Bricked my system

[garreh]

I did a modest overclock on my CPU 266 FSB 12.5 Multiplier and gave 1.30V... PC restarted and it showed "BIOS AUTO RECOVERING FROM HARD DRIVE........" it restarted a few times with the same message until it just stopped displaying this message and it sounds like the motherboard is "toggling" between on and off after a few seconds constantly.

I have removed RAM and disconnected hard drives. No luck...

I have lights come on my mobo (cpu leds or something) they light up two green, red, yellow (I believe.. all of them light up anyway) and they all blink on and off.

I'm not sure what to do.. Could the CPU be screwed or is it the BIOS? I thought this motherboard is supose to have dual bios protection to stop these instances.

[scrivz69]

Try removing the coin size cmos battery,with the power unplugged for 5 mins buddy,put it back in and see how it goes from there.

[Baggpuss]

Agreed with above, should clear your bios back to its default settings.

[garreh]

Thanks for your comment. I have used a jumper to clear the CMOS pins on the motherboard for a few seconds and that didn't seem to do anything. Haven't tried removing the batteries as such but I think clearing the jumpers is just the same?

[PhoenixRising]

Using the jumpers should reset the Bios but just to be on the safe side, it's better to remove the battery for about 30s or so.

[garreh]

Also this is my spec PC if it helps...


Motherboard: GA-EP31-DS3L
CPU: Intel E5200 @ 2.5GHZ
Ram: Geil PC6400 (2x2GB)
PSU: Antec 500W Earthwatts
HDD: 200 GB Maxtor & 640GB Western Digital


Do you think its worth following the Recovering a Corrupt AWARD Bios here http://pc-hacks.blogspot.com/2007/09/recovering-corrupt-ami-bios-chip.html ? I'm really lost for what to do.. I cannot even get a picture on my monitor

[Jonny2Bad]

Do as advised above remove the power cable, then remove the batteryfor a minute and that should sort the problem out. Do this before trying other avenues.

[garreh]

Ok I've taken the CMOS battery out for 10 mins, still no luck same as before. What next? :rolleyes:

[Jonny2Bad]

Very odd indeed remove all usb attachments, only connect the boot hdd, do checks on hsf, all power connecters etc to make sure everything is seated and connected properly.

[garreh]

Removed everything including Gfx, USB, Hard drives, leaving only one working RAM module. Checked connections all ok. Still the same.

I really feel it is the BIOS. It must of auto-recovered from a past BIOS that was already corrupted. I vividly remember seeing on screen "Auto recovering BIOS from hard drive................" and it had "BootBlock" at the top right hand corner (Award I believe).

It did this a few times, restarted PC few times before finally restarting for the last time. Now I get nothing on screen and PC seems to constantly toggle switching on and off every 2-3 seconds or so.

[simonmaltby]

Do you still have the cmos jumper on?
Make sure you have taken the cmos jumper back off otherwise you would get the symtoms described

[garreh]

Yes, CMOS jumper is removed.

[Jonny2Bad]

And youve returned to to pins 1-2 correctly?

[garreh]

Erm? The jumper isn't on the CMOS anymore and the batteries are put back after 10 minutes of them being taken fully out and all USB devices removed, still no change.

[Jonny2Bad]

The jumper should be put back to pins 1 and 2 for it to work that could your problem.

[simonmaltby]

I agree with you then, something seems to be unwell. You have tried everything i can think would be causing the issue.

It might be the motherboard, or the overclock may have damaged something else.

Do you have any different RAM, PSU and graphics cards you can try?
Might be worth taking out and reinserting the CPU.
Try graphics and RAM in different slots if available.

Only other sggestion is try the battery again. Physically remove the mains lead from the PSU then take out the battery and leave it for 1/2 hour (Complete overkill, but what have u got to loose)

[PMM]

If you had the 'bootblock' message then your bios was corrupted.

I am not sure on the what-nots for Gigabyte but general senerio is that a BIOS image is usually on the utilties CD you got with the system.... with that in the CD drive when machine boots the BIOS will run a routine to load and reflash itself from the CD.

