GIGABYTE GA-Z68XP-UD4 not shutting off completely when powering down, and BIOS loop.

[panda419]

Hi all,

I have this very annoying problem with my GA-Z68XP-UD4 it does this 95% of the time. When I shutdown in Windows 7 Pro 64bit the board does not shutdown completely. My case power LED will stay on, the CPU and case fans are running, the LEDs on the board is on, but my video card's fan is off and no signal is going to the monitor. The mouse and keyboards are off. The only way to shutdown completely from this state is to unplug the computer. Holding down the power button does nothing, reset does nothing. I don't think it is a software error since eventlog does not show any errors during shutdown.

The other problem i have with this is BIOS loop, when I boot up the computer it display the bios logo and it will reboot, and I get a blank screen after the 2nd reboot. To get around this I have to unplug the power, once again holding down the power button and reset button does not work. But the BIOS loop only happens 10% of the time, but still annoying, i've been using Gigabyte boards since 2000 and this is the 1st board that i have issues with.

here are my hardware specs

i7 2600k
GA-Z68XP-UD4 BIOS version F4 (this also happens on F3)
Corsair Vengeance (2x4GB) DDR3 1600
Corsair Professional Series HX750 750W
EVGA Superclocked GeForce GTX 570
WD Caviar Black 2 TB

I've spoken to Gigabyte tech and they blame it on software. This was a clean install and not a port from something else.

Any inputs would be helpful. Thanks.

[wazza300]

Re: GIGABYTE GA-Z68XP-UD4 not shutting off completely when powering down, and BIOS lo

have you tried latest beta bios's if there are any? and where are you shutting down from? the power switch or from within windows? its best to always shut down from windows

tried f5 bios??

http://download.gigabyte.eu/FileList/BIOS/mb_bios_ga-z68xp-ud4_f5.exe

[panda419]

Re: GIGABYTE GA-Z68XP-UD4 not shutting off completely when powering down, and BIOS lo

Thanks wazza300,

I'll try the F5 BIOS when I get home from work tonight. I use the windows shutdown command to shutdown my machine every time.

[wazza300]

Re: GIGABYTE GA-Z68XP-UD4 not shutting off completely when powering down, and BIOS lo

remember to load optimized defaults after flashing,then enter your bios settings

[panda419]

Re: GIGABYTE GA-Z68XP-UD4 not shutting off completely when powering down, and BIOS lo

got it. I'll report back if it still does the same thing. I may even put in a new HD and a clean version of windows just to see if the problem goes away.

[wazza300]

Re: GIGABYTE GA-Z68XP-UD4 not shutting off completely when powering down, and BIOS lo

seemslike a bios isue to me,it takes a while for them to catch up and fix the issues,i remember i had the same thing with sleep resume ect when my mb first came out

[Hyper530]

Re: GIGABYTE GA-Z68XP-UD4 not shutting off completely when powering down, and BIOS lo

I assume that you can try to run the Windows live update to make sure all the hotfix patches are installed, and update to final version of BIOS (you can downloaded it from GIGABYTE website)

[panda419]

Re: GIGABYTE GA-Z68XP-UD4 not shutting off completely when powering down, and BIOS lo

As of today all software and firmware are up to date, and it is still happening, not powering down completely after a shutdown. I'm still skeptical about Gigabyte tech telling me this is a software issue. This weekend i'm going to put in another HD, format it and do a clean install; OS, drivers, and updates only and do some testing and find out once and for all if Gigabyte techs are just lazy and pointing fingers, or i have a bad board :(

And i forgot to mention my brother has the same setup as I do but with a GTX460 and his board shutdown correctly. Not to mention he has more software loaded than my machine.

[wazza300]

Re: GIGABYTE GA-Z68XP-UD4 not shutting off completely when powering down, and BIOS lo

can you give a list of your components? your using onboard gpu? could be igpu related if your bro's pc shuts down fine but with an add in gpu

[panda419]

Re: GIGABYTE GA-Z68XP-UD4 not shutting off completely when powering down, and BIOS lo

wazza300,

I'm using a EVGA superclocked GTX 570 while my brother is using a EVGA GTX 460. The rest of our components are the same.

In my BIOS I did not turn off the onboard video, I have it set to auto (use onboard if no other videocard is detected) and initiate PCIex16 slot 1st. My brother also has these settings set, in fact our settings are exactly the same.

[wazza300]

Re: GIGABYTE GA-Z68XP-UD4 not shutting off completely when powering down, and BIOS lo

isnt their something in the bios that says "instant off" when power button pressed? try with the igpu turned off or disabled if it has the option,seems strange that one board does it yet the other doesnt,you could try fully clearing the cmos by removing mb battery for 30mins or overnight,then put back in and load optimized defaults and re-enter your bios settings

[panda419]

Re: GIGABYTE GA-Z68XP-UD4 not shutting off completely when powering down, and BIOS lo

Been really busy these few days. The Soft-Off by PWR-BTTN in BIOS is set to Instant-Off (by default). I'll try playing with the other BIOS settings this weekend and report back.

[panda419]

Re: GIGABYTE GA-Z68XP-UD4 not shutting off completely when powering down, and BIOS lo

Just an update of what I did this weekend, I try disabling the on board video and the symptoms are still there. So I finally popped in a different HDD and installed a clean version of Windows and so far the problem is gone, but all I did was install the drivers and updated the OS no other software was installed, so far so good.

Now here is the kicker, i had to do some work so i swapped the old HDD back in and now the symptoms seems to only manifest about 30% this has me puzzling, I've turn off the machine 10 times and only 3 times where the machines did not shutdown. During this test I did not load any applications, I let the OS boot up. Wait for about 2-3 minutes after login, and I shutdown the computer.

I really like to find out what's going on, but this looks like something that would just take too much of my time. For now I can live with the 30% and will probably pick up a SSD in the near future.

Oh and one more thing, BIOS version F5 may have fixed the boot loop I was getting. It haven't reboot on me after the flash. Lets hope it stays that way.

And thanks for everyone that helped.

[wazza300]

Re: GIGABYTE GA-Z68XP-UD4 not shutting off completely when powering down, and BIOS lo

What make/model hdd's were they? If they support smart test with it enabled/disabled in the BIOS,some hdd's have firmware updates too,its worth testing,glad you found the cause though

[DarKSeeD]

Re: GIGABYTE GA-Z68XP-UD4 not shutting off completely when powering down, and BIOS lo

As I wrote on another thread you can check in Device Manager the hardware that has the option "Power management" and in that tab select "Allow the computer to turn off this device to save power". Usually network cards, USB, IEEE 1394...