How do I change the RAM voltage in my Gigabyte EP45 UD3R mobo

[Muse]

My S3 suspend isn't working. The machine POSTs when it's supposed to resume. I've seen online that boosting the RAM voltage from 1.9v to 2.1v or even 2.0v is apt to solve this.

When I go into the BIOS the voltage settings are greyed out (not adjustable). I thought maybe installing Easy Tune 6 would give me the ability to adjust RAM and CPU voltages. I installed Easy Tune 6B but when I run it absolutely nothing happens.

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

How do I adjust the voltages?

 

[Muse]

I figured out getting Easy Tune 6 to show up. Goofy thing. There's an icon in the tray and you have to right click that and click Show.

Better yet I found where in the BIOS I can change the DRAM voltage, using Intelligent Tweaker. I set it to 2.0v and then 2.1v, but the system still POSTs instead of resuming.

 

[VirtualLarry]

Do you know how to access the "MIT" menu, in Gigabyte BIOSes? From the main BIOS menu screen, hit CTRL+F1, or maybe it's ALT+F1. But I think it's CTRL. That opens up the "MIT menu", which is where all of the advanced tweaking happens.

Btw, you takes your chances getting power-management to actually work, in XP. At least in Win7, it works, most of the time. The drivers for hardware are a lot newer, and much more likely to support "proper" power-management behavior.

 

[Muse]

I may order Win7 for this machine, indeed. Meantime, I'm living with the limitations. Have a lot of things to attend to now. No hurries on this.

 

[BonzaiDuck]

That's the board I had myself, which died eventually for being left in sleep mode for days at a time. It was my abuse or thoughtlessness -- not the board. I should've implemented hibernate, if it were possible, and I don't think I ever determined or tested it. But it was configured under Win 7.

 

[Muse]

That's the board I had myself, which died eventually for being left in sleep mode for days at a time. It was my abuse or thoughtlessness -- not the board. I should've implemented hibernate, if it were possible, and I don't think I ever determined or tested it. But it was configured under Win 7.

Hibernate will not work for me with this system. It's an HTPC/HDTV system. It's a rebuild of the XP system I used for many years using a MyHD HDTV card (+ DVI daughterboard), that got put to sleep and automatically woke up to make pre-arranged recordings and would go back to sleep if so configured. It would then reawake to make the next scheduled recording, and again, if so configured, go back to sleep. For that it worked great. But the mobo (also a Gigabyte, a Gigabyte GA-K8n Pro), died on me over the summer, a slow but sure process and finally it would not boot.

So, I have replaced that mobo with a Gigabyte EP45 UD3R (3 PCI) Motherboard (the PCI slots are crucial, because the MyHD card is PCI). Unfortunately, the Gigabyte EP45 UD3R has failed to come out of S3 suspend every single time it was supposed to. I've tried a few things including boosting the DRAM voltage from the fail-safe 1.8v level to 2.0 and 2.1, no luck. I set it back to fail-safe CMOS settings. Right now, however, I'm having an even worse problem -- The system will not even POST. It starts to POST and before I can even get it into the BIOS settings it starts again, ad infinitum. It happened yesterday for the first time, came out of it (actually made it to the Windows sign-on and I did some HDTV stuff. The system locked up (the old Gigabyte GA-K8n Pro used to do this, maybe every 15 hours of use while watching HDTV but this Gigabyte EP45 UD3Rsystem has only locked up one previous time), and since this 2nd lockup yesterday it won't POST, it goes into the loop (restart, partial POST, restart, etc.). After watching about 25 of those loops last night (tried removing power from the system, waiting a few minutes) I gave up and went to bed. Haven't tried this morning. I will try later when I have time, but I'm not optimistic. Maybe it's RAM (the last thing seen on the POST screen is that it's testing the RAM), but I tested the RAM with Memtest+ when I got it a couple months ago and it passed.

 

[VirtualLarry]

Don't know. Could have toasted the RAM with the over-voltage. If that's the RAM that I included with the board, that was only 1.8V RAM. I don't know if 2.1V would be too much for it.

Edit: BTW, your description of the problem isn't correct. It sounds like it won't finish POST. Not that it "won't POST". Because if it's showing the memory test part of POST, then it is POSTing. Just not finishing.