Basically a BIOS has a reserved area that cannot be touched and acts as a safety to the main bios, it only has very basic routines enough to do the recovery process, therefore that also means most likely you have no normal gfx display output either.

I would find the utilties CD pop it in the drive and reboot or turn off and on... if the bios is in safemode then if all goes well it will re-flash and reboot itself and it should hopefully be per normal.

((For reference as well... if overclocking jabbing the <Insert> key on boot up normally preforms a soft reset without resorting to clearing the BIOS.)) Basically sets FSB speeds and multipliers to normal while leaving all other settings intact.

[garreh]

If you had the 'bootblock' message then your bios was corrupted.

I am not sure on the what-nots for Gigabyte but general senerio is that a BIOS image is usually on the utilties CD you got with the system.... with that in the CD drive when machine boots the BIOS will run a routine to load and reflash itself from the CD.

Basically a BIOS has a reserved area that cannot be touched and acts as a safety to the main bios, it only has very basic routines enough to do the recovery process, therefore that also means most likely you have no normal gfx display output either.

I would find the utilties CD pop it in the drive and reboot or turn off and on... if the bios is in safemode then if all goes well it will re-flash and reboot itself and it should hopefully be per normal.

((For reference as well... if overclocking jabbing the <Insert> key on boot up normally preforms a soft reset without resorting to clearing the BIOS.)) Basically sets FSB speeds and multipliers to normal while leaving all other settings intact.

I've read the same thing on another forum actually. They also say it looks for BIOS on Hard drive, Floppy, then DVD/CDROM drive. Though I'm not too sure it will work because I just tried to plug in a really old floppy drive in the system and see if it would look for a BIOS there but it didn't even light up or make any sound whatsoever. Granted I didnt have a disk in there or have any RAM in the system then, not sure if that would affect it?

[PMM]

bios will error anyway if ram is not present as its needed to run the flashing program ;)

So it won't do anything, make sure you have ram installed / cpu installed and make sure cable for floppy drive is on the correct way around ((its not fool proof on old floppy drives)) but usually if its the wrong way around you get a permanent lit light on the drive.

its worth browsing the gigabyte site, they do somewhere have all the needed instructions on there for doing the re-flash using all methods.

[garreh]

Thanks for all your support so far.

I've tried once again with one RAM module in slot 1 and confirmed floppy drive is connected in the right way and fully working as I connected it to another system and wrote a self flashing BIOS using FLASHSPI and also turned it into a Bootable floppy disk, no luck. Didn't even try and read it.

Also tried putting Gigabyte disc that came with mobo in there, with only that connected up via IDE1, still nothing.

Tried clearing CMOS jumper while system on, nothing.

The only other things I can think of doing are the last resorts and are extreme; a hot flash or short correct pins on the BIOS to force BootBlock into thinking there is a corrupt BIOS and flash backup. Though I think if the BootBlock isn't looking for a BIOS on the Floppy on CDROM drive then there is little chance.

Though I didn't have Floppy drive set as the first boot device, and read therefore the method of flashing via Floppy is useless and just won't work. Putting BIOS on DVD may work but I highly doubt it, I have sceptism that it actually even looks on a CDROM drive for the BIOS.

Mobos have been saved from the shorting PIN technique, though after some research I found what I believe to be the two BIOS chips on my mobo (dual BIOS) SST 25VF0808


http://www.biosdiy.cn/html/25VF080B/SST25VF080B.jpg

and the Datasheet for this (PDF) (http://www.sst.com/downloads/datasheet/S71296.pdf) I am unclear what pins to short to force a BIOS flash.

I think I may just RMA through Ebuyer.

[garreh]

Oh and just to add to my last comment, I'm still not absolutely 100% convinced its the motherboard, its possible it could be the CPU? I'm not sure of any easy way to check the CPU is working. I don't know of any PC I can check it in.

