Gigabyte EP45 UD3R, only partially POSTs, reboots, can't get into BIOS

[Muse]

Gigabyte EP45 UD3R (3 PCI) Motherboard
Q8200 (2.33Ghz 45nm Core2Quad), copper core stock heatsink/fan
PNY 9600 GSO dual DVI PCI-e GPU
2x2GB GSkill blue DDR2-667 RAM
EVGA SuperNOVA 550 G2 550W 80 Plus Gold Modular Power Supply
MIT MyHD-130 HDTV PCI + daughterboard
Hercules Game Theater XP (GTXP) PCI sound card + breakout box
120GB IDE HDD for OS/Apps
Western Digital 2TB Red 5400 SATA III HDD for secondary storage
Midtower case
2x 120mm fans

System was working. Running XP in HDTV system, no browsing, no
email, just HDTV. One major issue, though -- Would not come out of S3
suspend. Biggie, because scheduled recordings work in tandem with
suspend/resume. I don't want to leave the system on all the time.

These Gigabyte boards are famous for S3 suspend issues. Some have
overcome them by increasing the DRAM voltage from 1.8v to up to 2.1v. I
tried that, it didn't change anything as far as I can tell. So, I reverted to fail
safe defaults (1.8v, etc.). This was 4 days ago. The machine pretty much immediately wouldn't
boot but went into a boot loop. It would seem to POST but before
loading Windows it would simply reboot. It did this quite a few times
and to my surprise it snapped out of it and booted to Windows. I
computed seemingly normally for a few hours, and the
system locked up (this used to happen to me when I ran this TV card in
my previous build). I restarted and ever since the machine partially
boots, gets to this screen (and then reboots):

Memory <4GB> OK.

I cleared CMOS and now the machine goes to the Gigabyte splash screen
and either hangs there or reboots after ~10 seconds or whatever.

I can't get into the BIOS no matter what.

I tried using either of the two 2GB sticks singly and in different of
the 4 memory slots. This didn't change anything.

Suggestions/thoughts?

 

[UsandThem]

Suggestions/thoughts?

Sounds like the motherboard went to that great recycle facility in the sky; A.K.A. it bit the dust.

 

[VirtualLarry]

Well, you did run the RAM @ 2.1V, which might have been a bit hard on it. I would, at the least, try another stick of RAM in it, if you've got one.

Edit: Also, try removing all of the cards, and all of the SATA and USB devices, and try to POST.
(If your cards are old, one of them may be going bad, perhaps due to a failing cap or something.)

I thought of something else.

If the backup BIOS cannot be flashed, and it flashes itself over the main BIOS, in the event the main BIOS is corrupted, then maybe the backup BIOS is old enough that it doesn't support 45nm CPUs?

Although, that's probably a stretch, for a new-ish P45 board. I think that the box specifically called out support for 45nm CPUs.

Have you tried connecting ONLY a DVD drive, or plugging in a flash drive, with a bootable Linux distro?

I mean, to me, it sounds like the BIOS bootloader is punting. Maybe a PCI diagnostic POST card would help here? Check out if FastTech carries them.

With your PS/2 keyboard, directly connected, when it's displaying the POST logo, can you hit the Caps-lock, Scr-lock, or Num-lock key(s), and see the indicator LEDs change? If you can, and they do, that means that the BIOS runtime is processing keyboard interrupts, and interpreting keystrokes.

If it is, that's a good sign. OTOH, if it isn't, that may mean that the LPC-IO controller is bad, or your +5V or +5Vsb line on your PSU is bad.

You should see all three indicator lights on your keyboard come on at power-on, then go off, then a little while later, Num-lock will come on if you've set the BIOS to enable Num-lock enabled at boot.

Also, try holding down Ins at power-on, to reset the BIOS. (Think that works on AMIBIOS.)

 

[VirtualLarry]

BTW, the mobo may have +5V/+5Vsb or "PS/2 Power" and "USB Power" jumpers on the board. By default, I believe that they are set to +5Vsb. If the keyboard LEDs do NOT flash at power-on, then the keyboard PS/2 port may not be initializing.

You can try pulling the power cord, then changing those jumpers to the opposite position (+5V). This will switch the source of PS/2 and USB power to +5V. If that then allows the keyboard LEDs to flash, and then hopefully the BIOS will respond to the DEL key, then that indicates that the +5Vsb line on your PSU is going bad, and that you should replace the PSU.

