Corrupt Gigabyte BIOS?

[Tagny Daggart]

Hi all,

I'm sporting the GA-Z77X-UD5H (seriously awesome mb!). I was making some changes in my BIOS to boot into a USB-Thumbdrive for a Linux distro, and, for some reason, when I rebooted the machine, the Gigabyte BIOS boot screen no longer displays. And, I no longer have the option to select a disk. The good news was that the machine did eventually boot off the USB stick into Linux, but when I was done, I could not boot into my OS X, simply because there was no way to tell it which device to boot off of. With the USB stick out, it just sits there without any indication at all that it has booted (nothing onscreen AT ALL).

I flipped the BIOS Switch (SW4) and was able to successfully boot into OS X as normal using the backup BIOS. Yay for backup BIOSes!

I am unclear on what happened, and what to do next (backup-BIOS virgin here).

I'm also getting conflicting info from the manual.

On page 70 of the User Manual I read:

... If the main BIOS is corrupted or damaged, the backup BIOS will take over on the next system boot and copy the BIOS file to the main BIOS to ensure normal operation. For the sake of system safety, users cannot update the backup BIOS manually.

Well, that didn't happen, since the first time the system was booted since the supposed corruption, (into Linux), it did boot successfully on the Main BIOS, but it wasn't working correctly (no screen at all). The second reboot resulted in no activity at all for a good 10 minutes. I am now booted up again, but directly from the backup BIOS via the hardware switch.

A couple of questions:

1) Does the Main BIOS and Backup BIOS share the same configuration? I mean, my OS X booted seemingly perfectly and I have only guessed that this is because all of my BIOS settings are intact, having come out of a CMOS on the motherboard. Is this a correct assumption?

2) Is my BIOS really corrupt, or did I manage to simply turn off the boot screen somehow? If this is the case, how do I turn it back on again?

Ideally, you'll all help me understand what is going on better before I reboot my machine again (I worry I'll lose it altogether!). I suspect the smart thing for me to do is reboot again into the Backup BIOS and copy my BIOS settings to a flash disk somewhere, then re-flash the main BIOS and re-load my settings again. But, I'd like to hear from you guys/gals first.

Oh, I'm running F14 if that is useful here.


Thanks!

 

[Solidww]

This actually seems to be a common problem with Gigabyte boards and USB. I would use Google to see what others have done to fix their issues.
Your board is common this forum community so you maybe able to get some help here about this issue.

 

[Tagny Daggart]

This actually seems to be a common problem with Gigabyte boards and USB. I would use Google to see what others have done to fix their issues.
Your board is common this forum community so you maybe able to get some help here about this issue.

Hmmm, I've not seen anything about and issue like this before. I do hope someone with some experience pipes up!

 

[potemkin]

USB sticks vary a lot.
Some will boot usb 2 and USB 3.
Some only boot one way.
A common tip is boot USB in USB 2 port only.

On bios problem I would troll Gigabyte support forums.
Call Gigabyte support also.
Leave out discussion of OSX.
They do support linux to some extent.
Your problems started during linux install.

Some things I have done in past include pulling CMOS battery.
I do not recommend this until you have contacted Gigabyte.

Occasionally a different keyboard helps.

Older Gig boards when they got confused or would not boot would show a screen asking which bios to pick.
Those bios could also write bios to HD.
Picking which bios became problematical.
The screen was user unfriendly.
Also it was unclear if I was using backup bios or bios copied to HD.
In my cases I stopped writing bios to HD and pulled battery.
They stored up to six bios profiles.

I would check with Gigabyte first before doing anything.

 

[Solidww]

Hmmm, I've not seen anything about and issue like this before. I do hope someone with some experience pipes up!

So, did you figure it out?

 

[Tagny Daggart]

Not really. I'm still booting into the backup BIOS, which, contrary to what the manual says, seems to be able to be updated/modified. If I switch again to the main BIOS, it won't boot. =/