Bad Bios update unable to boot (Striker II Formula)

do you know the maker of the bios?
if it an AMi or award, there are emergency recovery procedures which forces the board to flash from a bios on a cd/mem stick before it even attempts to boot anything up (so the screen would remain blank throughout)
 
It's an award. I've looked around for instructions on how to do this but I cant seem to get this to work.

I've used the motherboard support CD to try to restore the BIOS as advised in the motherboard handbook, which is the proper way through Crashfree BIOS but this doesn't work. I've got a SATA DVD Drive. Do I require an IDE DVD Drive?
 
Hello,

I fixed this 2 days after i posted this thread. What i did was just put ONE stick of ram in, and it went to Bios, then I flashed Back to 1901. It wouldn't boot up with anymore ram sticks in. So i used the Bios flash utility 2, and did it that way. My pc was Dead as nails for a day or two and gave up on it.

Incindently, one of my ram sticks fail Memtest 86, so I think it depends what RAM you've got in perhaps?? (Tracer balistics here)
 
I've already tried that but ill give it a shot again since the LCD Poster displays the DET DRAM error code. So it could be related to that. But like I said I have already tried it before. Fingers crossed.

EDIT: I've found a freeware app that can restore your RAID 0/5 arrays and I've tested it on another pc and managed to find all the data on my RAID 0 array so I don't mind now if I have to change my motherboard. The app is called raid 2 raid and its completely free and it works with virtually all raid adapters!

I've tried two different types of RAM now, still no luck. Two different speeds as well. I've tried each slot too. What about my GFX card, does it have to be in a particular slot? its currently in the middle pci-e slot for better airflow.
 
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Cheers, I'll do that right now.

If my motherboard has gone **** up, could you recommend me a decent mobo? Preferably one known to clock well for quads as I'm thinking of getting a quad q6600 or q9650 or even qx9650 if I can find one lol.

Thanks for all your help.
 
Cheers, I'll do that right now.

If my motherboard has gone **** up, could you recommend me a decent mobo? Preferably one known to clock well for quads as I'm thinking of getting a quad q6600 or q9650 or even qx9650 if I can find one lol.

Thanks for all your help.

Yeah nvidia chipsets are crap (I've had two and one of which was the striker ii formula) so I went to P45 chipset and damn, they are great, so i suggest you get Asus P5q-delux or p5q pro turbo. very good clocking boards I give them 10/10 but its shame you cant use SLI.
 
Yeh mate i realise that now lol. Im going to get a x48 board which now natively support sli!! But for now im thinking of the p5q turbo, although im getting put off by asus now, this was my 2nd striker II formula and it wasnt worth the premium price!

Anyone suggest a good gigabyte board or another 780i that is cheaper than a striker ii formula to use before i move to i7?
 
Intel chipsets for socket 775 do not support SLI but do support ATI crossfire. The Asus P5Q Pro Turbo is a very good board. See siggy. ;) It's the crappy Nvidia chipsets that are the problem. Do not let that put you off a otherwise good brand.
 
Intel chipsets for socket 775 do not support SLI but do support ATI crossfire. The Asus P5Q Pro Turbo is a very good board. See siggy. ;) It's the crappy Nvidia chipsets that are the problem. Do not let that put you off a otherwise good brand.

Hi, alright I might just go for that, 780i and 790i chipsets are way too hot and cripple overclocking capability, plus Intel ICH10 is way better than Nvidia RAID IMHO.

What I meant was I read that there are Socket 1366 and 1156 motherboards on X48 and X58 chipset that can do SLI for I7 platform natively without an Nvidia chipset. Check out the SLIZone and also its on the asus independent site which is where i got this info from.
 
P45 & X48 are socket 775 and only do crossfire. P55 is socket 1156 and not all boards do SLI and Crossfire (all with two slots do crossfire) and X58 is socket 1366, again not all boards natively do SLI and Crossfire. It's mainly the cheaper P55 & X58 boards that are crossfire only. Make sure you are buying the correct socket board for your current stuff.
 
What do you think about this board? Would this be a good choice to replace my dead Striker II Formula or the SE2 or would the Asus P5Q PRO Turbo or even Gigabyte GA-EP45-UD3LR be better for overclocking, etc?

http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showproduct.php?prodid=MB-278-AS&groupid=701&catid=5&subcat=1155

Also, I currently have a Zalman CNPS9900-NT CPU Cooler and thinking of improving the cooling in my case and knocking down the noise. I've already replaced 2/5 of the fans (1 intake, one outtake) in my case with Scythe Kaze Jyuni's.

I'm considering going the watercooling route and considered the Corsair H20, but I'd also like to improve the cooling on the NB and in the future I might upgrade to 400 Series GTX's and maybe overclocking them and replacing the cooling with waterblocks in the future.

How much of an improvement will I see with the H20 and would you recommend me another cooler instead, eg CoolIT Vantage Liquid or Eco A.L.C, Coolermaster V10, Noctua NH-D14, etc

Thanks for all your help so far.
 
N.B do not update the bios in windows!!

Sorry to hear you are having trouble with the mobo. You have had plenty of good advice already. I would remove the cmos battery and move the jumper to reset the cmos. Replace the jumper and battery & remove all but one stick of ram. If crash free bios isn't kicking in try using a fat formatted usb memory stick with the original bios copied to it rather than using the cd. Yes i know it should work from the dvd drive but shiz can and does happen.

good luck bringing it back to life
 
Hi, yes I've already tried every bit of advice. I didn't update in windows because I knew the risk of this kind of thing happening. I updated with the EZ Flash BIOS Utility and it appeared to flash fine. But it didnt. I've never had a problem in the past.
 
I've heard good stuff about XFX boards in general. If I knew about some of the problems with the striker II formula, id have gone with the XFX hands down as its a better board.

Whats it like for overclocking?

Also does anyone know what ESA certified boards are? I've got a Dell XPS 630i with a Nforce 680i which was supposedly ESA certified.
 
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