Scanning BIOS Image in hard drive ....... EP45-UDP3

[dclayw]

Have been having some problems with this build for a while now. Just hangs occasionally in Windows 7. Have just upgraded to Windows 7 from XP and it was hanging occasionally in XP too. Tried a few things but basically haven't finished diagnosing yet.

Anyway, it hung today and needed reset (holding down power button). When it started back up it would not post (no beeps). Simply says:

Scanning BIOS Image in hard drive .......

BIOS Auto Recovering ....

and sits there forever. Looks like the BIOS is gone or corrupted or something. I thought these motherboards had auto-recovery/dual bios etc.... anyway. There is obviously no BIOS image on the hard drive, should there have been? Might have been able to recover if there was.

Cleared CMOS by disconnecting power from the wall, held power-on button in for a minute or so, then jumpered the CMOS jumper for about 15-20 minutes. Unjumpered and powered back up but get exactly the same result.

Where to from here? Is it possible to connect the drive to another PC, drop a BIOS image on it and then get it to recover from that BIOS?

What else can I try? The build is around 1 1/2 - 2 years old and is listed in my sig.

[Chike]

Re: Scanning BIOS Image in hard drive ....... EP45-UDP3

Did you try simply to disconnect all peripherrals?

[dclayw]

Re: Scanning BIOS Image in hard drive ....... EP45-UDP3

Disconnected mouse and keyboard, same result.

Disconnected hard drive, similar result but ofcourse doesn't have a hard drive to scan so doesn't spit out that message.

Swapped memory modules around, tried booting with just a single memory modeule (tried each one), same result.

No other peripherals connected, except the monitor ofcourse.

Any other suggestions?

[dclayw]

Re: Scanning BIOS Image in hard drive ....... EP45-UDP3

This motherboard is supposed to have dual BIOS, my understanding is a separate BIOS chip that is read-only. Why is looking for a BIOS on the hard drive, why doesn't it just boot from the backup BIOS.

Or does the fact that it doesn't boot from the backup BIOS indicate the motherboard is dead.

[Chike]

Re: Scanning BIOS Image in hard drive ....... EP45-UDP3

Good question.
Try clearing BIOS with battery out and jumper on, for a few hours or over night.

[dclayw]

Re: Scanning BIOS Image in hard drive ....... EP45-UDP3

I'll give your suggestion a go.

Can anyone tell me. Is the BIOS supposed to be stored on the hard drive by default, or is there some setting to make that happen. One reason I ask is that my mission critical machine is the other one in my sig with EX38-DS4 mobo. If that dies with a problem like this I'm gonna be a hell of lot more angry then I am now. I'm looking for an avoidance procedure.

It's rediculous that there appears to be no way to force the board to look elsewhere for the BIOS, like on a USB, floppy or whatever. Then again, if the board is dead then it's dead I guess. Mabye the BIOS is actually OK, the board just can't get to it, or to the backup BIOS. Who knows.

My research thus far tells me this is a reasonably common problem with Gigabyte boards.

[Lsdmeasap]

Re: Scanning BIOS Image in hard drive ....... EP45-UDP3

There is only two ways to correct this since it is not recovering from the hard drive backup (You did wait several minutes when it says recover right?, the latter fix I will PM you if the following does not fix it.

Disconnect all hard drives, and CD/DVD drives. Then connect ONLY a single CD/DVD drive, either IDE Master, or a SATA drive to the first Intel SATA port (SATAII_0).

Then put your motherboard install CD that came with the board in the CD and start the system, let it run for a bit and it should find no hard drives and then scan for a BIOS on the CD and recover from there.

If that does not help nothing else will expect what I will PM you if needed, if that does not help let me know

[dclayw]

Re: Scanning BIOS Image in hard drive ....... EP45-UDP3

Yes I left if for 30+ minutes several times when it said it was scanning the hard drive for a BIOS.

