Cant enter BIOS. Cant boot into anything. Would love some help!

[jcmustin]

GA-z87x-oc
i5 4690k
crucial ballistix sport 2x4gb ram
evga gtx 760
250 gb ssd



PLEASE give me some advice. I got as far in the installation that I booted one time from the ssd. Then I made some changes in bios and screwed something up. Now I can't access ANYTHING. No boot menu, no bios, only a blank screen with blinking cursor at the top left. I have cleared cmos all three ways I know how (battery, jumping, and the button) to no avail. at this point i am completely at a loss as to WHAT I can even do now. Is there a way to completely wipe the bios and start from scratch, or a way to flash the bios back onto the MB?

Thanks!

 

[neilhart]

GA-z87x-oc
i5 4690k
crucial ballistix sport 2x4gb ram
evga gtx 760
250 gb ssd



PLEASE give me some advice. I got as far in the installation that I booted one time from the ssd. Then I made some changes in bios and screwed something up. Now I can't access ANYTHING. No boot menu, no bios, only a blank screen with blinking cursor at the top left. I have cleared cmos all three ways I know how (battery, jumping, and the button) to no avail. at this point i am completely at a loss as to WHAT I can even do now. Is there a way to completely wipe the bios and start from scratch, or a way to flash the bios back onto the MB?

Thanks!

Over the years I have found myself in this situation a few times. And only once did it turn out to be an RMA for a factory repair.

Follow my advice at your own risk as this is how I would proceed and it is a toss of the coin if it works.

The OC features on the motherboard should help you resolve this issue.

If you are not already on BIOS version F8 then download it from Gigabyte and put the files on a FAT formatted USB stick.

Locate he PCIE SW and insure that four switches are in the OFF position (see page 23 if the manual).

While at this area of motherboard, take note of the position of the BIOS SW.

Note the on-board power switch.

Also note the MBIOS and BBIOS LED locations.

With the power cord disconnected from the mains, remove every thing not needed:
Remove SATA cables
Remove all USB devices leaving one USB Keyboard
Remove the GPU (video card) and another PCI or PCI-E devices.
Remove the Ethernet cable
Remove internal USB cables at the motherboard headers
Remove the front panel audio cable from the motherboard header
Remove the front panel panel harness from the F-PANEL motherboard header

Then attach a Display using a HDMI cable to the motherboard one of the HDMI ports.

Find and connect a system speaker to the F_PANEL (see manual page 30). The system can report errors at start up through a series of beeps.

Verify that you have the 24 pin power cable connected and the CPU power cable connected.

Aslo verify that the CPU cooler fan is connected to the CPU_FAN connector.

NOW… re-connect the power cord to the mains and press the on-board power switch.

If everything is good on the motherboard you would hear a single beep and see some sort of pre-post message on the attached display. And system would halt because there is nothing to boot. This would be a good out come.

However, you may not get a beep and you may not get an output to the display. In this case note and record what if any LEDs are lit on the motherboard. Or you may have a series of beeps.

If you elect to try the above, please post the result and I will provide my guidance for the next steps.

Good modding,
neil

 

[jcmustin]

Over the years I have found myself in this situation a few times. And only once did it turn out to be an RMA for a factory repair.

Follow my advice at your own risk as this is how I would proceed and it is a toss of the coin if it works.

The OC features on the motherboard should help you resolve this issue.

If you are not already on BIOS version F8 then download it from Gigabyte and put the files on a FAT formatted USB stick.

Locate he PCIE SW and insure that four switches are in the OFF position (see page 23 if the manual).

While at this area of motherboard, take note of the position of the BIOS SW.

Note the on-board power switch.

Also note the MBIOS and BBIOS LED locations.

With the power cord disconnected from the mains, remove every thing not needed:
Remove SATA cables
Remove all USB devices leaving one USB Keyboard
Remove the GPU (video card) and another PCI or PCI-E devices.
Remove the Ethernet cable
Remove internal USB cables at the motherboard headers
Remove the front panel audio cable from the motherboard header
Remove the front panel panel harness from the F-PANEL motherboard header

Then attach a Display using a HDMI cable to the motherboard one of the HDMI ports.

Find and connect a system speaker to the F_PANEL (see manual page 30). The system can report errors at start up through a series of beeps.

Verify that you have the 24 pin power cable connected and the CPU power cable connected.

Aslo verify that the CPU cooler fan is connected to the CPU_FAN connector.

NOW… re-connect the power cord to the mains and press the on-board power switch.

If everything is good on the motherboard you would hear a single beep and see some sort of pre-post message on the attached display. And system would halt because there is nothing to boot. This would be a good out come.

However, you may not get a beep and you may not get an output to the display. In this case note and record what if any LEDs are lit on the motherboard. Or you may have a series of beeps.

If you elect to try the above, please post the result and I will provide my guidance for the next steps.

Good modding,
neil

I REALLY appreciate your post. Ill have to go pickup a speaker tomorrow... all the local pc stores are closed on sundays. Without the beeps, theres not much new to report. If I put the bios_sw on backup bios, it boots for a split second with the bbios_led lit, then turns off and turns back on with the mbios_led lit. Nothing ever appears on the display.

Occasionally, this message will appear:

"Memory Allocation Error! Addr: 0xdeadbeef, size 0x0, file: gui.c, line: 491
This is a non-recoverable error! System Halted!!!"

Also, im assuming bios is up to date. Took the board to a local pc shop and they flashed the most recent bios not two days ago. Assuming those updates stick through a cmos reset, it should be the latest bios version.

Hope this is relevant. Ill post back when I can get my hands on a speaker and let you know what beeps i hear. Thanks again!

 

[neilhart]

The fact that you saw a "Memory Allocation Error! Addr: 0xdeadbeef, size 0x0, file: gui.c, line: 491
This is a non-recoverable error! System Halted!!!" is major!

This indicates that the board is working and processing code as opposed to dead.

Good modding,
neil

 

[jcmustin]

The fact that you saw a "Memory Allocation Error! Addr: 0xdeadbeef, size 0x0, file: gui.c, line: 491
This is a non-recoverable error! System Halted!!!" is major!

This indicates that the board is working and processing code as opposed to dead.

Good modding,
neil

Is there anything I can do though, or does it need special equipment to recover? Other than CMOS resets, i clueless as to what to try. Having just bought the MB, and then paid someone $20 to flash the newer bios, I would hate to have to pay someone for more services!

Thanks again for your help by the way. Its nice to know there are knowledgable people on this site willing to take their time to help out the little guys.. Just know that it IS appreciated.

 

[jcmustin]

Got it figured out!

When the PC shop originally flashed the bios update, they apparently only did so with the main bios, not the backup bios. When I selected bbios to load from, it was immediately switching to the main bios (even though it was corrupted) because my cpu was not compatible with the older bios version on the backup bios.

Got the PC shop to flash the backup bios to the updated version, then they went ahead and copied the backup bios over to the main bios. Booted right up.

Now if I could figure out how to boot up NOT in safe mode, Id be a happy camper.

Thanks again!