Pulling out my hair!!!

jonnyhockey

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Mar 9, 2012
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Greetings,

Long time lurker, first time poster. I've searched these forums and found similar issues, but have had no luck fixing my particular issue.

So, 2 months ago I built a computer. Specs are in my profile so they should be visible? Anyway, everything was running fine, when one evening, when I powered up, the trouble began.

When I hit the power button, it beeped, a few lights came on, the fans kicked in, and then it crashed. It waited a few seconds, and then repeated (without me touching anything.) It cycled like this 5 or 6 times and then came to life. However, when it came to life, I got the following error:

Warning: MAIN BIOS CHECKSUM ERROR!
Retrieving recovery source from HPA.... HPA BIOS not available!!
Retrieving recovery source from the Backup BIOS... Done!
Writing BIOS Image.... xxxxK OK


So, frightened, I turned it off, and then back on. Same thing. It cycled a few times, and then brought me to this error.

It was late, I was tired, so I called it a night. The next evening, everything worked fine. Started up normally, the world was back to normal. However, the following night, it happened again.

So after some research, I thought there was a chance that it was my power supply. My brother brought his over, however the issue remained.

Tried removing the vid card, memory, etc, to isolate the problem, with no luck.

So I did some more research and decided to flash my motherboard with the latest software. It took me a while to figure out how to, but using a flash drive, I was eventually able to get into BIOS, and using Qflash, update to the latest version of my gigabyte motherboard.

So, I fired it up, and I thought I was laughing, as it did NOT cycle at the beginning. It went right through the BIOS, but then I hit another snag. The following error:

Loading Operating System ...
DISK BOOT FAILURE, INSERT SYSTEM DISK AND PRESS ENTER


OK, so I put my Windows 7 CD back in and changed the boot order to boot from the cd drive first. Exact same error.

Thinking maybe a power surge fried my motherboard (we get power failures here frequently) (and I didn't have a surge protector at the time)
I picked up a new one (same model) and installed it, however the same damn error reared it's ugly head.

So here I stand, with a 2 month old system and a free weekend I had planned on playing Call of Duty with, but will be stuck pulling my hair out instead. I'm heading out for the night, but will be back here first thing in the morning. If you have any advice, I greatly appreciate it, and will be able to respond tomorrow morning.

Thanks in advance, and this is a great forum by the way.

-Mike
 

jrazor247

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When you flashed you BIOS, it may have reset to the default settings. One of those being IDE mode instead of SATA or RAID. Try changing that and Windows might boot. I have the same random BIOS corruption error with my Gigabyte EP45 also some times, and have to reflash and redo the settings in BIOS.
 

carnage0651

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Ok, as Jrazor said, try flashing and redoing the BIOS.
First check the CMOS battery though, a cheap multi-meter would come in handy here or just replace the battery with a new one. Even if it doesnt fix the issue its nice to have a spare around. Yes, I know the mobo is still new, but who knows how long that battery was sitting waitng to be installed by Gigabyte.
Second, if your equipment is prone to power outages, dirty power or anything like that you need to get an UPS. Surge protectors are nice, but UPS' normally provide better protection.
Third providing you get the BIOS issue fixed, set the machine to stay turned off after power failure.
If all else fails consider maxinexus' suggestion.
 

carnage0651

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Having done some research on this motherboard, I found that over 200 of the 1434 reviews on this board on newegg were bad (1-2 eggs) many people are having the same issues as you and nekulturny are having.
Personal opinnion - RMA the motherboard and try another company like ASUS, ASROCK, Intel or MSI. Do lots of research, DOA and faulty equipment happens, but it should be a rather small amount of the reviews. Much research is required for picking equipment.
 



Yea, I agree with you, I thought I had properly vetted my MOBO before ordering as well. But as soon as I googled that "bios checksum error" everything that came up was a Gigabyte MOBOs. As I mentioned in my thread, Tigerdirect was real nice about me exchanging it for a Asus Sabertooth. The only reason I didn't buy the Sabertooth when I bought my system was because at the time the Mobo was over 200 bucks, now its only about 5 bucks more than this Gigabyte.


The only problem I can find on Newegg reviews that seems common with the Asus Sabertooth is that the original BIOS didn't support FX processors (odd considering its an AM3+ board), this has been fixed, but either way it doesn't matter because I'm running a Phenom II.
 

jonnyhockey

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Morning folks.

