Gigabyte 8IHXP loses raid after bios update. HELP!!

[LotusNotesGuy]

A system bios flashed to the f8 version recently posted by Giga, and now while it detects the 2 hard drives it does not boot.
The raid configuration is obvioulsy lost. It was not configured for mirroring but simply performance and total capacity equaled the 2 drives space added up.

NO WHERE in any documentation, manuals, or on Giga's site did it say there were changes to the raid parts of the bios when versions are updated. The drivers have been updated for the different oper systems but thats all I find so far.

I have read on ABIT's motherboards their bioses were such that a change could lose the raid. What I find more distressing is the bios flash over wrote the extra backup bios on the system too without asking me. Not very smart, since a flash update is the most likely time a bio corruption happens and you need the old version.

Anyone have any thoughts? I am thinking the bios version was older than these 2 versions on the web site.

Its version 2.1 of the motherboard and have reflashed to all earlier versions without success, the system boots but ctrl-f never brings up the raid configuraton screen and other than finding the drives on post it just sits there even though it is set to boot to raid

 

[LotusNotesGuy]

Does anyone out there have a first run Gigaybte 8IHXP? If so , when the machine boots, there is an option in the bios (F8 along the bottom after the bios screen loads up I think it is) to save the current bios off to a floppy, to email me a copy.

My machine is dead in the water without it.

I searched gigabytes sites last night and reflashed the bios to every old version they had listed and while the machine posts, finds the hard drive and all that it won't boot windows from the raid.

I can't get the raid utility screen to come up no matter how many times I hold CTRL-F down which it should.

I think gigabyte may have posted the wrong bioses on their site.

I did run the windows setup from the pc, and it seemed to install into a different partition name I gave it just fine on the raid , after I pressed F6 during the windows 2000 setup to let it load up the promise drivers but the cd install routine was done, the pc would still not boot from the raid.

HELP!

 

[rgf]

If you are trying to setup raid with a dead bios it won't work. You will have to put a single hard drive on the 0 ide chanle and load windows and reboot. Hopefully, you will be able to get windows to load. If that doesn't work, boot to dos with a win98 bootdisk and reflash your bios. If that works, change your settings in your bios to boot from your cd-rom drive and load windows from winxp cd, do the F6 and load your raid driver.

I really hope that you can get into your raid setup utility before you actually load windows. If you don't see it on boot up, its either dead or not turned on in your main bios. What happeded anyway? Your backup bios should have kicked in. If you have total dual bios failure, your might try replacing your on board battery and/or bios chip.

What ever you do, do not overclock this board rev2.1.... It really doesn't like it.

P.S. I sent you Bios F8 from gigabyte's website. It works. If you have access to another computer just run it/expand it to a floppy, boot to dos with a win98 boot disk, use your flash utility, and load the new bios.

RF37

 

[LotusNotesGuy]

I got your email, I had downloaded the bios from the Tawain site a little while before you sent me yours and it seemed to work, that and remembering to change the setting from ATA to Raid, since it resets to default of ATA.

It came back, as to what happened I am not sure. My best guess Gigabyte mixed up the 3.1 and 2.1 bios posts or for some reason until I flashed it repeatedly the raid was not working .

It is weird. I wondered about the backup bios myself, I have a sneaking suspicion that Gigabyte is doing something VERY unwise and that is flashing the backup bios as well.

I find this very disturbing since the most likely time any bios problem occurs it 95% during flashing it.

Thanks for the email, by the way, I posted in several places and you were the only kind soul who responded.

 

[rhawk79]

it flashes the backup bios ONLY if the flash to the primary bios was successfull. Based on that, I would think that flashing both of them is a good idea.

also, correct me if i'm wrong, but wasn't the F8 bios only meant for revision 3.0+??

 

[LotusNotesGuy]

The gigabyte page lists the F8 bios for version 2.1 here, so you are probably incorrect.

F8 bios for version 2.1 motherboard


As for the flash being successful, the only real way you really know that, isnt until you reboot the pc and it works. Those flash utilities have alot of problems over the years ,most bios issues are of course when you update the bios and it doesn't take for some reason , or if they put out a bad version or a version that doesn't work with something you have, or in this case post similar but different bioses on the wrong pages with the wrong labels.

And of course, in classic Gigabyte fashion, as I have read on over a half-dozen web sites, the never responded to any of my THREE emails to tech support last week.