What could be causing my system/Gigabyte board to suddenly boot loop? Corrupted BIOS??

Neural · 12 Jan 2017 at 16:29

peanutismint said:
I hate to judge a company based on one bad experience but when it's happening to a few people then I'm sad to say I've been considering the same thing.....

FWIW re 'cold boots', I don't know if this is what you're talking about but mine seems to have been fine since I came back from my Christmas break.... And I know that sounds like just a weird coincidence but I only mention it because I've had one too many similar experiences with, for example, my Hackintosh build suddenly refusing to boot after I've come back from a long vacation where the machine has been off for a few weeks... I'm wondering whether it is just an odd coincidence or whether there's actually some hard evidence to suggest that older BIOS chips can lose data or corrupt after being without power for a while....?! Maybe a failing CMOS battery? But then aren't they supposed to last for like 10 years? Maybe I should try replacing mine....

Yea its unfair I guess to taint all gigabyte boards, clearly we all have a specific model that has the issue so maybe it was just that board and Bios' that are prolific in that regard.
I still like their boards but I think ASUS are considered a little better overall and particularly in regards to BIOS' but that may be just my impression.
Hopefully ill have a nice new Asus z270 very soon

peanutismint · 12 Jan 2017 at 17:59

Good luck with that mate! I may well end up joining you if a new battery doesn't solve my issue...! FWIW BTW I did test it with a meter and was still getting 3V so I'm thinking it's not going to be as simple as that for me, unfortunately.

Davedree · 12 Jan 2017 at 20:03

My z68xp ud3 has done it since new (2011), so as annoying as it can be it's not a sign it's going to die.
Sympton would be black screen upon what would be post and then it powers off, it would then powerup onto backup bios with stock settings at post screen and i'd have to reload my oc profile and restart the pc.
It would bootloop if i pushed restart button, or from a cold boot, if left off for a week or more.

At nearly 6 years old i've just put up with it, but it is a common bug for gigabyte z68,z77
Playing with the vccsa or vtt did help it, i haven't had a boot loop in over a year, (fatal words) z

peanutismint · 12 Jan 2017 at 20:16

Haha that sounds perilous...! Well knock on wood it hasn't looped for a couple of days now, so I'm probably going to stick with it for awhile… I think it's currently booting from the backup BIOS (i.e. probably the original BiOS version it shipped with) but I'm unsure whether to upgrade to a new are one or just stick with it as "if it ain't broke…"

almightydutch · 16 Jan 2017 at 14:06

Update, from my own post above that I had BIOS corruption.

Went through recovery many times and wouldn't boot properly.

managed to get to reflash the BIOS and hey presto its working like new.

No boot loops, no weird ghost booting.

reecevxr · 16 Jan 2017 at 17:08

almightydutch said:
Update, from my own post above that I had BIOS corruption.

Went through recovery many times and wouldn't boot properly.

managed to get to reflash the BIOS and hey presto its working like new.

No boot loops, no weird ghost booting.

any good guides for doing this?

my z97-sli started doing this last night and i havent a clue how to sort it

peanutismint · 17 Jan 2017 at 14:19

Mine has also been running seemingly fine, though I did have to do my reflash twice before it 'took', and I still haven't dared to update to a newer BIOS so it's currently running/booting every time but on the very first (oldest!) BIOS so I'm missing quite a few features....

@reecevxr Personally I had to follow a method where I powered down, removed IEC power cable from PSU, held front power button to clear any capacitors etc, then re-plugged IEC cable and whilst holding the front power button use the switch on my PSU to quickly turn the PSU on/off a few times. I usually waited a few seconds between each 'cycle' to allow the system to truly reset, and the timing for letting the machine boot is a little tricky... I finally got success by just flipping the PSU switch long enough to allow the fans to JUST start spinning before I switched it off again.

Somewhere else on the internet somebody has offered these more concise instructions which may work:

Method #1:
1. Shut your PC down (if you're reading this guide, than your PC isn't working anyways)
2. Hold the power button until the PC starts and shuts down again
3. Press the power button again, your backup BIOS should kick in now and should re-flash the main BIOS if there's anything wrong with it.

Method #2:
1. Shut your PC down
2. Hold the power AND the reset button for about 10 sec, than release.
3. Backup BIOS should kick in anytime soon now.

Method #3:
Had to use this one in order to get my 990FXA-D3 working again. Backup BIOS kicked in using method #2, but I was back to the good ol' no signal state once the procedure finished..
1. Short out pins 1 and 6 on the main BIOS chip (pin #1 should be marked with a red dot or whatever)
2. Tell a friend (or a relative) of yours to press the power on button
3. Remove the ghetto-like jumper you're holding between pins 1 and 6 as soon as you hear a beep.
4. Backup BIOS should kick in again and everything will (hopefully) be fine.