Computer fails to post

Freddie1980

Freddie1980

Freddie1980

Soldato
Joined
25 Sep 2009
Posts
10,218
Location
Billericay, UK
Firstly sorry for any misspelled words I'm having to type this on my phone.

I was wondering if some of you could lend me a hand trying to identify the faulty component.

Earlier today I was playing Mass Effect 3 when seemingly at ramdom the display went black and the computer frozze so I had to a hard reset. Laded up the game again then 10 mins latter the game frozze up again so another hard restart was needed. The same happened a third time and I gave up and turned of the pc. I came back to about an hour ago and now it won't even display the bios splash page.

All the lights come on hard drive spns and the fan spin up and my water cooling loop is working but my monitor stays in standby mode. I've tried replacing the graphics card a gtx670 (under water) with a 5770 but the same thing happens.

When I look at my motherboard (Gigybyte z77x udh3) led bios display the numbers are jumping around 72 96 4f 15 36. Ive tried putting everything back to default but still the same problem.

I have a 2tb hard drive with a 60gb ssd acting as cache and the cpu was overclocked. CPU freid? Rma on the motherboard?
 
popp out the cmos/motherboard battery,leave it out a good 10 minutes then put back in and try

are you stock or oc? and what make/model ssd?
 
Ssd is a San Disk ultra 60gb, cpu was oc to 4.5ghz but board has been raet back to default uaing the buttons on the board. Psu is a cosrair ax 650.
 
try a long cmos clear first

if that doesn't cure it,try bare minimum setup,no gpu/hdd's/ssd attached and see if it boot to bios (use onboard graphics)

something could be preventing it from booting(failed/faulty component ect)
 
Thanks cor tips. I took out battery for 10 mins unpluuged everything dvd hdd ssd sound card and video card. Put the battery back in and I couldn't get any power at all.
I've just ripped out ny old seasonic from my htpc and plugged it in and low and behold I'm in business. Looks like rma time for this corsair psu.
 
Video card seems to be there culprit. When thats plugged in I get no display at all. Time to see how well me3 with the mighty hd4000 and see how good evgas rma service is.
 
I updated it eariler in the year to get my new sound card working I did notice gigabyte have newer posted recently (December 13) which I could try. Starting to think it may not be the video card as a perfectly good hd5770 caused the same problem. Its starting to look like an issue with the pci-e slots as I tried it out in a 8x slot and that failed as well.

The problem is testing my gtx670 in another machine isn't straight forward as it conected into a full water loop. I'll have to get a new valve before I can disconnect it and reattach the hsf that it came with. I have a ticket open with gigabyte so I will see what they say.
 
Not sure I'm going to be able to update the bios. I plugged everything back in bar tbe souncard and video card and while I was getting a display it would reboot during the post and gof stuck in a cycle. I'll try without the ssd and dvd but I'm not full of hope.

Thanks for tbe advice its helpped me identity that the the is almost certainly the mb.
 
Some good news!

I've finally been able to get my PC to boot up again and I'm now in Windows.

I remembered that Gigabyte motherboards all come with dual BIOS, given as I had nothing to lose I flipped the switch and I'm back into Windows. It's slow because the cache isn't working and I haven't installed the Intel graphics driver yet but at least it's working.
 
That's good you are back in. Do you think the first bios is corrupt? Can you not copy it over?

I had similar woes with one of my systems last year. I was pulling my hair out. The machine stopped posting, reset the bios, and unplugged near everything, still no luck. I hadn't contemplated it would be the GFX card, had to remove it from the first PCIe slot to get to the remaining two sata cables, moved it down to the second slot, viola, machine posted.

Turned out the card was faulty and decided it didn't want to work in any speed other than 4x (second slot on this old mobo was 4x max and 2x compatibility), Sometimes when it booted in GPU-z it would show 2x - clearly unstable and couldn't run at full speed.

This card was about five years old though and the company who made it had gone bust, so it was time to move on!

Worth noting that EVGA's RMA is ok, I RMA'd a 660 last year. I raised a support ticket, they gave me an RMA number and postage label and off it went. You can track the RMA in your registered products control panel, they normally get the card inspect and turn it around in a few days. Postage back is a few days too.


Cheers,
 
Last edited:
Given that I've had about 3 different conclusions thus far I wouldn't want to go out and say for sure it's 'X' but yes it does look like a BIOS failure. I haven't tried running my GTX670 with the backup BIOS yet, I know for a fact the ASUS sound card won't work (I had to update my main BIOS to get that working).

