GA-P35C-DS3R Won't Post Naturally!

I've had this motherboard since around August and flashed it to the F4G around that time. I had no issues with the PC and I've not interfered with any hardware since installation. The PC's been working fine.

The other day, I rebooted and the damn thing wouldn't POST. The fans and the lights were on. I removed the graphics cards, unplugged the hard disk, removed all the memory and it was happily bleeping at me when I did this.

In the end, I had to remove the battery, unplug the power chord, short the cmos jumper (which incidently is in a crazy place under my graphics card). It then booted up ok and I loaded the BIOD defaults and the PC kicked into action.

I put it down to a dodgy battery so I've just gone and bought a new one and but I get the same issue.

I can obviously get the PC on once I perform the above ritual, but its a royal pain having to do so. Anybody have any ideas as to what it is? The PC works fine once it POSTs so I'm not sure what's going on.

z

They're great these boards aren't they. Mine does exactly the same, worked great for a couple of months then for no apparent reason... problems during post. I've found that if you just leave it for a minute it will sort itself out. Mine gets stuck mostly after the very first line during the post, so leading me to believe that it's a memory issue. I've moved the sticks of ram from channels 1 & 3, to 2 & 4 (and back again), left timings on default, altered timings as per manufacturers instructions (and back again) but nothing helps. Have done the Vista memory test and a good couple of hours with memtest, both report back with no errors.

I wish someone could figure this one out.

Rev 1.1 board (haven't updated bios)
2x1GB pc6400 Geil Ultra
C2D 6750
2x80G Hitatchi SATA Deathstars
1X Liteon IDE DVD read/writer.

All I can say is that you're not alone!

Best of luck.

Eeek, great motherboard indeed!

I don't get to see anything on the screen. It never makes the first 'good' startup beep which indicates its firing on all cylinders. Trouble is when I go through the ritual, it's practically running on BIOS defaults and I have set the date/time clock in windows. I might try the sit patiently for a minute approach next time.

I'm glad I just leave my PC on until I absolutely need to reboot. My PS3 media sharing and Linksys wrt54gs combination kills my internet connection (another common problem). I have to reboot the PC to get it going again. Grrr.

I really really don't want to RMA my motherboard, that's just way too painful!

Is anyone else having similar issues with this motherboard not posting? Do you think their 12mth and 1 day out-of-waranty chip has activated too soon?!

z

See my post from a few days ago http://forums.overclockers.co.uk/showthread.php?t=17802853 I sent mine back in the end and brought a Asus P5k-E, I simply had enough.

Oh man, just what I didn't want to read... looks like the boards have some kind of inherent fault. Might try to flash it with a more recent bios. Otherwise will have to RMA it which is going to cause me nothing but grief.

z

Hi folks,

I appear to be the latest in an ever-growing line of people who are experiencing problems with this board.

Mine was purchased in August and the build was absolutely fine (spec in sig) nothing overclocked and the only bios changes made were to up the ram voltage to the 2.3v recommended for the twin sticks of OCZ 8500 sli 1066mhz I got.

Had been playing WoW when I started to experience frequent crashes, which I at first attributed to the original 480w Tagan PSU perhaps struggling with rendering multiple spell effects etc whilst in large raid groups. So I replaced the PSU figuring that would sort the problem. Nice new shiny Corsair 620w PSU, still a machine that had now stopped even booting properly or if it did boot would hang pretty much immediately after windows had loaded.

Checked the hard disk figuring perhaps something wrong there - as I was now getting regular bsod followed by "disk boot failure, insert system disk and press enter" messages when trying to POST and boot-up.

I went through as much as I could, putting the HDD into another machine and checking for viruses, reformating etc. I tried using windows recovery console to fixmbr and fixboot, figuring perhaps the MBR had succumbed to either a virus or that the hdd itself had plain failed.

I have another HDD arriving tomorrow, but am increasingly begining to think that the source of the problem is the mobo or some conflict between either chip, mobo or ram.

Problem is, given the machine won't even boot at all now, despite clearing CMOS etc, unplugging everything, changing most of the cables over etc etc. I cannot run any further tests to see what the cause of the trouble may be. I don't have another machine that I can run either the intel chip in or the ddr2 ram.

Should I try flashing the bios, assuming I can get far enough to be able to do that? It is currently still on the F2 version it came with, or should I now be asking for RMA numbers for the mobo, ram, chip or all together?

Am at wits end trying to chase errors I cannot readily find! Any advice gratefully received folks.

Many thanks

Guess I should be grateful that at least I can eventually get into windows. I'm going to back all my data off just in case!

z

Well I flashed it with the latest bios and now the damn thing won't post no matter what I do. I'm sick of this motherboard. Anyone suggest an alternative motherboard?