[Iainm]

Had asimilar problem with a laptop and Award bios. Had to put the latest bios .bin file on a floppy and allow the bootblock to boot from it. The bootblock only contained enough code to boot from floppy not cd

[garreh]

Had asimilar problem with a laptop and Award bios. Had to put the latest bios .bin file on a floppy and allow the bootblock to boot from it. The bootblock only contained enough code to boot from floppy not cd

Ahh I suspected just as much. Its not much use to me since I didn't have my Floppy drive set as the first boot device prior to the failure. I would of thought it to ignore the boot setup options as the CMOS has been cleared, the BIOS is now purely reading from the BootBlock so I don't see how it affects it, but *apparently* it does. See TweakTowns: Guide to flashing (http://forums.tweaktown.com/f69/bios-flashing-how-qflash-guide-27576/)

Sounds really silly to me as this it the whole purpose of Bootblock as the last form of recovery.

The Ebuyer RMA process looks pretty simple and they offer refund for shipping to them if the fault is confirmed. Should it not be confirmed, its just sent back and you have to pay for shipping. Not too bad I guess. I'm hoping because I was invoiced only 9 days ago I will be offered an advance replacement if it will have to be sent to GB-UK for repair.

[PMM]

does not matter what your bios settings were prior to it going awol.

The function is embedded and locked into a 4kb special block thats untouchable.

If you get the bootblock message... that 4kb program does the necessary to initiate basic bits and bobs inc the floppy drive (Its requires no user setup).

The IC you posted cannot be forced into flashing itself from shorting pins its aSerial Peripheral Interface
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Serial_Peripheral_Interface_Bus) It has to be written to by another SPI compliant master device.

Does sound like a complete BIOS failure TBH and best sent back for replacement, if it was CPU the BIOS would still function and Issue warning beep codes to say CPU issue.

[garreh]

Yeah, I thought it would beep too even if CPU failure.

Good news... I've just come off the phone from Ebuyer and they are arranging collection of the board and the kind man said a replacement would be issued. Coming to collect tomorrow, nice service! Lets hope everything goes smoothly.

In lighter news, I will *NEVER* buy a Intel CPU ever again. Why? I've just removed the CPU from the mobo to find the LGA 775 pins some of them screwed and a little twisted. I tried fixing with a pin head but as Intel say themselves, once the pins are bent there is absolutely no way to bend them back. Simply brushing lightly against them with your fingers will bend them beyond recognition.

I think my struggle fitting the huge Akasa 965 could of contributed to the bending too.

I originally always had AMD CPUs and bought this for the performance/power consumption aspect. And overclockability (that went straight **** up) and so my next PC will most certainly be AMD with a much less fragile Socket AM2.

I don't believe it is the pins, even though they look very unhealthy, because I just tried correcting them and fired the system back up -- this time no phase LEDs on the mobo light up (possibly made the pins worse?).

Even with the CPU out of the system and the system speaker connected on the F_PANEL connectors, there are no error beeps. I think the BIOS simply has no soul.

[system7]

You're obviously heavy-handed Garreh. :rolleyes:

Nova can be grateful you bought it from (Shudders...) eBuyer. :biggrin:

I looked it up. Nice board, as it goes. Try not to break the next one. :thumbs:

http://img91.imageshack.us/img91/9476/gigabyte.jpg (http://img91.imageshack.us/my.php?image=gigabyte.jpg)

[cje]

Nice board and all, apart from the PINK IDE slot.... ewwww. Pink right beside yellow SATA prots. The Gigabyt designer must like Rhubarb and Custard.

[Ammok]

to find the LGA 775 pins some of them screwed and a little twisted

I think my struggle fitting the huge Akasa 965 could of contributed to the bending too.


And you think the bios is at fault? hmmmm....couldn't be an intermittent short that eventually overloaded the motherboard circuitry thus rendering useless? just a wild stab in the dark there.

PS the cpu should gently "drop" into its socket, zero insertion force required. I have trouble getting heatsinks on every time, but have not come across bent pins. Chipped a bit off an athlon corner mind, but it still worked, sort of.:)

[PMM]

I don't think you can get a short in the socket due to the size of the pins ?... a lack of connection to the CPU pinpad yes but i don't think you will get a bent pin being able to touch another and short.

