GA-EP45-UD3R BIOS not recognizing hard drives

[Snogger_T]

So last night I was hanging out in my room watching TV, and all of a sudden my computer crashed out of windows and rebooted. There were no programs running or anything (other than background services), it was just sitting there idle. When it rebooted, it brought up a message about the OS not being found. So I went to the BIOS to check the boot sequence, and my windows drive was out of order, so I moved it back to first spot. Everything went fine, but then windows got hung up on the loading screen and never booted into windows. I just turned everything off and went to bed because it was late and I didn't feel like dealing with it at the time.

So this morning I booted back up and went to the BIOS, but none of my SATA drives were showing up at all. I turned off my computer and then unplugged all the drives except my Windows drive (74GB Raptor). I went into the BIOS again, but it was not showing up. When I tried to boot into windows, it told me the OS was missing or gave me an error that told me to use a boot disk or whatever. I turned everything off and left it alone for a little while to try and think of what could be causing the problem, then decided to try booting into windows again just to see what happened. When I booted up, it went through everything normally and then ran chkdsk automatically (I didn't try to run it). After running chkdsk, windows booted up fine and now everything seems to be running fine again. All of my HDD's are showing up in the BIOS and in windows as well.

So can anyone help me with what possibly happened? I don't want to just assume my computer fixed itself. I can't have my computer crash in the middle of a semester like this because I rely on it heavily for my homework. I've had some nagging issues with my MOBO since I've had it (like the DVD drive not working or locking up windows, or the USB wireless dongle just quits working), but this was the first time something like this happened. Should I maybe update the BIOS or anything like that? Any advice would be great. Thanks

[Acebmxer]

Re: GA-EP45-UD3R BIOS not recognizing hard drives

So last night I was hanging out in my room watching TV, and all of a sudden my computer crashed out of windows and rebooted. There were no programs running or anything (other than background services), it was just sitting there idle. When it rebooted, it brought up a message about the OS not being found. So I went to the BIOS to check the boot sequence, and my windows drive was out of order, so I moved it back to first spot. Everything went fine, but then windows got hung up on the loading screen and never booted into windows. I just turned everything off and went to bed because it was late and I didn't feel like dealing with it at the time.

So this morning I booted back up and went to the BIOS, but none of my SATA drives were showing up at all. I turned off my computer and then unplugged all the drives except my Windows drive (74GB Raptor). I went into the BIOS again, but it was not showing up. When I tried to boot into windows, it told me the OS was missing or gave me an error that told me to use a boot disk or whatever. I turned everything off and left it alone for a little while to try and think of what could be causing the problem, then decided to try booting into windows again just to see what happened. When I booted up, it went through everything normally and then ran chkdsk automatically (I didn't try to run it). After running chkdsk, windows booted up fine and now everything seems to be running fine again. All of my HDD's are showing up in the BIOS and in windows as well.

So can anyone help me with what possibly happened? I don't want to just assume my computer fixed itself. I can't have my computer crash in the middle of a semester like this because I rely on it heavily for my homework. I've had some nagging issues with my MOBO since I've had it (like the DVD drive not working or locking up windows, or the USB wireless dongle just quits working), but this was the first time something like this happened. Should I maybe update the BIOS or anything like that? Any advice would be great. Thanks

Some time Computers do stupid things for no apparent reason. Some time this is a reason it could be very simple or very difficult to figure out. In this case I would try running some HDD diagnostics I dont know them off the top of my head maybe someone else can chime in and list them but I would start off with HD tune or some hdd bechmark utilities and check the performance on the drives. You could have a HDD starting to fail or get flaky. How old are your hdd's? Other thing is, is this computer connected to a battery back up (UPS) if not you could have had a power surge or spike or brown out just for a split second but enough to flip the computer out. I know a bunch of times here the lights would flicker or not even and I can hear my UPS kick in and out for a second. Not often but some times 2-3 times a day.

Also you could have a controller starting to go or be flaky. Which ports are your hdd's connected to? Are you using Ahci or Raid?

It may not be important but more info is always better please fill in your system specs into your Sig like I have my info just so we know exactly what hard ware you are working with.

[Snogger_T]

Re: GA-EP45-UD3R BIOS not recognizing hard drives

I'm actually leaning towards something to do with the power in my room. The clock on my 360 was also messed up this morning (was set to 11/22/05), so I think something must of happened that threw everything off. Hope that's all it is at least.

[Lsdmeasap]

Re: GA-EP45-UD3R BIOS not recognizing hard drives

Power surge could do that, could also mess up your BIOS as you have noted.

Are you using the latest BIOS? If not I would go ahead and update it.

[Snogger_T]

Re: GA-EP45-UD3R BIOS not recognizing hard drives

Power surge could do that, could also mess up your BIOS as you have noted.

Are you using the latest BIOS? If not I would go ahead and update it.

When updating the BIOS, will I have to re-input all the settings I have now (will it go back to defaults)? Also, is it fine to just use the windows based BIOS updater that came with the board?

[Acebmxer]

Re: GA-EP45-UD3R BIOS not recognizing hard drives

When updating the BIOS, will I have to re-input all the settings I have now (will it go back to defaults)? Also, is it fine to just use the windows based BIOS updater that came with the board?

When updating the bios its advised to load optimized defaults save and exit reboot renter bios or enter Q-flash I think its the F8 key. Turn off keep DMI pool. Flash bios exit and reboot re-enter bios load optimized defaults save and exit re-enter bios and make necessary changes.

You can successfully use @bios windows flashing utility but so may things can go wrong its not advised to use it. Always Q-flash or dos based flash utility.

Follow these procedures found in this guide Bios-flashing-how-qflash-guide

[Lsdmeasap]

Re: GA-EP45-UD3R BIOS not recognizing hard drives

Yes, you will need to write down some of your settings if you think you wont remember then, such as SATA/Disk settings. The guide I wrote linked above will explain everything to you

As for your MIT overclock settings, those will also be gone so if you need them as a new base starting point print out a template from the link in my signature and you can write them all down to input after you have flashed and loaded optimized/reboot again. Keep in mind old BIOS overclock settings do not always work with New BIOS, so you may need to tweak things again