Scanning bios image in hard drive ... sometimes?

[JTee]

Hi,

I have a problem with my computer that's baffling me.

When I turn the computer off and then turn it back on it says "Scanning bios image in hard drive", it then restarts, repeats - in a loop.

If I then hold the power button in to turn the computer off, leave it for 10 minutes and turn it back on again - it will boot successfully!

My motherboard is a Gigabyte GA-8S648FX Rev 1.0 (I think bios version f4)

What I've tried so far:

1) Remove CMOS battery for 10 minutes. Replace CMOS battery with brand new battery.
2) Reset bios to default settings
3) Replaced power supply
4) Used just 1 stick of known good working RAM
5) Disconnected everything apart from RAM & CPU.

Nothing has solved it so far.

I can't solve this mystery...any ideas what's going on? It strikes me as odd that I can boot after waiting 10 minutes, I'd of thought if the bios was corrupt it would never boot at all?

Perhaps it's capacitor related?

I'm wondering if I should I risk flashing the bios or not. If I do that, what's the recommended procedure...QFlash?

Any advice would be greatly appreciated - I'm ready to try out any procedures people advise, thanks so much in advance. :)

[JTee]

Re: Scanning bios image in hard drive ... sometimes?

I decided to flash the bios with a bootable floppy disk. It solved the issue.

Now the only problem is memtest always fails test 5 when I run 2 sticks on this board. Tried different sticks, different slots, same result everytime. Hmm.

All sticks pass when running on their own in memtest.