@ Ammok.. lol snap but it was due to the 'Vapokill' aka the Vapochill phase change cooler but it survived too :)

[garreh]

You're obviously heavy-handed Garreh. :rolleyes:

Nova can be grateful you bought it from (Shudders...) eBuyer. :biggrin:

I looked it up. Nice board, as it goes. Try not to break the next one. :thumbs:


Its an ok board, but whoever decided to put that heatsink slap bang at the end of the PCI-Express slot needs shooting. It can barely breathe when I have my huge Gtx 260 seated in there. Can get very hot and sweaty there too.

That board is slightly different, don't worry my IDE slot isn't pink (nothing wrong with that, shows your feminine side!) because that is the v1 board I have v2.1.

Whats wrong with eBuyer? You think my chances of RMAing a mobo with bent pins is slim? I'm starting to hope and pray they will replace it out of goodwill as I've bought quite a lot from there recently and over christmas!

Strangely enough, you know that CPU cover that protects the pins? The one that came with my board says "FoxConn" -- think someone at Ebuyer had a wee slip up.

[system7]

Strangely enough, you know that CPU cover that protects the pins? The one that came with my board says "FoxConn" -- think someone at Ebuyer had a wee slip up.

It was a recycled board then. Maybe you didn't break it. :biggrin:

[Baggpuss]

Is a good motherboard, was the one in this pc before i got my current one

[garreh]

I hope my new board is just as good as your old one Baggpuss. I think its likely I have a recycled board like Steve says. Gigabyte generally don't ship brand new boards borrowing Foxconn CPU protector cap.

I'm still very worried that they will return it and charge me administration + shipping because of physical damage to the cpu pins. Someone put my mind at rest! Though I will try and stay positive, hopefully they will just replace :)

[system7]

Here's the facts, garreh. once that CPU is installed and locked down, no amount of messing with a cooler is going to break the CPU socket pins. Stick to your guns if you are feeling good about that. :thumbs:

[garreh]

Didnt help Steve :furious:

Even still, the BIOS is corrupted within 9 days of receipt. Though they could charge for repair of the pins, they will still need to repair the BIOS.

[PMM]

Don't take my word for it... but I think they don't even bother to check.

I am sure somebody told me that due to the high volume of returns they don't have the time to check so as such they get palletised /skipped out back at HQ.

As said don't quote me on it.

[garreh]

Thats more like it, cheers PMM mate! :D

Only just had installed COD4 Modern Warefare the night before it failed. Played the first training part of the game, looks like it will be incredibly good! Can't wait :rocker:

[Baggpuss]

i expect they will just replace it then ship it back to gigabyte rather than try and fix it

[garreh]

Well, unsuprisingly they have just denied my RMA stating the pins are bent which is physical damage therefore warranty is void. They say they will be sending it back straight away.

I'm guessing they will automatically charge me shipping fee back on my account which will mean I will become overdrawn, which case I will really be annoyed, or CityLink will just charge me when they deliver. I might as well say I'm not accepting the charge and to send it back to Ebuyer. Its a broken board so no point paying to have it sit building dust.

Its possible I just had bad luck and got a dud board, but I don't see how a really light overclock can corrupt the BIOS, or am I mistaken?

I think my issue could be because I set the CPU voltage to "auto" to correct the red bold flashing message saying "!!!! SYSTEM VOLTAGE NOT OPTIMIZED !!!!" and when I checked the Gigabyte BIOS was pushing 1.57v through the vcore and put the temps up to 70c as I saw in the BIOS. I quickly changed back down to 1.28V. This was on a Intel E5200 and shouldn't be pushed past 1.4-.5V tops. I highly doubt the CPU was damaged since this CPU has been known to allow 1.7V to be pushed through it 24/7 under very good water cooling. The 1.57v was only pushed thorugh it for 15seconds.

I think the BIOS auto-recovered from a previous version that was deemed to fail due to an auto overclock. If this was the case, the design is flawed. It should automatically reset all CMOS settings prior to the BIOS flash.

Its really put me off buying Gigabyte boards. Others have had the same problems on the *-DS3 models. I'm thinking of going with Asus again, that one in my system still going strong after constant batterying for 6 years.