I'll see if I can RMA it back, but I don't really want to fork out an additional £30 + vat if they decide that there is no fault with the motherboard.

Won't be touching Gigabyte again... thats two motherboard manufacturers already off my list (MSI being the other!).

Ho hum...

z

Sorry to hear... With no answer to the problems, it's best to move on I suppose, shame...

I feel your pain.

Thanks for the sympathy vote! I've requested an RMA so will see what happens.

Would like to hear what alternative motherboard I should go for tho.

z

When the power is on, if I hit the reset button I get three long beeps, a pause followed by continuous long beeps.

I don't get any beeps if I use the power button....

Any ideas?

z

zpos said:

Thanks for the sympathy vote! I've requested an RMA so will see what happens.

Would like to hear what alternative motherboard I should go for tho.

z

Click to expand...

http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showproduct.php?prodid=MB-241-AS&groupid=701&catid=5&subcat=913

http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showproduct.php?prodid=MB-131-AB&groupid=701&catid=5&subcat=913

Thanks for the motherboard recommendation.

I've been having all sorts of fun and games with the thing today. I've been experimenting with the RAM and managed to get it to boot into Vista safe mode. Something weird happens when I boot into normal vista - it starts up but then the screen goes off and the hard disk light stays on. Can't ping the machine at that point so it crashes or something.

For now, I'm frantically backing up my data. Once I get that done, I'll see if it is some kind of memory issue/vista issue. I might go back to a previous restore point too.

The show goes on....

z

Are all these reports of faults simply to do with the DDR/DDR3 combo memory controller?

No idea! Don't really understand what has suddenly triggered it. You'd think some kind of inherent fault would have manifested itself at build time rather than 3 months down the road.

I'm running memtest86 on each stick at the moment.

z

One good thing about this board is the manual, page 95 gives you the beep code meanings (if you haven't seen them already), now that is rare in my (limited) experience.

Hmm, one of my ballistix 1Gb is failing with numerous errors in memtest86. The plot thickens....

z

hi zpos,

sounds as though you are fast approaching the point my machine is now at - pretty much completely dead.

Cannot even get it to stay stable in bios setting page long enough to be able to flash to a different bios and more often than not I get no signal sent to monitor when I try and boot up and am just left with whirring fans and a black screen.

Prior to my machine completely dying I did manage to run some memtest stuff - which appeared to be fine with zero errors reported. Running super-pi however led to a failure on one core within seconds of starting the test, though not always the same core it appears!

Machine also appears to have trouble recognising the optical drives (on IDE) as even when set to boot from CD-ROM in bios, it just brings up "disk drive failure error etc" as described above.

So I am stuck now and lacking another chip, ddr2 ram or socket 775 mobo in which to test remaining individual components it looks like I will have to try and rma stuff, hopefully through OC but if not direct to manufacturer I guess.

Am completely at my wits end now

I feel your pain. At the moment I'm not convinced what is causing the issues. This is what I have gleaned so far:

1) Machine would not POST unless I removed battery/cleared cmos/unplugged power chord. I then flashed it with the F7 bios and no matter what I did, it would not post at all.

2) At one point I hit the reset button and it bleeped at me 3 times. It didn't do this when I powered it up with the power button apart from once when I left it off all night.

3) This led me to think that perhaps it was a memory issue. I think ripped out 3 of the four ballistix memory chips and lo and behold, it kicked into life (went past the POST). I managed to get all the way into vista but then it died on me (monitor went off, hard disk light on, couldn't ping it). A few times it just powered off after I logged into Vista - might be something in my startup which is bring it down? So I don't know whether it is a vista issue or whether it is still the motherboard. The POST issue has gone away completely tho!

4) The BIOS is running completely on the defaults. Do I need to change anything for the memory?

5) I've since tested all four of my memory sticks and one of them is reporting lots of errors on memtest86. I can get into safe mode ok with vista running on the good 2x1GB sticks. I backed up all my data at this point - result!

6) So I'm not exactly sure what is going on. Ok, one stick is faulty - fine. I can RMA that no problem. I might just re-install vista and see where I go from there.

As always, it is a process of elimination. However, I bought the memory from one place and the rest of my gear from another so its not so easy to send the stuff back. I also don't have any other kit that I can swap out and test.

The fun continues....

z

the saga continues indeed.

Have managed on a rare occasion to get it to boot into bios setup screen and reset to optimised defaults and it has now managed to boot from CDROM and is formating new hard drive for a new windows installation.

Hopefully if it gets far enough without crashing again I will at least be able to run some tests then on the cpu and ram to see whether either is at fault.

The mysterious hardware fault drama continues.... good luck with yours Zpos - lemme know what you find out and I will do likewise hehe.