The downside of setting them to +5V, is that they will NOT be powered in sleep/standby modes, and thus, cannot be used to wake the PC. The ATX power button will have to be used.

 

[vailr]

Gigabyte dual bios:
Alt-F10: flash backup bios with main
Ctl-F10: switch to backup bios
Note: works with older dual-bios boards, but AFAIK: not with latest Skylake/Kabylake boards.

 

[VirtualLarry]

Thanks, good to know, vailr.

Anyways, looks like my DeskMini is NOT "toast" due to static after all. Just some flakiness.

https://forums.anandtech.com/thread...ially-suceptable-to-static-discharge.2500067/

Hopefully, you can get your issue resolved, Muse.

Maybe you can try those backup BIOS hotkeys. See if the keyboard LEDs are responding first, though. Because if they aren't, that would explain why the hotkey isn't working to access the BIOS, and might indicate that your PSU needs to be replaced.

 

[vailr]

@ Muse:
Is the memory being used on the official "approved" list for that board?
There should be a method of clearing the CMOS, such as shorting 2 pins (while power is disconnected).
Otherwise, remove the board's button battery, then press the system power-on button (while the PSU's rocker switch is in off position).
Leave the button battery out for 5 or 10 minutes, then replace & re-attempt booting back into the bios setup. I'd suggest staying at (or lower than) 2.00 volts for the memory.

 

[Muse]

Well, you did run the RAM @ 2.1V, which might have been a bit hard on it. I would, at the least, try another stick of RAM in it, if you've got one.

Edit: Also, try removing all of the cards, and all of the SATA and USB devices, and try to POST.
(If your cards are old, one of them may be going bad, perhaps due to a failing cap or something.)

I thought of something else.

If the backup BIOS cannot be flashed, and it flashes itself over the main BIOS, in the event the main BIOS is corrupted, then maybe the backup BIOS is old enough that it doesn't support 45nm CPUs?

Although, that's probably a stretch, for a new-ish P45 board. I think that the box specifically called out support for 45nm CPUs.

Have you tried connecting ONLY a DVD drive, or plugging in a flash drive, with a bootable Linux distro?

I mean, to me, it sounds like the BIOS bootloader is punting. Maybe a PCI diagnostic POST card would help here? Check out if FastTech carries them.

With your PS/2 keyboard, directly connected, when it's displaying the POST logo, can you hit the Caps-lock, Scr-lock, or Num-lock key(s), and see the indicator LEDs change? If you can, and they do, that means that the BIOS runtime is processing keyboard interrupts, and interpreting keystrokes.

If it is, that's a good sign. OTOH, if it isn't, that may mean that the LPC-IO controller is bad, or your +5V or +5Vsb line on your PSU is bad.

You should see all three indicator lights on your keyboard come on at power-on, then go off, then a little while later, Num-lock will come on if you've set the BIOS to enable Num-lock enabled at boot.

Also, try holding down Ins at power-on, to reset the BIOS. (Think that works on AMIBIOS.)

I'm going to try some of this stuff tomorrow morning (Sunday).

The keyboard I have connected by PS/2 to the Gigabyte EP45-UDR3 doesn't have any LEDs! It's ancient. I mean, probably from the last century! I liked it then because I liked the touch. It's heavy as hell and really big. I tried it out a month or so ago on a system and it worked.

I could disconnect the keyboard I have that's connected to the KVM switch and plug that directly into the PS/2 receptacle on the EP45 mobo, can do that tomorrow. That keyboard (a Microsoft curvy ergonomic) has LEDs. I'll try disconnecting all the cards, too. If I can't get the EP45 mobo working I may resort to using my 2nd midtower, which I discuss below. It seems to work OK most of the time but today I had 3 crashes out of nowhere. The machine just spontaneously rebooted. It didn't used to do that so maybe it has something to do with the attached Rosewill case and 2TB WD Red HD. So, I disconnected that tonight and put a 160GB IDE drive in there and will see how the machine behaves tomorrow. The thing about this machine is it lacks any kind of SATA controller! I figure I can maybe add a PCI SATA card, I don't know how that would work out, what the issues are. Here's what I did today with the 2nd system...

