd. Any thoughts?

PSU is a suspect. Can you run HWmonitor or something like it to verify voltages?

maybe bios too old with your cpu?

This motherboard and CPU are supposed to be compatible with each other, neither is particularly cutting edge--is it likely that the CPU would be incompatible with the bios? Why would the bios be old in a brand new motherboard? Is the blue screen the sort of effect one might expect if the CPU were incompatible with the bios?

Remember that it did boot initially, and only started going directly to the blue screen after I cleared the CMOS.

Also note that the previous copy of the motherboard before I exchanged it for the same model, booted fine and didn't seem to have any problem with the same CPU.




Right now, as I mentioned, the system won't start at all so I can't run anything on it. The PSU was working OK just prior to installing the motherboard with my older model motherboard. Not to say it might not be suspect; the new CPU and motherboard have higher energy requirements than the old; but I was running the old system with the same PSU with 4 hard disks, the new system won't boot even with no disks attached.

I could remove the new motherboard and install the old motherboard again and try to see what the voltages are there (I don't have microsoft windows so I couldn't run HWmonitor which is a windows-only program I believe, but I think I could use lm-sensors on linux. However, I already ordered a new PSU which should arrive in a couple of days, I was thinking I might wait for that and try it with the new, non-starting motherboard. Does that make sense?

Has anyone had similar symptoms in their PC, getting this weird blue screen after clearing the CMOS? (note its not like the microsoft windows blue screen; this one is happening before any OS boots.)

I keep thinking maybe I did something wrong to cause this to happen. Is that possible? Like maybe I didn't put enough thermal grease on when I added the CPU? (I followed the instructions super closely, but is it possible I made a tiny mistake that caused this?) Or could I have hooked up the PSU wrong somehow? (don't see how). Or am I missing something?

this model has been released for long time and there should be latest bios to support cpu better.
you can add it as a checkpoint.

According to gigabye, the GA-970A-D3 "Supports AMD AM3+ FX/ AM3 PhenomII, AthlonII series processors"
http://www.gigabyte.us/products/product-page.aspx?pid=4...

I don't think this is why its not booting.

Well, I just got the new PSU. Installed it and...exact same result. System powers up and immediately displays a blank blue screen.

Anyone have any ideas?

bsod in post you can check to insert only one memory dimm or check cpu socket quality if there is damage.

Please note the blue screen I am getting is not the classic microsoft windows "blue screen of death".... this happens before POST, so no operating system is involved.

Took out the CPU to inspect, no visible problems with it or with the CPU socket in the motherboard.

Tried booting with only one memory stick; got same result. Tried again using just the other memory stick; same result.

To reiterate, what happens is:

-Turn on PC with power button.
-Power supply fan goes on.
-CPU fan goes on (after a few seconds as cpu heats up).
-On screen, see black screen with a single blinking cursor for one second.
-There is a single, normal beep.
-Screen goes blue and that's it. I can power off using the power button.

Also note--if I try to boot with NO memory sticks, I get continuous beeping and nothing on the screen.

I have eliminated the PSU as a suspect, It seems likely its either the CPU or Motherboard. I don't have another compatible CPU or motherboard to test them individually though.

i thought you could be tired checking this and that but if you can check to clear cmos once again.
If it continues same problem, you have to check motherboard quality.

Tried clearing the CMOS again, got no improvement.

I RMAd the motherboard. Should get a new one in about a week, will post the results here.

Well, the new motherboard arrived today--I installed it with the cpu, memory, and power supply...and I still get the same result (starts, 1 beep, blinking cursor for a few moments, then a blank blue screen and nothing more).

Since I've tried it with two PSUs and two motherboards, and with each memory stick independently, right now it looks like the cpu is the culprit.

To update this thread in case it helps someone else: I finally found out what was going on.

The problem was that Rev. 3.0 of this board ( the Gigabyte GA-970A-D3 ) has a new graphical bios. It turns out that the new bios has a problem with my video card -- it will not output anything if a monitor is attached to the HDMI port. If a monitor is attached to the VGA port AND ONLY the VGA port, it will work and display the POST screen and the bios menu.

Since I had no way of knowing this problem, when I reset my CMOS, the system would try to go to the bios menu... but since it could not display anything it just stopped there, while all I saw was a blank blue screen.

Now that I know the problem I can work around it by turning off my HDMI monitor and only having the VGA one on at boot if I need the bios menu.

I do not know if this issue affects more video card models besides my own (nvidia geforce 210 chipset).

Needless to say, I was not pleased with Gigabyte when I figured this out. I have reported the problem to them and they say they are looking into it. I sincerely hope they do fix this soon to spare someone else the tribulations I went though.