The machine has been turned off for an hour or two while I've been researching this. When I went to try the motherboard install CD method, unplugged the sata drive and turned it on and it started recovering the BIOS..... from the backup BIOS I think. I did not even get to put the cd in the drive. If you see my earlier post I tried this before, starting up with nothing connected except monitor and CD ROM, i.e. no hard drive. It does only have one memory stick in atm.

I'm happy to be back up but there are still some questions unanswered. What could possibly cause this? I wasn't updating the BIOS when I got this problem. The machine just hung in windows and on reset it couldn't find a BIOS. What could possibly cause that. Is the mobo on the way out, a bit flaky.

I started having some stability issues a while back as I indicated in my first post and I never quite got to the bottom of that. I thought it could be memory as I had a lot of problems getting the timings etc right for this build about a year and a half ago. I did eventually find stable memory timings etc but it was some task.

Should I load optmized defaults now or has that kind of already been done as part of the recovery process.

I do have some stability problem that I need to track down but having your BIOS wiped and not being able to recover is pretty catastrophic. Is there a way to avoid that problem? Is the BIOS image supposed to be written to the hard drive by default? Why didn't the backup BIOS just kick in straight away when it couldn't find a BIOS on the hard drive. It did eventually, for no apparrent reason, pot luck I guess.

So what's the best way to get around this problem if it happen's again. I also have a machine with EX38-DS4 mobo and that machine is much more critical.

LSD, thanks for joining in with this thread. I think I know about the fix that you said you would PM to me, I came across it during my research. Is it the one entitled "I unbricked it". Would you mind sending it to me anyway, just for future reference.

I'm going to be very hesitant to do anything with this machine from now on, including updating the BIOS. Then again, maybe the mobo really is on the way out and there's not much I can do about that I guess.

[Lsdmeasap]

Re: Scanning BIOS Image in hard drive ....... EP45-UDP3

So wait, you got it recovered now from the backup on the hard drive finally? If so GREAT to hear!!

This can be caused by power outages, or incorrect BIOS settings for your hardware, and of course bad flashes or anything along those lines.

I would go ahead and load optimized, and then update your BIOS via Qflash to the latest if you are not using it already. Then dial in your needed settings again before getting into windows, don't forget your SATA/Disk settings.

There is a BIOS setting to enable/disable writing an image to the hard drive, you can disable it if you want it's in integrated peripherals BIOS page. But it will always look there first, and since you apparently had it enabled once before it will always see that images unless you low level format your hard drive to get it off there. When there isn't an image on the hard drive it will quickly skip that and try the CD drive, then use the backup BIOS if no BIOS is found on those two places first.


Yes, unbricked it would be one of the suggested methods, but I would have been giving you other similar suggestions involving a different/similar fix that is much quicker/for sure. Ya, I'll send you the info in a PM, give me a sec.

It could have just been caused by unstable BIOS settings, are you 100% sure your settings were stable and tested stable?

[dclayw]

Re: Scanning BIOS Image in hard drive ....... EP45-UDP3

Yes it's recovered, but from the backup BIOS I believe. I had the drive disconnected at the time it recovered.

Don't know why all of a sudden it recovered, it wouldn't do it before. I did clear the CMOS earlier on but it wouldn't recover after I did that either. Just left the machine for an hour or two, turned it on and it recovered.

Not going to upgrade BIOS, unless you think it is absolutely essential. Not game to on this machine.

I cannot find that setting you refer to, the one that enables/disables writing an image to the hard drive. It is not in Integrated Peripherals and can't find it anywhere else either. Maybe it's in a later BIOS. I'm running F6.

I just want a procedure in place to handle this if it happens again as the board doesn't seem to do what it is supposed to do, or it is very flaky in the least in doing it. It's fair enough to look for a BIOS image on the hard drive but if it doesn't find one then provide an option to look somewhere else. Do later BIOS's provide such option?