First off, thanks for the replies. It's nice to have support during these difficult times. ;)

To jrazor: I found only one setting that deals with IDE, RAID (XHD), and AHCI, and that setting is:

PCH SATA Control Mode

Is this the setting you're referring to? I tried all three settings with no luck. However, when in RAID(XHD), I get a new error that flashes, before going to the DISK BOOT FAILURE screen, and that message is:

Serial ATA AHCI BIOS, Version iSrc 1.20E
Copyright (c) 2003-2008 Intel Corporation
**This version supports only Hard Disk and CDROM drives**
Please wait. This will take a few seconds.

And then back to the Disk Boot uscreen.

@Maxinexus: What does RMA mean?

@Carnage: My other motherboard was 2 months old. I bought a new one, (with a new battery) and am getting the same issue. I doubt it's the battery.

@a_tractor: Tried that already.
 

jonnyhockey

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Update to my previous post:

The complete error message (when set to RAID(XHD) is:

Serial ATA AHCI BIOS, Version iSrc 1.20E
Copyright (c) 2003-2008 Intel Corporation
**This version supports only Hard Disk and CDROM drives**
Please wait. This will take a few seconds.

Controller Bus#00, Device#1F, Funtion#82: 86 Ports
AHCI BIOS not installed
 

jonnyhockey

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I doubt it's the board. I bought a second one to see if it was, and the new one has the same issues.

Also, I'm pretty sure the model I have does not have "dual bios", but if I can't fix it I'll see what I can do about returning them.

 



Well,, the error says blah blah trying to load HPA BIOS. HPA is hidden-protected area on the hard drive.. So in theory its trying to engage the hard drive to find something it doesn't have (very simplistically put, what can I say? I like simple explanations). And for whatever reason, its not able to communicate with said hard drive. I guess, out of curiosity since you're still having the same problem with a 2nd board, do you have another hard drive to try?

BTW, I looked at Gigabytes website, your board does indeed have their infamous "dual bios"..

From the page:
GIGABYTE DualBIOS™ is a patented technology that automatically recovers BIOS data when the main BIOS has crashed or failed. Featuring 2 physical BIOS ROMs integrated onboard, GIGABYTE DualBIOS™ allows quick and seamless recovery from BIOS damage or failure due to viruses or improper BIOS updating. In addition, GIGABYTE DualBIOS™ now supports 3TB+ (terabyte) hard drive booting without the need for partitioning, and enables more data storage on a single hard drive.

Yea, and if my aunt had....... shed be my uncle.
 

carnage0651

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Ok, on this did you install SATA controller drivers when you were installing windows? As you may recall in the early days of SATA you had to install the drivers during the windows install like they were SCSI drivers. The only way to avoid this was to use AHCI mode. I got to thinking about that because you mentioned "The complete error message (when set to RAID(XHD) is" So try dropping it into AHCI mode and see what happens.

 

carnage0651

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The sabertooth boards are really nice, I have a buddy that has one. Installed it myself...and spent hours fixing his jacked cooling system and cable layout. It is normal for ASUS boards to get bios updates to add support for newer CPUs. I had a P5B deluxe that i had to update the BIOS in order to use my core 2 extreme a couple years back. I think you will be very happy with it.
 


I hate these long threads where it looks like people are missing obvious things. Folks, slow down and read carefully.

Mike, you successfully dealt with your BIOS issue, it would seem. Also, you were able to change the device order in your BIOS, indicating that the BIOS is successfully seeing your drives.

However, you don't seem to be able to read or write to these drives. Changing around your HDD compatibility to RAID did not help at all, and may have corrupted the data on your HDD.

Your configuration details are somewhat lacking.

What HDD?
What optical drive?

Three more questions:
Can you still boot from a thumb drive?
Can you boot from a different disk? Like Ultimate Boot CD?
Did you swap out your data cables to both drives?
 



Read the first sentence of your post, stopped, and looked at the quote you posted, and saw it. You're right. *blush*
 

jonnyhockey

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The HDD is a Western Digital 500GB
The Optical Drive is SuperWritemaster Speedplus

I haven't tried booting from a thumb drive, just the original windows 7 disk. When flashing the BIOS, it did recognize a thumb drive however.
And as for the data cables, no I have not swapped them out. I don't have any extra ones.

Another tidbit: my CD Drive has no power to it. ?
 

jonnyhockey

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Correct. The button to open/close the tray does not function. I tried plugging into another computer, and the button didn't work there either.

I can manually open and close it, but why doesn't it have power? Brand new drive, only ever used once or twice.

This damn computer is falling apart.