BIOS Flash Crash

[lb1947]

Making a long story short, malware has driven me to have to rebuild my boot drive, starting with a reformat. During the beginning of that process, I noticed that for the 160GB SATA disk I was going to format, the XP Pro installation disk was seeing only about 132GB of it. I wanted it all, and figured a BIOS flash wold allow it to see the full capacity of the drive. So I went to the Gigabyte site, downloaded their latest BIOS for my motherboard, pressed <end> during POST and got to the Q-Flash utility. From there I saved my current BIOS to a floppy disk, then had Q-Flash flash the new BIOS. Everything went swimmingly; Q-Flash reported that the flash was successful so I continued on to the point of having Q-Flash reboot my computer. Q-Flash shut the computer down, then turned it back on. The computer tried to reboot, but my monitor just stayed blank! Nothing appeared; the computer doesn't even sound as if it's trying to recover or do anything else, for that matter. To attempt a reboot, I have to turn the computer off using its "Power Off" button, then turn it back on -- Ctrl-Alt-Delete doesn't do anything.
Upon powering up, the empty floppy disk drive's indicator light comes on, then the indicator light on my internal DVD/CD Reader/Writer flashes a few times, and the light on my internal CD Reader/Writer comes on, then goes off. Next the computer sounds as if it's accessing the hard drive, but then that sound stops. Before flashing the BIOS, my boot sequence was set to CD/floppy/hard drive. There are no Beep Codes sounded, and the monitor never changes from a blank, dead screen.
My system specs are:

GA-P35-DS3L Rev 1.0 motherboard
4 GB memory
an Intel Core 2 Duo Processor E6320
an Nvidia GeForce 8500 GT PCI 16x Express graphics card with 512mb of DDR2 memory
a Samsung SyncMaster 204T LCD Monitor

As best as I could tell as the BIOS specs flew by at POST (before flashing it), the motherboard's original BIOS was F4 (although I don't see that as an option on the list at the Gigabyte site. I was trying to flash it to F9.

Is there anything that can be done to save this motherboard? Thanks in advance for any help offered.</end>

[warren300]

Re: BIOS Flash Crash

clear cmos by removing mb battery,leave it out overnight then put back and try,also every hard drive from 30gb to 1tb+ will never give you the full amount of free space to use so a 750gb drive will show 700gb, a 1tb will show 950gb ect,its just the way the os sees it

[Chike]

Re: BIOS Flash Crash

Try to clear CMOS for a start, as explained at the second part of this post. Don't cut corners, remove the battery and place a jumper on CLR_CMOS for 20-30 minutes, then try too boot with one memory stick only.
Remember to disconnect the power and discharge the PSU before clearing CMOS.
If you manage to boot, load optimized defaults, save & reboot, turn the computer off and add the second memory stick.
If that doesn't help, try a long overnight clear.

I doubt the new BIOS will make any difference of the disk capacity though.

[artdrivers]

Re: BIOS Flash Crash

Have you tried to unplug the power chord then hold the front panel power button in for 20 seconds. After that follow the instructions in your motherboard manual, and Clear CMOS. I would try it with the short clear cmos jumper first (on page 29). Then the remove battery for 20 minutes or more. Below is an English version of your manual in a pdf. Please allow a little for it to download. http://download.gigabyte.ru/manual/m...5-(d)s3l_e.pdf
If that fails below is more on it. http://forums.tweaktown.com/f69/bios...h-guide-27576/

[Grnkjr0]

Re: BIOS Flash Crash

I had a bad BIOS flash 2 weeks ago and thought my motherboard had gone bad. It turned out I had to remove a memory stick from the middle memory slot in order to boot. It is faulty and I have had issues before getting the middle memory slot to be recognized by BIOS to run triple channel.

Like chike posted try booting with only one memory stick in the 1st memory slot after you removed battery and cleared CMOS.

Poul

[lb1947]

Re: BIOS Flash Crash

Thanks to those above who've posted suggestions for me. I am currently working through them -- right now my CMOS battery is out, the power cord is off, 3 of the 4 sticks of 1GB memory are out (leaving in the one closest to the CPU), and a jumper is across the "Clear CMOS" pins. The grandkids are coming over tonight so this will be the computer's state until tomorrow.

I have a question regarding the removal of all but 1 stick of memory. According to the User's Manual, "Dual channel mode cannot be enabled if only one DDR2 memory module is installed." . Does this mean that if at least 2 memory modules aren't installed, it won't work at all? Or can it work without enabling dual channel mode if only 1 memory module is in?

Thanks, again. As you might suspect, hardware ain't my thing.

[Chike]

Re: BIOS Flash Crash

I have a question regarding the removal of all but 1 stick of memory. According to the User's Manual, "Dual channel mode cannot be enabled if only one DDR2 memory module is installed." . Does this mean that if at least 2 memory modules aren't installed, it won't work at all? Or can it work without enabling dual channel mode if only 1 memory module is in?

Quite simple, to operate in dual-channel mode you must have at least one stick in each channel, e.g. one in slot 1 and one in slot 3, or 2 & 4, or all of them. This increase memory transfer troughput.
With one stick it will just operate in single channel-mode, no problem.

[artdrivers]

Re: BIOS Flash Crash

You will want to be sure you unplug the power chord when removing or installing hardware, like memory,pci cards, hard drives, battery, and, ect...

[profJim]

Re: BIOS Flash Crash

Please include a detailed list of your hardware in your forum signature.
This makes it much easier for us to help you and helps to eliminate errors.

See steps 1 and 2 in this post for more information.