Technology, Support, and News Forum

[yeshuas]

I sure hope someone around here could flash the chip. The mobo is 2.5 years old now, and:

Manufacturer Warranty

Beyond any applicable Newegg return policy, this item is warranted independently by the product's Manufacturer. Below is a summary provided for convenience only and may not be accurate or current. Use this link for full details.

* Manufacturer Limited Warranty period (parts): 1 year
* Manufacturer Limited Warranty period (labor): 1 year

CPUs Have like 5 year warranties... mobo's with 1? This is madness!

But thanks for all the help though

Have you tried Graham's suggestion?

That is why I buy ASUS most of their's have a 3 year warranty

[Cornflake Profile]

Yes, I tried booting several times with the CMOS pin on / off, and removed it during boot process too. It was a no-go. I never even got a signal to my monitor. It's safe to say that I'm pretty livid right now.

*EDIT* I was just doing some browsing on the web about BIOS flashing -- and I'm jealous of one person in particular who actually switched off their PC in the middle of a "frozen" BIOS update, and then still had an emergency BIOS error on reboot that was searching for a floppy / disc (allowing further recovery). Mine seemed to go without error and I don't even get a checksum error!

[Cornflake Profile]

Just thought I'd post a bit of good news on the subject, according to Gigabyte's RMA Policy:
o All motherboards (besides Micro ITX) carry a 3 year warranty.
Micro ITX motherboards carry only 15 months limited warranty.

So maybe I'm in luck It's just the month or so to ship it back and fourth. Not to mention I'll have to disassemble my PC!

[yeshuas]

Just thought I'd post a bit of good news on the subject, according to Gigabyte's RMA Policy:
o All motherboards (besides Micro ITX) carry a 3 year warranty.
Micro ITX motherboards carry only 15 months limited warranty.

So maybe I'm in luck It's just the month or so to ship it back and fourth. Not to mention I'll have to disassemble my PC!

That is certainly good news, and I hope you are right about it only taking a month. I usually do advance replacement, but didn't the last time on my own ASUS board because I wanted my own back if possible and it seems like it took a lot longer than a month, and they still ended up sending me a replacement board, because they could not fix mine.

[Cornflake Profile]

Okay I have an update:

It turns out that my BIOS flash went fine. As a last attempt before removing my board and RMA'ing it, I tried a suggestion someone made on another forum: Try taking out one of my sticks of RAM and swapping them. Well, turns out that one of my sticks was faulty - and the system wouldn't even POST with the bad stick in there, with the new bios. That's the good news.

The bad news is, something is wrong with the board's USB. Whenever I try to boot into Windows XP, it shuts off during the loading bar unless I remove my USB devices from a certain couple ports on the back (It boots into Vista fine, I'm guessing it doesn't initialize the USB devices the same way XP does). In any case, if I make it into Windows and put a memory card in my 3.5 reader (hooked up to one of the mainboards USB connectors) it instantly shuts off.

It could be because this new BIOS is squirrely - It's a "beta" BIOS [Which was NOT mentioned on the download page], however I can't help but wonder if doing Graham's suggestion of messing with the clear CMOS jumper during power up could of damaged the USB on the mainboard. I did some google searching and people are split on whether or not that can cause damage. What do you guys think?

[Grav!ty Profile]

If you boot without the CMOS jumpers and short them you can cause physical electrical damage, but it's highly unlikely that would affect your USB plugs on the south bridge. I did that repeatedly without any physical damage, but hey the possibility always exists that it can when dealing with electricity and so many fine conductive circuits.

The real damage it can cause is to totally blank the registers on the BIOS chip so there would be no possible way of reflashing it and one would have to replace it

[Cornflake Profile]

OK, that's a little bit of a relief. At least I know that the USB issue is unrelated to the CMOS pins.

So either A) This BIOS version is screwy, or B) a short or something caused damage to my mainboard's USB. On one of my back ports I have a plug that's missing the center "peice" and it's just the contacts sitting in there. I must of ripped it out somehow

[Grav!ty Profile]

Yeah it would take a bit more than the 0.75 volts or so the BIOS chip gets to blow out the center piece of your USB connection

[JabbaPapa Profile]

It would be great if you could play the warranty, but it sounds like your motherboard has been hit by some electric damage (not from the BIOS flash lol).

USB is often first element to go down in such cases.

It could be lightning, particularly if you live in a house not an appartment building and keep your rig on the floor or near some pipes or cables inside a wall, or it could be an electric surge, or hardware/electric failure in one of your USB devices.

Most likely is lightning, and it can even damage rigs that have been switched off and unplugged, where the lightning can have a conduction path via an outside wall or even the floor!

If you live in a detached house you should revise the location of your workstation and ensure that your computer and connected periphals are neither on the floor or next to your wet wall or lightning rod, but if you live in town/in an appartment then you should think about checking the integrity of your electricity installation and of your peripherals.

Of course, USB sockets are also physically fragile, and if there is any peripheral, even keyboard or mouse, directly connected to the motherboard (ie not to a USB port connected via internal cable to the mobo) and that you plug in/unplug daily or often, then the USB socket can be fairly easily damaged, can short circuit, and damage the board...

[JabbaPapa Profile]

It would be great if you could play the warranty, but it sounds like your motherboard has been hit by some electric damage (not from the BIOS flash lol).

USB is often first element to go down in such cases.

It could be lightning, particularly if you live in a house not an appartment building and keep your rig on the floor or near some pipes or cables inside a wall, or it could be an electric surge, or hardware/electric failure in one of your USB devices.

Most likely is lightning, and it can even damage rigs that have been switched off and unplugged, where the lightning can have a conduction path via an outside wall or even the floor!

If you live in a detached house you should revise the location of your workstation and ensure that your computer and connected periphals are neither on the floor or next to your wet wall or lightning rod, but if you live in town/in an appartment then you should think about checking the integrity of your electricity installation and of your peripherals.

Of course, USB sockets are also physically fragile, and if there is any peripheral, even keyboard or mouse, directly connected to the motherboard (ie not to a USB port connected via internal cable to the mobo) and that you plug in/unplug daily or often, then the USB socket can be fairly easily damaged, can short circuit, and damage the board...