Today, I did some HDTV work. I did it with my 2nd midtower, which runs Windows 2000 Pro SP4 and has these specs:

MSI KT3 Ultra2 mainboard
AMD Athlon XP 1700+ CPU
BFG geforce 6600 GT OC AGP video card (actually, I don't know if this is the video card, whatever it is it is AGP and not dual DVI).
MyHD 120 HDTV card + DVI outputting daughterboard
Santa Cruz sound card (PCI)
IDE optical drive
floppy drive
I think 3 IDE HDs right now.
A cheap but good 350W PSU

This morning it had only 1/2 GB DRAM (two 256MB 184pin sticks). I swapped them for the three 1GB stocks that were on the motherboard that died 2-3 months ago, so it's running 3GB now.

This system is actually evidently doing S3 standby and resume and can evidently make scheduled recordings of HDTV and go back to sleep when the recordings are done, wake when the next recording is scheduled, etc. However, if I can't solve the random spontaneous reboots I will have to go to plan C (assuming I can't get the EP45 mobo etc. working). Plan C would be another mobo, I suppose. Maybe another 775 system so I can reuse the CPU and RAM

BTW, I don't have another stick of RAM I can try in the EP45 system. I suppose I can get one somewhere. I suppose even a 1GB stick would be adequate to see if the board will POST, etc. with different RAM.

 

[Muse]

@ Muse:
Is the memory being used on the official "approved" list for that board?
There should be a method of clearing the CMOS, such as shorting 2 pins (while power is disconnected).
Otherwise, remove the board's button battery, then press the system power-on button (while the PSU's rocker switch is in off position).
Leave the button battery out for 5 or 10 minutes, then replace & re-attempt booting back into the bios setup. I'd suggest staying at (or lower than) 2.00 volts for the memory.

Well, the memory was working. I don't know if the specific brand is approved. It's at the low end of the specs at 667mhz.

I did clear the CMOS the other day... twice. After the 2nd time, which was with a jumper (first time a screw driver blade... not a reliable method, obviously) followed by removal of the battery for ~2 hours.

The memory is set at 1.8v right now, the fail safe default.

 

[Muse]

Hmm, I'm running Memtest+ on the 3GB of RAM I have in the MSI KT3 Ultra2 system, figuring that bad RAM could be involved in the 3 spontaneous reboots I had today. I don't think I've ever seen errors when testing RAM with Memtest, but I have 2 errors showing up in the first pass ( 0 ). How do I determine which stick it is? Do I have to test each separately?

Edit: Actually, I got one of those 3 spontaneous reboots today before I swapped out the two 256MB sticks for the three 1GB sticks, so maybe something other than bad RAM is involved there.

 

[VirtualLarry]

The keyboard I have connected by PS/2 to the Gigabyte EP45-UDR3 doesn't have any LEDs!

That's... kind of weird. Are you sure about that? Indicator LEDs are part of the PS/2 keyboard spec.

Edit: Here's a curiosity - did the issue start when you connected that PS/2 keyboard, by any chance?

Just wondering if maybe it draws too much power.

 

[Muse]

That's... kind of weird. Are you sure about that? Indicator LEDs are part of the PS/2 keyboard spec.

Edit: Here's a curiosity - did the issue start when you connected that PS/2 keyboard, by any chance?

Just wondering if maybe it draws too much power.

Edit:

Looking now I see that the keyboard does have 3 LEDs, Caps lock, Scroll lock and Num lock. I'm going to get back to dealing with the EP45 system this morning...
- - - -
By "the issue" I assume you mean the partial boot loop. No, I only attached the PS/2 keyboard in an effort to solve the_problem. The_problem hasn't changed one iota since almost 1 week (it will be one week tonight). Here's what I see maybe 4 seconds after the boot process starts:
- - - -
overclockedeForce 960 GSO PCIe 2.0
Version 62.92.45.00.53
Copyright (C) 1996-2000 NVIDIA Corp.
768 MB RAM

_
- - - -

It sits at that screen I'm guessing 3-4 seconds, and goes to the splash screen and sits there until I restart the machine with the reset button or shut it off. Function keys do nothing at that splash screen

Earlier (last weekend) it got further in the boot process, and the last thing I would see on the screen was something like:

MEMORY TESTING <4GB> OK

Then it would reboot... each time. The difference seems to be that I cleared CMOS. After that, it has gone to the splash screen every time and sat there apparently dead to anything but reset or system-off.