Anyways, if it's dying during the RAM test, and resetting, then you should probably use the "CLR CMOS" jumper, if you haven't already, and then possibly try another kit of RAM. (Maybe "CLR CMOS" as a preventative measure after swapping RAM. The BIOS auto-configures the RAM sub-timings on first boot after a CMOS clear, I think. Swapping RAM might confuse it, without clearing CMOS. You didn't do that, did you?)

Edit: I am slightly concerned, that you can't hit DEL to enter BIOS. Are you using a PS/2 or USB keyboard? And are you using a KVM switch or not?


Edit: Also, do you have any USB Mass Storage Devices plugged in, at boot time? On those boards, that would cause a restart (during POST), and a failure to boot into Windows.

 

[VirtualLarry]

You sure that it's punting in the middle of POST? It's not looking for a boot disk, and not finding one properly, because you reset the CMOS to defaults? I would try hard to get into the BIOS setup again, and make sure that the proper disk is the boot disk, and that the IDE/AHCI setting is appropriate for the installed OS.

Also, unplug any additional flash drives or USB external HDDs, it may be trying to boot off of those and punting back to POST.

It seems fairly unlikely that you killed your RAM with 2.1V, although that's still a very remote possibility.

 

[VirtualLarry]

Any luck? Or have you had issues accessing the forums? I saw your thread in one of the Forum Issues subs. Yeah, sometimes you get that Akamai SSL error, I've gotten it before. It's one specific mis-configured Akamai server, that's been like that for a few years.

 

[Muse]

Any luck? Or have you had issues accessing the forums? I saw your thread in one of the Forum Issues subs. Yeah, sometimes you get that Akamai SSL error, I've gotten it before. It's one specific mis-configured Akamai server, that's been like that for a few years.

Are you sure that's me you saw in that thread? Can you link me to that?

I haven't approached the EP45 machine for a few days, I've been involved with some other issues, etc. I'm going to try to tackle it now and will work off your suggestions in your last few posts in this thread. I figure to first see if I can boot. Like I said, I'd changed to fail safe defaults before this happened, so I'm wondering if the DRAM timings could be wrong. Wouldn't they have been set OK when setting to FS defaults?

I figure if the machine will not boot now, I'll clear CMOS (gotta look up how to do that in the manual, I suppose I have to short a couple of adjacent pins. There's no USB HD attached, I don't think there's a flash drive attached, but I have to check that. The boot order is the default: CDRom, HD1. The only bootable partition is on HD1, the other HD is a WD 2TB which isn't bootable.

When the machine is about to restart it says something like:

Memory Check OK

It sits there a few seconds (~10 seconds), the screen blanks and the machine acts like I'd just pressed the power button.

 

[Muse]

No storage is attached at USB ports. Machine behaves as a few days ago. It spontaneously reboots when it says:

Memory <memory size... i.e. 4GB> OK

It reboots at the point where it would go to Windows, actually, so the problem may have something to do with Windows. However, as you noted, it is concerning that I can't get into CMOS. Hitting the Del key has no effect. Yes, a KVM is connected, but that's never stopped me before from getting into a BIOS. I've hit the KVM toggle, so either way it does not get into the BIOS.

I'll look for the CMOS clear in the user guide and/or manual, clear CMOS and try to boot again. I don't have any settings I don't want to lose, I set it to fail safe defaults, after all. That's exactly where it should be now. And I'm 99% positive that the boot order is still CDRom, HD1. That's the way it remains after going to FS defaults, I checked.

As a test, I'll insert a bootable CD and try to boot from it, however I'm pretty sure nothing will change.

Edit: Yup, inserted Memtest+ CD and the machine ignored it completely as if it weren't there. There are threads out there in forums concerning EP45 boot loop problems and S3 issues that look like mine. I checked them a few days ago, that's what led me to try boosting the DRAM voltage, some other people found that this solved their problems. 2.1v was mentioned as doing it, even 1.9 or 2.0, which I tried before going to 2.1. However, I was able to go back to 1.8v before this boot loop problem developed. As I noted above (I believe), I was able to boot Windows and computer "normally" one time after the boot loop issue emerged over the weekend. However, when I rebooted after a Windows freeze (such as I've had many times with this machine when doing HDTV service), a boot loop issue emerged on the first boot and it hasn't gone away since. I'll look to clear CMOS now and see what happens.