I'm happy to write it to the hard drive but don't know how to make it do that (can't find the option). The fact that it didn't recover from the hard drive indicates there was no BIOS image there. Fallback procedure is to use motherboard CD (doesn't always work from what I've read), and as a last resort the unbrick it procedure (doesn't always work either).

Then there is the question as to why the BIOS got corrupted or wiped, very bad. I did have memory problems when I built this machine May 2009. Took me a long time to get stable memory timings but once I got that, yes it was stable as shown by prime95, memtest and intelburntest. Machine ran fine for well over 12 months and it gets hammered, lot's of intense gaming. Only in the last couple of months windows started hanging (both XP Pro and now Windows 7), not BSOD, just hang. Have not got to the bottom of that problem yet.

[Lsdmeasap]

Re: Scanning BIOS Image in hard drive ....... EP45-UDP3

Cool, well no matter how it was fixed it's great to see you got it going!

I do suggest the latest BIOS if you are not using it already, and since it recovered it may have recovered a very old version. Update to the latest BIOS and you should see the setting, I think it's added to X38 by now anyway.

All the recovery options follow the same procedure, HDD, then CD, then backup BIOS chip, and no there isn't anyway to adjust this other than to not make a HDD backup via the setting I mentioned. It just does not always work as easy as it should.

Unbrick 4+7 works every time, the other one does not.

If your system started hanging it could be failing memory or OS driver issues, have you tested your memory lately? Might just need some minor adjustments.

[yuu]

Re: Scanning BIOS Image in hard drive ....... EP45-UDP3

It happend to my Ep45 too, it didn't even bother if hdd image is not seen, switching to next source. After unplugging the HDD it had no reason to look for image on HDD and the backup bios restore was initiated. It happened because I set some insane low 1.75 voltage at 1000Mhz DDR2 combined with something else, instant bios corruption. Funny thing is it had no problem running stable at 1.75 in windows lowered by easy tune, so i must have lowered PLL, VTT to 1.1V too in bios and tried to boot. I believe that voltage too low could cause the same thing as too high, some VTT/PLL/DRAM/MCH combinations just don't run well together. just like if MCH is 1.14 and Dram 1.94 it results DIMM fine delay of 10-0-10-0, and 1.14 1.96 does 9-6-10-0, and so on, 1.16 goes with 1.96 well together as 10-0-10-0 is set. If PLL is lowered to 1.15 and VTT to 1.15 while 500 FSB, then again 9-6-10-0, despite being stable it eventually fails the tests after 100-200 iterations or who knows.

I believe fine DIMM delay (as seen by everest:chipset) could be considered some sort of health indicator for memory stability.

[profJim]

Re: Scanning BIOS Image in hard drive ....... EP45-UDP3

From the EP45-UD3P (rev 1.0) user manual:
Page 49, Advanced BIOS Features:
Dual BIOS Recovery Source ------ [HPA] --> near the bottom of the screen after Full Screen Logo Show

Page 51 description says that HPA is the default setting.
I don't think that [CTRL + F1] needs to be pressed from the main bios screen to see this option.

[dclayw]

Re: Scanning BIOS Image in hard drive ....... EP45-UDP3

OK, thanks for everyone's input.

Just to round this one off. I upgraded to latest BIOS, F10, (my board is rev 1.1 btw). I can now see that option that enables/disables writing of BIOS image to the harddrive. I enabled it.

I assume there was no image written there before as recovery procedure did not pick one up. Maybe the "Dual BIOS Recovery Source" option that profJim referred was still at it's default value of HPA but as there was no image there then it would not recover, (even when disconnecting the hard drive). It did eventually recover (from the backup BIOS) after swapping memory modules, clearing CMOS, many reboots, and just leaving it a lone for a couple of hours.

With this new F10 BIOS I'm hoping it will automatically look for a backup BIOS in the other location if it can't find one in the default location (as specified by "Dual BIOS Recovery Source" option.

[profJim]

Re: Scanning BIOS Image in hard drive ....... EP45-UDP3

Thanks for the update.
Glad to hear that everything is now OK.