Weird Motherbaord Issue

GrandNagusZek

Beta member
Messages
4
Location
USA
Hey everyone,

I just got done building my new system. It has an ASUS SABERTOOTH X79 Motherboard, intel i7-3820 CPU, 16GB Corsair Vengence RAM, ASUS GTX 570 Graphics Card, intel ethernet card, creative extremegamer, and a 2TB WD Black Caviar, 240GB Corsair N-Force SSD, and a 60GB Crucial M4 SSD.

I built the system and everything was running beautifully. Then before finishing up the build I wanted to update the BIOS to the mobo, as personally I have never had a severe problem doing so. After updating BIOS the computer still turns on and starts to load windows, but then just crashes. I tried windows repair same thing, I've tried using Hirens bootCD and off a USB, and the exact same thing (windows starts to load then crashes). I've even taken all of the hard drives out that had any data on them, cleared them, put them back in, and the same thing. I try and run windows 7 install and windows installer never comes up, instead it also tries to load windows and just fails. After clearing the N-Force that use to have win7 on it I tried installing Ubunto linux onto it from another computer, and I still have the exact same issue. Only time it wont try to load windows if if there are no drives attached at all. So wheter I am booting from a CD, clean HDD's, or linux, all it does it try to load windows 7 then crash.

I have taken the battery out and cleared CMOS. I have even taken every ram chip out and touched each metal connector with a paper clip to discharge them. I have tried to reflash the BIOS back to the orginal version, but ASUS did a .ROM to .CAP BIOS conversion and I can no longer go back to the original .ROM BIOS version. When I try flashing back to an earlier version it tells me it is an outdated version. I will be calling up ASUS tomorrow, but in the mean time I was curious if anyone has every encountered a problem like this.

Thanks for the help,
Zek
 
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You never ever ever flash a bios unless you're having a problem the update fixes, just for the reason of the problems you're having now. It sounds like the flash got corrupted. ASUS is going to have to help ya on that one.
 
yup this whole experience has taught me to never update my bios. lol only reason I even did was because I just built the system and was excited, lol.

anyways I figured only asus could help me, but figured it wouldn't hurt to post a few forums though. Thanks for the reply seti
 
Something else to realize when you flash a BIOS is that you should reset all the settings to "safe defaults" or some similar setting. Often a BIOS update will contain new microcode on how to handle DRAM timings, and sometimes, not often, the flash itself will be fine, but the new microcode isn't compatible with the installed components.

Yes, clearing the CMOS is useful, but sometimes even that won't work fully until you set the BIOS to defaults.

Failing that, it could just be that the update went fine, but you've got incompatible hardware (usually RAM) that is preventing the system from running normally. Reseating modules sometimes helps.

The fact that the system powers on and completes POST says to me that the flash was a success. If you have a bad BIOS flash, the results are usually much more...catastrophic.
 
Thanks Indigo,

I tried resetting BIOS to defaults and clearing the cmos again and there has been no change.

My memory is on the mobo's QVL, and worked before the update. I checked and I have not been able to find an updated QVL for the new BIOS version.

I wish that I could at least get to a dos os and update the bios from there, but it only wants to load windows and crash...
 
You can also try running with just one stick of RAM depending on how the board / CPU likes that. To see if it's an issue in that regard - I know I'm just throwing pebbles at the problem now, but anything to at least limp you by is better than nothing sometimes.
 
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