[Baggpuss]

Had my voltage always set on auto, infact its on auto for this mobo too. Wont be that.

[garreh]

Had my voltage always set on auto, infact its on auto for this mobo too. Wont be that.

Hmm thats very odd then... Apart from that I only changed the FSB to 266, multiplier 12.5x which is quite a light overclock to bring it up to 3.3Ghz which the E5200 is easily capable of.

I definitely saw it pushing at least 1.57v through the CPU after setting the voltage to auto. The bios lets you push an incredibly unsafe voltage through your vcore (from what I remember you can go right up to 2.0V and beyond?)

It could be possible that I needed to up my Geil PC6400 800Mhz Black Dragon (2x2GB) RAM kit up +0.1V I also didnt manually set or check what mutliper the RAM or PCI bus speed was set as, I believe again it was auto.

I think setting auto during overclock is pretty much suicidal. I've read lots of problems for overclockers when they allow the BIOS to automatically select the best setting and its only ever harmed their overclock. After manually setting, things become stable and you get a good overclock. Has anyone else discovered this?

[garreh]

Bought the same motherboard and setup all went smooth, CPU is working 100%.

Little reluctant to start overclocking again. Would it really be worth it... I have Gtx 260 (192 Cores). Thinking about clocking the E5200 @ 3.3Ghz 266 FSB. How much speed increase would I be looking at in games?

I'm thinking around 15% increase, so if I'm getting 38fps then +15% = 43 fps.. only 5fps increase. Doesn't seem like its worth the risk in corrupting the BIOS again :p

[scrivz69]

Leave it alone bud once bitten twice shy,38 fps aint bad.But that depends on what your playing.

[krnlg]

I'm wary of messing too much with gigabyte boards after I flashed the BIOS of my EP35-DS4, supposedly "sucessfully" using the mobo's own built in flashing utility (ie. not the dos/win utility) and it got stuck in a permanent reboot cycle that was impossible to get out of. You'd think the dual-bios would help in an occasion like that, but no.

[system7]

Just a question of studying a few overclocking articles, I think. For instance, googling hardware secrets on the Gigabyte GA-EP31-DS3L:

http://www.hardwaresecrets.com/article/575

Usual Gigabyte Ctrl-F1 to unlock the right options. Start with small overclocks and get to know what CPU-Z tells you about memory and bus speeds. Lock the PCIE bus. Geil Black Dragon DDR2-800 should be fine at 2.0V and DDR2-900 (450 MHz) speed at, say, 5-5-5-18 timings. But you should be able to run at much lower DRAM: FSB ratio than 5:3 here.

Running an E5200 at 3.3 GHz and about 1.3V gives you about 20% more, but watch your temps with Hardware Monitor.

[I3R0K3N7FEET]

pushing voltages where they arent meant to go has a higher probability of damaging the board more than the cpu, why? push too much power to the cpu it overloads and crashes and restarts, but if the board cant take the power it can cause random little faults all over the place though i think you were simply unlucky with the board, from my experience its usually best to manually add volts as auto usually over or undervolts and never gives what it needs. its always a shame to hear of this kinda thing happening to people as lets face it anyone into selfbuilding can come across this problem eventually and its not very nice to hear a company say.. you broke it/ causing a massive waste of money. that reminds me, has anyone used scan's 28day user damage insurance? im wondering if nova would start doing something like that..

[system7]

It's a good point, death9000.

Andrew Moore got an amazing overclock today on an NVidia 650i using all manual settings.

I used to set the Vcore manually on my E6700 at 1.4V for FSB1333, up from stock 1.3V.