 

[Muse]

So, I'm right now involved to trying to get SYSTEM_2 working, my backup system, which spontaneously rebooted 3 times yesterday while I'm watching an in-process recording (time shift) of HDTV. The Memtest+ screen after having run overnight shows 2 errors in each of 2 passes. For some reason I can't make out the header of the first column. Is there a way to tell which module is throwing the error or do I need to test each stick individually? I thought I'd tested that RAM around a year ago when I bought a 3rd stick for my system that died over the summer. That stick matched the other two 1GB Crucial sticks that were in the system. I'm sure (SURE) I tested all three sticks together with Memtest+ and there were no errors, but that was ~1 year ago.

I'm going to get on the EP45 system problem this morning, try some things.
- - - -
Edit: Doing some searching I see that the Memtest error situation is going to take a while to sort out. The MSI mobo has 3 memory slots. To really sort out the problem I'll have to test each stick individually in each slot for something like 8 passes. That will be for next week. Since those three 1GB sticks tested good last year I figure there's a good chance that the problem is with a slot on the mobo, not any of the sticks.

 

[vailr]

Note: the PS/2 port can get messed up if a keyboard or mouse is plugged in while system power is switched on.
Plug or unplug while system power is switched off.

 

[VirtualLarry]

Still curious, if you can hit CAPS LOCK, SCRL LOCK, or NUM LOCK keys, and see the indicator lights toggle, at any time during the POST on the EP45 board.

 

[Muse]

Also, try holding down Ins at power-on, to reset the BIOS. (Think that works on AMIBIOS.)

The above snipped from a very good post, lots of ideas and I may have to revisit and apply something from it... however, this mobo has an Award BIOS not an AMI Bios.

 

[Muse]

Note: the PS/2 port can get messed up if a keyboard or mouse is plugged in while system power is switched on.
Plug or unplug while system power is switched off.

Absolutely, I did not hot swap any keyboards while troubleshooting this problem. The only thing I have been hot swapping at times is the DVI video out from my HDTV card's daughterboard on either of my midtowers. That can go to either my desktop monitor or my projector with the computer on, Windows never seems to notice.

 

[Muse]

Still curious, if you can hit CAPS LOCK, SCRL LOCK, or NUM LOCK keys, and see the indicator lights toggle, at any time during the POST on the EP45 board.

Well, I've put that old OmniKey Ultra keyboard aside, at least one of the keys is all but dead. I have the KVM on it now. I can try those things with the KVM keyboard, I honestly think it works just as if there were no switch in there at all as long as it's toggled to the system in use.

The board appears to be posting normally now, all is optimized defaults. AFAIK everything's fine except for the fact that the mobo has never once recovered from being suspended.

 

[VirtualLarry]

The board appears to be posting normally now, all is optimized defaults. AFAIK everything's fine except for the fact that the mobo has never once recovered from being suspended.

So, "boot loop" fixed? How did you fix it? Did taking out your older cards have anything to do with it, you think?

Edit: Still think that you're barking up the wrong tree, trying to get power management to work properly in XP...

 

[Muse]

So, "boot loop" fixed? How did you fix it? Did taking out your older cards have anything to do with it, you think?

Edit: Still think that you're barking up the wrong tree, trying to get power management to work properly in XP...

Well, I tried to explain as well as I could what happened this morning when I returned to the system after a 1+ delay (I often do better with difficult problems if I let them fallow for a spell). As I said, before removing any cards or changing ANYTHING, I decided to just reconnect the power cord and press the power button... i.e. no changes at all but just make sure the problem was still as constant and intractable as it was. Surprise, it wasn't! I got a very different experience, the blue screen with considerable information about failed boots, some options and a counting down timer that when I saw it was at (I think) 12 seconds and counting before the machine would do something, I didn't know what. What amazed me was that it was gong into suspend!!! A moment after that it booted, yes, actually posted and I went into the BIOS and set to Optimized Defaults and the machine's behaving AFAIK as it was before last week. The problem began 7 days ago on Sunday night, and it's now Sunday night.

Power management in XP? Well, my previous mobo, a Gigabyte GA-K8n Pro never had any problems going into and out of S3 sleep, so I expected the same from this Gigabyte mobo. My internet searching has revealed that there are owners of this mobo that have never had a problem with S3 sleep with it, so I'm holding out hope that there's a solution. If it exists, of course, I may or may not find it!

 

[Muse]

System acting whack again. I attached my new Toshiba Canvio portable 3TB HD to USB hub, turned on system and it started the reboot loop again. Detached the USB HD, the loops continued. Hit DEL, it kept looping a couple times, next time the screen says Prepare to Enter Setup and just sits there interminably.

Edit: Then I hit Reset and now it's just doing the boot loop I described initially. The DEL key causes no response.