 

[Muse]

Cleared CMOS after removing power. Used clean screw driver, tough to get jumper on. Plugged power cord back in and pressed power button. I get the splash screen (which I'd disabled before), which proves that CMOS was cleared. It sat at that for a few seconds, didn't respond to the DEL key and restarted, came to the splash screen again and there it sits... won't budge whatever keys I press (DEL, F9, F12). Stumped. Guess I'll hit some of those threads I saw...

I could turn off and move the two RAM boards to the alternate positions. That was one of the trouble shooting strategies tried in those threads. Seems a long shot, but absent buying more RAM, don't know what else to try. Could remove everything from the board and try to do a rudimentary POST. Don't know if that's a reasonable approach.

Edit: Hit reset, now it's in a partial POST loop... goes to the splash screen, stays there around 20 seconds and starts over. Key presses appear to have no effect whatsoever.

 

[Muse]

Trying one stick at a time in different slots, no help. This search comes up with a slew of threads of people getting in these reboot loops:

Google search on gigabyte ep45-udr3 boot loop

 

[VirtualLarry]

If you unplug all SATA devices, does it still boot-loop? Or does it sit there, and say "No Bootable devices found"?

Also, have you tried unplugged the keyboard from the KVM, and plugging it directly into one of the rear USB ports on the mobo?

Have you tried a PS/2 keyboard?

 

[Muse]

If you unplug all SATA devices, does it still boot-loop? Or does it sit there, and say "No Bootable devices found"?

Also, have you tried unplugged the keyboard from the KVM, and plugging it directly into one of the rear USB ports on the mobo?

Have you tried a PS/2 keyboard?

The 2TB SATA HD has been unplugged for a while, ever since I went to clear CMOS. The cables were in the way, there was no point in leaving it plugged in.

There's an SATA CD Rom, I'll unplug that now.

Earlier in the day I disconnected the KVM attached keyboard and have a PS/2 keyboard plugged into the keyboard jack on the mobo.

Actually, looking I see that the optical drive (SATA) was disconnected, at least the data cable. I just removed power to it, the behavior remains the same.

The info shown on the screen at the beginning of the reboot process pertains to the video card only. Then it goes to the splash screen (none of the function keys do anything). It sits there 10-15 seconds and then it boots from scratch, ad infinitum until I shut down the machine by holding down the power button. Nothing I have tried has changed this pattern since Sunday. I cleared CMOS a 2nd time later this afternoon, this time with a jumper for 15 seconds and then I removed the battery for a couple of hours and reinserted it and reseated the video card (needed to remove it to remove the battery). Everything is as it was, boot loops.

 

[VirtualLarry]

Huh. That's not a good sign then, if you were using a PS/2 keyboard directly connected, and had all of your SATA and USB Mass Storage devices disconnected.

Maybe the BIOS is corrupted then. Could try to do a BIOS recovery, it might be looking for a BIOS file on a USB or floppy. I would do some deep research on the manual online, and see how to go about that.

http://download.gigabyte.us/FileList/Manual/motherboard_manual_ga-ep45-ud3(r)_e.pdf

<End>: Q-FLASH
Press the <End> key to access the Q-Flash utility directly without having to enter BIOS Setup first.

Edit: Page 74 shows the BIOS update stuff.

Part of it talks about Q-Flash, and the BIOS stored on an IDE/SATA HDD, and then part of it talks about it being on a floppy. Neither place talks about the BIOS being flashable from a USB stick, like a modern mobo. Sadly.

It does say that the board has DualBIOS, and that if the main BIOS is corrupted, it will boot the backup BIOS, and automatically copy the backup BIOS over the main BIOS, and that you cannot update the backup BIOS. (Apparently, it's a failsafe.)

I wonder if the reboot being triggered, has something to do with this?

 

[BonzaiDuck]

Actually, I think I had two of those EP45-UD3R's. The first one died at first power-up to a new but defective PSU. I think the PSU was a BFG 550W. I have one of their Logo-T-shirts. That was confirmed: dead.

The second one died a slow death for remaining in sleep for many days between any hands-on activity.

I won't recommend what I'm thinking I would do with your EP45. Larry offered much. It depends on what it's worth to you in time and trouble versus retiring the board and replacing it. That's almost a whole other topic. But -- DDR2? C2D/2Q? My best of luck to you.

 

[Muse]

THINGS HAVE CHANGED.... !!!

OK, having trouble reading the posts you guys have made since I posted earlier this morning. I'm on a laptop adjacent to the problem midtower (well, both of my midtowers have problems now, but I mean the one that hasn't been booting, the Gigabyte EP45 system).