Then I tried auto and +100mv. It was running at 1.6V in CPU-Z by the time the auto setting had kicked in. Lucky to get away with it. God knows what the North Bridge was doing, but it was all unstable as ****. :furious:

[I3R0K3N7FEET]

i can run the 940 @ 3.4-3.5 at stock volts stable, (1.35v) 3.6 at around 1.4125-1.4250v and atm over that im limited on temps (when i say limited i mean after running everest julia 5x in a row over 3.6 im hitting 55/58 (61max for P2) degrees then crash, i doubt that this is fair to say its unstable as lets face it how many programes force 4x cores at 100% for 10s-1min?), when i first had my system running i managed 3.856 @1.5125v but tbh i think this was overkill on volts but since its getting warmer (especially as my room is a furnace, its about 30 degrees at night with window open atm, imagine what its like during the day in high summer) its been getting much more unstable, i looked at other coolers (i have an asus triton 78, for the price it doesnt perform as good as it could) but i wouldnt really gain much over this with my rooms temps. anyway i recommend that when pushing clocks make sure you know what the voltage and temp limits for your cpu are and set them to manual even if you manually enter stock volts, once you know the size of the playing field you then know how much you can play. its then a simple matter of, stable/unstable

[system7]

Is that AMD Overdrive program any good?

Have you tried it?

[I3R0K3N7FEET]

got the latest version of amd overdrive the other day, its ok actually, i dont really use it for real clocking but for on the fly changes and realtime system info its really good for monitoring everything as its the most accurate programme ive used for this though its a shame that the 'auto' clock feature doesnt really do much but lock the system, im wondering if amd can come up with a 'real' auto clock configuration which will give you the best stable clocking automatically, its a dream to be able to squeeze every lst drop of performance from your system automatically but heres hoping. its definately something amd are commited to working on and i think its something that will only get better, for full functionality of it though it depends on the mobo youre using etc.

[system7]

The way AMD were selling it, a child of 6 could get good overclocks...:D

But just trying to follow the probs people were having with all the brands and speeds of memory on the i7 Biostar thread of Nelly's, well, I just gave up on trying to figure it out.

Gone are the days when Nova just sold 3 brands of RAM which we all knew like the back of our hand for issues.

I'd certainly like a single Turbo overclock button just for gaming though. And my preferred quiet mode for the rest of the time. :cool:

[I3R0K3N7FEET]

yeh i know what you mean, it is pretty easy to overclock using the AOD, as its all there in one place you have your voltages multipliers etc though theres a basic interface and advaned interface, but i prefer not to have overclocks start after post.. dunno with memory i think id stick with crucial or corsair and heard good things about kingston too tbh.. want some screens of AOD to satisfy your curiosity?

[system7]

I watched the AMD Overdrive video yesterday for the Spider platform, apropros something else, as it goes. Thanks anyway.

i_q_9a4zDps

Evidently it's not as simple as the guy makes out. There's nothing like actually doing it, as ever. :thumbs:

[I3R0K3N7FEET]

tbh the latest versions are far bettter than the older versions but still far from perfect. as i said i think its a useful tool not just for OCing

[system7]

Intel could do everyone a favour by selling CPUs with unlocked multipliers at regular prices. After all, they cost no more to make. It's all a bit strange when you think about it. Deliberately crippling products so we have to spend more to get the performance back.

Oh, wait, that's the whole idea. :rolleyes:

But I musn't rant... :D

[I3R0K3N7FEET]

lol i think that maybe chip makes should simply have a low end and high end chips at decent relative clocks and architecture and basically allow people to clock them themselves, EG

intel standard 2000mhz x8 1.1v clockable to 3600 @1.5v << cooling dependant warrantee only up to say 2.8

intel high end 3000mhz x8 ht @1.3v clockable to 4.6ghz warrantee up to 3.8ghz< that sorta thing but i guess that wont happen too, i just think people should be given the power they need not the power they think they need nor not enough power for the needs they need in future kinda thing.. blah babble xD<< not going to happen anyway.

just thought i should add

Apart from that I only changed the FSB to 266, multiplier 12.5x which is quite a light overclock to bring it up to 3.3Ghz which the E5200 is easily capable of.

each chip is different depending on batch etc etc you shouldnt comfortably assume a chip can do something even if you do read good reviews, regardless i wouldnt call an 800mhz bump in speed a light OC, remember it were only a few years ago 800mhz was powering a whole pc. 800mhz is 2 and a half PS2's, a light oc i would say would be around 1-200mhz as these are the steps cpus are generally sold in..