Somehow I need to workout how I'm going to restore the main BIOS, I know how to flash the BIOS but I'm afraid that all I'm going to do is update the backup BIOS which could cause me a bigger headache, this backup BIOS is all that stands between me and an RMA. I would flip the switch back to the main BIOS and use Qflash but I can't get far enough into the boot cycle to enable Qflash. Is there any way of updating the main BIOS whilst running under the backup BIOS?

Edit:

ME3 works at least all be at much reduced settings. I knew I was trouble when there was lag on the menu screen! I might try putting back the 670 latter and see if it that works or not.
 
Last edited:
It is possible to make the BIOS Auto-Recovery kick in (Dual BIOS) and re-flash the MAIN BIOS with the contents of the BACKUP BIOS.

This is a simple and easy method for anyone to try before having to resort to other more difficult methods, or a RMA.

1. Shut off the power supply using the switch on the back of the PSU, wait 10-15 seconds.
2. Press and hold the case Power On swtich, then while still holding turn on the power supply from the switch on the rear.
3. Still holding the case power on switch, the board will start, once it does release the case power on switch and shut off the power supply via the switch on the read of the unit. (Do the latter two parts as quickly as you can once the board starts)
4. The board will shut down.
5. Turn the power supply back on using the switch on the rear of the unit.
6. Turn on the motherboard by pressing the case power on button.

Once the board starts this time you should see the Gigabyte splash screen, or POST page, then the Auto-Recovery from Dual BIOS will kick in. You will see a checksum error, and then recovery from BACKUP BIOS will begin. Once it is done reboot your machine and enter the BIOS and load optimized defaults then save/apply/reboot back to BIOS.

Now you are done, and will be using whatever BIOS was in your BACKUP BIOS, From there you can attempt whatever you were previously trying, or update your BIOS to the latest version.

that usually works,can also bootup from backup bios then while in the bios flick the bios switch to the main bios position and flash the bios through qflash,that should recover it (atleast that's the way on gigabyte z87 so should work on z77) if not the above method will work
 
wazza300 said:
It is possible to make the BIOS Auto-Recovery kick in (Dual BIOS) and re-flash the MAIN BIOS with the contents of the BACKUP BIOS.

This is a simple and easy method for anyone to try before having to resort to other more difficult methods, or a RMA.

1. Shut off the power supply using the switch on the back of the PSU, wait 10-15 seconds.
2. Press and hold the case Power On swtich, then while still holding turn on the power supply from the switch on the rear.
3. Still holding the case power on switch, the board will start, once it does release the case power on switch and shut off the power supply via the switch on the read of the unit. (Do the latter two parts as quickly as you can once the board starts)
4. The board will shut down.
5. Turn the power supply back on using the switch on the rear of the unit.
6. Turn on the motherboard by pressing the case power on button.

Once the board starts this time you should see the Gigabyte splash screen, or POST page, then the Auto-Recovery from Dual BIOS will kick in. You will see a checksum error, and then recovery from BACKUP BIOS will begin. Once it is done reboot your machine and enter the BIOS and load optimized defaults then save/apply/reboot back to BIOS.

Now you are done, and will be using whatever BIOS was in your BACKUP BIOS, From there you can attempt whatever you were previously trying, or update your BIOS to the latest version.

that usually works,can also bootup from backup bios then while in the bios flick the bios switch to the main bios position and flash the bios through qflash,that should recover it (atleast that's the way on gigabyte z87 so should work on z77) if not the above method will work
Click to expand...

Good info, didn't realise it was that simple on those.
 
Not a bad shout about the ram, my HTPC uses DDR3 so a clean swap will be straight forward.

Well it looks like i've borked Windows. I started setting up Intel SRT and it's wrecked the boot process and now my computer crashes and resets every-time the Windows 7 logo shows up.

I'm going to get Windows reinstalled tonight but I'll also tryout the ram.

I've managed to repair the BIOS (thanks wazza300 View Post) and update it but every time I solve one problem another crops up. I don't think my girlfriend was to happy about all the time I spent trying to fix it!
 
boot from your windows dvd disc and do a startup repair,might take two or three attempts but should fix the startup
 
wazza300 said:
boot from your windows dvd disc and do a startup repair,might take two or three attempts but should fix the startup
Click to expand...

Cheers trying windows repair now.

TIP: If your installing Windows 7 on a modern motherboard make sure you have a USB to ps/2 adaptor handy so you can use your keyboard.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top Bottom