So, I figure to try some things, disconnect all cards except the video card (I need that one, right?), and the SATA burner (if connected), etc.

However, since I hadn't done anything with the box for a couple of days I figured I'd first just reconnect power cord and press the power button and see what happens.

Dang thing blows my mind! A Blue Screen comes up saying something about boot failures, it's counting down from 20 seconds or so to an automatic action so I only had a few seconds to look at it. Said something are reverting BIOS I think. I had no chance to do anything. The keyboard was on the ground. That screen disappeared and the machine booted to Windows!!!

Well, what to do now? I think it actually went into suspend from the Blue Screen (the classic going into suspend screen) and booted into Windows.

Where things stand now, I don't comprehend. I think I can shut down the machine, restart and go into the BIOS. I can set it to optimized defaults, (is that the same as fail safe defaults? That's where I think it already is).

I'm going to read you guys' posts now, but THINGS HAVE CHANGED!

PS I had a tough time getting into Windows because that really old PS/2 keyboard that's now attached to the mobo has a bad key and I needed that key to type in my password. After many many tries the key finally worked. I'm going to have to remove that keyboard and attach the one on the KVM. The KVM AFAIK hasn't been a problem except for one thing -- for some reason the mouse portion of the KVM hasn't been working, I think ever since I rebuilt the system with the EP45 mobo. My workaround has been to use a USB cordless mouse.

 

[Muse]

I think the backup BIOS may have been restored. Don't know what happened there when that Blue Screen came up with info I've never seen before about Failed Boot stuff. It went away. I would have taken a picture of it if I'd had time.

 

[Muse]

I rebooted this laptop, dang thing had so much lag in the browser, it was driving me bonkers. It's OK now.

Well, what I figure I'll do right now:

Shut down the EP45, remove the whack really old OmniKey Ultra keyboard and reconnect the KVM, which has my MS curvy ergonomic PS/2 keyboard attached, hit the Scroll Lock key twice real quick (that switches the KVM from one midtower to the other, so it will enable keyboard for the EP45.

Then I will turn on the EP45 and see if it boots. I think it will, and I'll hit DEL, go into BIOS, sniff around, hit optimized defaults or fail safe defaults (I think it only has the latter, but not sure), the see if it boots. I think it will, but don't know exactly what is going to happen. After that, I don't know. I'd like to get S3 sleep/resume working. Hearing that using it kills mobos is depressing. I used to use it all the time with my last Gigabyte mobo, for many years, but the board finally died.

 

[Muse]

So, I did as I said. I had a choice of fail safe and optimized defaults and did optimized (that's what you said, Larry). The system is now acting as it used to, including rebooting instead of coming out of suspend.

Edit: Oh, I found out one thing. The keyboard part of the KVM switching of my two midtowers wasn't working because the keyboard PS/2 connector had detached from the KVM switch! Murphy's Law scores another victory. It is a hassle to look for that because the switch isn't easily accessed, but it IS accessible with enough effort. Of course, that was the first thing to check in troubleshooting that problem. I love that KVM switch!

Now I'm going to shut off the machine, reconnect the optical drive and put the 2TB HD back in it. I had that in my Rosewill enclosure and attached to the other midtower yesterday. That system won't boot with that HD so attached, it just hangs.

You know, these troubles I've been having is one reason I never upgraded my last system. With all its warts (occasional lockups, even restarts, lip-synch issues that came and went) it worked, I could work around all those problems. The machine went to sleep and came out of it on schedule, no problem. I meant to get another mobo, etc. hoping the crashes would end, the lip synch problems too. I think now that my sound card might be part of the lip synch problem, maybe the whole problem. I'd like to get the EP45 to behave with S3 suspend/resume. I may try S1, measure the energy usage with my Kill a Watt and see if I can live with that. The EP45 system is very quiet, which is nice.

 

[VirtualLarry]

I'd like to get the EP45 to behave with S3 suspend/resume.

Sigh. You know that you can install Win7 in "trial" mode, right? Might try that, just as an experiment to see if you can get sleep/resume working.

 

[Muse]

Sigh. You know that you can install Win7 in "trial" mode, right? Might try that, just as an experiment to see if you can get sleep/resume working.

I did not know that! Thank you! I was wondering that very thing today. How can I install Win7 in trial mode?

 

[VirtualLarry]

Just don't put in any product key.

 

[Muse]

So, it works for what? 30 days?