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[Solved] Boot stalled at Gigabyte splash screen

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Jul 24, 2014
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Motherboard
Gigabyge GA-Z97-H3D
CPU
i5-4570
Graphics
HD4 000
Mac
  1. MacBook Pro
  2. Mac mini
Classic Mac
  1. Lisa
  2. SE
  3. XL
Mobile Phone
  1. iOS
Hello All,

I understand that this issue (Boot stalled at Gigabyte splash screen) may not be Hackintosh specific, but I got to this point by working on the EFI settings of my triple boot hackintosh and this is the 2nd motherboard I "brick" in that condition.

So here is the story: I have been using my system (GA-B85M-D3H / i5-4570 / Clover / macOS+Win10+Ubuntu) for over a year with no hardware change and only standard monthly Windows 10 updates and macOS updates (currently High Sierra).

Two weeks ago, as I was testing various settings in config.plist in EFI, my system stopped booting ramaining stalled at the "Gigabyte - Ultra Durable" splash screen.

It does not respond to F9, F12, End, Del keys. The only recognized keyboard action is "Ctrl-Alt-Del" which reboots.

I have cleared CMOS by unplugging the Power Supply and putting a jumper on the CLR_CMOS pins for 30 seconds. No difference.

I have removed everything possible from the logic board only keeping the power supply (and I checked with two different power supplies), the memory (and I also checked with a known good memory and tested my memory good with Memtest on another system), obviously O also kept the i5-4570 processor (and I also checked with another processor from another good working system). In all cases, the system remains stalled at the same splash screen.

Then I have created a MBR/FAT formatted USB stick with FreeDOS and the F15 BIOS files from the Gigabyte site (autoexec.bat, B85MD3H.F15, Efiflash.exe). I tested the USB stick and it boot well on another system. I then plugged it in a USB port of the GA-B85M-D3H board and it does not boot from it but again it remains stalled at the splash screen.

I went through the same problem with the original motherboard of this PC (a Lenovo M93p tower). So I currently have to unusable motherboards, both with AMI BIOS…

Any help will be welcome!

Cheers,
 
I went through the same problem with the original motherboard of this PC (a Lenovo M93p tower). So I currently have to unusable motherboards, both with AMI BIOS…

Any help will be welcome!

Cheers,
Make sure the battery is working. Set up the motherboard on a piece of cardboard. Remove all attached drives, expansion cards. Connect only display and PSU. See if it will POST in that configuration.
 
Hello Vulgo,

Thank you for the prompt response. I did check the battery : 3.03 V and I also tried with another one, but as an extra precaution I will test with a brand new one. As indicated above, I tested with everything possible removed.

One additional information: I do get the single bip (which I believe means that the POST passed) before the splash screen appears on the display (connected to the mobo's DVI or HDMI - no difference).

When I connect a hard disk, it does spin up properly and I see a brief access (led flash once) as expected in the normal boot sequence.
 
As indicated above, I tested with everything possible removed.
So it doesn't enter the setup screen after clearing CMOS with everything unplugged. You can try this, set things up so you can reach the switch on your PSU and a connected power switch (or have a screwdriver you can poke the panel header power pins with).

Turn off PSU power
Hold power button in (keep it held in)
Turn on PSU power
When you hear/see the CPU fan spin up, turn off PSU power
Release power button
Turn on PSU power
Press power button

If you can get the timing right the firmware will maybe restore from backup BIOS if it has one, or otherwise try to recover from the state it gets left in doing those steps. Or it may not work, could be a worth a try though.
 
Last edited:
Hello again,

I have put a brand new Duracell CR2032 battery and retried a bunch of manoeuvres including your listed above to no avail.

And yes, this mobo has dual BIOS, so it should fall back to the backup BIOS after a failed boot but this doesn't seem to work.

Grrr…
 
Hello again,

I have put a brand new Duracell CR2032 battery and retried a bunch of manoeuvres including your listed above to no avail.

And yes, this mobo has dual BIOS, so it should fall back to the backup BIOS after a failed boot but this doesn't seem to work.

Grrr…
Yes the dual BIOS feature doesn't seem to work properly unless the board has a button to activate it. That method i mentioned will trigger it eventually but might not help depending on what the problem is. And a CMOS reset cannot actually reset things as a lot of what is needed to start up at all is stored in NVRAM anyway.
 
Hello All,

After months of unsuccessful attempts, I have finally managed to bring the GA-B85M-D3H motherboard back to life by reflashing the BIOS.

Since I couldn't reach the Gigabyte setup screen and the embedded flashing tools, I used a CH341A based USB EEPROM Flash hardware with an Soic8/Sop8 Clip Socket adapter and the "flashrom" mac command line software.

I have done a new install of High Sierra from scratch and the system has now been running perfectly for three weeks.

As a precaution, I am using the emulated NVRAM option (in the bootlader tab of Multibeast).

My belief is that the NVRAM got corrupted by to many boot entries in the UEFI parameters. This tends to happen when using multiple hard disks and multiple OSes on each disk. As you switch boots between disks and OSes the list grows.

I am now keeping an eye on the number of UEFI boot entries and, if needed, I do some house keeping. See the guide here:
https://www.tonymacx86.com/threads/...boot-entries-prevent-further-problems.175274/

If you go into the UEFI shell, please proceeding with caution as removing the wrong boot entries may make this more complicated.

To summarize:
  • Boot into Clover and choose “<> UEFI Shell” (the first option). Note: The UEFI shell usually assumes that you have a US QWERTY keyboard so, if you use another keyboard layout, have a cheat sheet handy with the QWERTY layout:
  • When entering the UEFI shell, wait for the system to display the “Shell>” prompt and type:
bcfg boot dump -b

The system will then display the list of boot entries with an option number nn for each one.​

  • To remove a boot entry type:
bcfg boot rm nn
bcfg boot dump -b

WARNING: Always relist the boot options after removing one or making a change to check that you obtained the desired change and also because it will change the numbering of the following entries. So, if you want to work on one these entries, its index number has changed compared to the initial configuration. Failure to do so may result in removing or modifying the wrong boot entry and being in trouble to boot the system.​

  • To add a boot entry type:
map –b

This will display the list of file systems: FS0, FS1… You can browse in the different file systems with unix style commands such as ls fs0:\EFI\ to verify the path to the .efi file you want to open with the new boot entry.​

The command to add a new boot entry is then:
bcfg boot add nnpath_to_.efi"name"

For example :
Bcfg boot add 04 Fs2:\EFI\Clover\CLOVERx64.efi "Clover"
… will add boot entry number 4 opening Clover​


A couple other useful commands (may not be available depending on the UEFI version on your mobo:
  • To move boot option #3 to boot option #7
bcfg boot mv 3 7

  • To modify the description in boot option #2:
bcfg boot mod 2 “My UEFI App”

Note: If you have Linux installed or a USB live key, you also modify the UEFI boot entries with "efibootmgr".

For reference, here is the 250 pages full reference manual (may be updated over time):

Here is also a “must-read” article on how the Clover bootloader works:

I hope this helps,

 
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