Questions about GIGABYTE products > Motherboards with Intel processors

GA-Z68X-UD7-B3 power cycle bug/"feature" (may affect other boards)

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Citizen Crazed:
Hi y'all, first post here as this is the first Gigabyte-based system I've built in, well, a while. Liked the feature set and build quality of the Z68-UD7 more than any of its immediate competitors so here I am.

Anyway, while I'm generally very happy with the system, I've been tangling with a couple of issues with the BIOS (both F8 and predecessors/betas) and TouchBIOS that make it less good than it could be. It seems from reading down the boards that some of you have encountered variations on the same themes. Thought I'd put this post up both in the hope that it might solve some head-scratching in other threads, or generate evidence to formulate a bug report to GGTS. Probably worth noting at this point that I've reproduced this behaviour with both the F8 and F7 BIOSes (as well as the F8 betas). So, here goes...

The "The system has experienced boot failures because of overclocking or changes of voltages" warning. I've seen quite a bit of mention of this elsewhere in the forum - and the advice to anyone experiencing it is almost invariably to change some settings to make the system "more stable".

On my setup at least I've noticed that it is possible to trigger this warning (and associated BIOS settings confusion) without either overclocking or changing voltages - and on a system that is otherwise absolutely, unperturbably, 100% stable in operation.

For example,  when I first built this system up on the bench (would probably have had the final F7 BIOS), as you naturally do, I got into a situation where I had to restart it a number of times within a relatively short space of time after installing drivers/ software. I'd initially set the system up stock clocked, everything auto/default. After about the fourth or fifth restart, the system suddenly shut down midway during POST, waited a couple of seconds an when it restarted gave me "that warning".

Slightly confused I checked the BIOS, got the warning again when I went into the MIT section, saved settings and then booted into the OS, confirming that all the voltages and temps were within expected ranges. Didn't see the warning again, even after getting everything set up and worked up to an initial mild but still perfectly stable overclock.

Then, a couple of days later, system still on the bench, I ran some precautionary advanced drive fitness tests on my hard disks. This involved running the DFT utility from a bootable USB stick. I set up a low power configuration beforehand - only one core enabled, 16x multiplier, everything switched off. In order to swap from one disk to the next I had to shut the system down - or reset it, and of course because I was booting from USB, I had to use the power button to turn the system off (or the reset button/Ctrl-Alt-Del to restart it).

Anyway, cutting a long story shorter. I discovered during this that resetting the system with the reset button (or Ctrl-Alt-Del) will, after about four or five cycles, prompt the system to shut down during POST, and then restart a few seconds later with "The overclocking warning" - and it will do this whether the system is overclocked, running stock, underclocked, or whatever. The system stability warning (and its consequences) are being falsely invoked, in other words.

Again, a few days later, I had cause to boot repeatedly from USB stick for some video card BIOS flashing. Sure enough,  after four or five successful boots from USB, with the reset button or ctrl-alt-del to cycle, I had the shutdown during POST and "the warning" - even though the system was set up in a configuration stable enough to withstand anything I throw at it within the OS.

I've also found that using TouchBIOS to change system settings (even minor ones like disabling integrated peripherals or the full screen logo) and then using TouchBIOS's own "restart" button to apply them will cause the system to power down - and then restart with "the warning" and default performance values. However, if I make the same settings change in TouchBIOS, and then use the main OS Shut Down command (and then power back up), it will behave itself - starting properly and applying my changes.

Trying to boil this down, it seems to me as though the BIOS doesn't respond properly to some powerdown/power cycle scenarios. Looks like it assumes that any multiple repeated  use of the reset button, Ctrl-Alt-Del, or the power button is the result of a failed overclock and reacts accordingly. It furthermore seems from my experience that using the "Restart"command inside the OS, or from TouchBIOS (instead of shutting down the system under OS control, and restarting it), will similarly prompt the BIOS to think that an overclock has failed.

I can't believe that this is intentional on Gigabyte's part. The board *should* store a flag in CMOS to indicate when the OS has successfully shut down/restarted, and thus should at very least be able to tell the difference between an unprompted restart after a BSOD/critical failure, and a user-initiated OS restart. Other motherboards don't freak out when you boot them to DOS a few times either.

I really don't like the way the board suddenly powers down midway through the POST sequence in these circumstances - as it withdraws power from the hard disks just as they're spinning up and running their self-test procedures. This caused one of the disks in a RAID 0 array to lose its configuration info last night. Luckily I was able to recreate it without losing any data.

So, how does this experience play with what other people have noticed? Have you ever got the "The system has experienced boot failures..." warning when you weren't overclocking (or when you were overclocking at settings you otherwise found to be stable)? Can you cause it by booting (and cycling) through DOS a few times?

Oh, just realised I was going to talk about a couple of TouchBIOS-related issues too, but figure I'll hit 'post' and leave my keyboard to cool down a bit. Over to you!  8)

Dark Mantis:
Hi and welcome to the Gigabyte Forum.

Thank you for your view of the issue and I am sure that a lot of it has foundation as I have already found that the use of the "reset" button can in fact cause the CMOS to be corrupted. Personally I never use it anyway as I prefer a hard shutdown if necessary. However I think your idea has validity and you should contact GGTS with it and make sure they are aware of the reason.

Just enter your email address and click on the language of choice.
GGTS   http://ggts.gigabyte.com/

Please expect several days for a reply.

Citizen Crazed:
Hiya DM, was hoping you might respond. Ummmm, yes, I''ve already got some experience with the response from GGTS as I already have one ticket open with them regarding TouchBIOS. I suspect I'm going to start another thread about that to see how widespread those  problems are. Anyway, back to this one.

As I intimated up top this is the first Gigabyte-based system I've put together in a while - but I have a fair bit of experience elsewhere. I'm an embedded systems designer and have done some ad hoc BIOS development for another brand in the dim and distant past. As such, I have a reasonably good idea of how things work under the hood - both at hardware and code level, although obviously things move on and clearly GB, with their dual BIOS implementation, do things a little different from my prior experience. From this point of view, I find your experience re. the reset button interesting.

From a technical standpoint, there is no reason why using the reset button should corrupt the CMOS data, in the true sense of the term. If this is what appears to be happening (and I've enough experience with this system to see where you're coming from), it's most likely either a bug in the BIOS code, or possibly, something that isn't a bug, but a "feature" that isn't working quite as intended.

Before I try and formulate a support question, can you give me (or point to a prior post) something that outlines prior experience of system behaviour during reset/reboot? When you talk about corrupted CMOS, what, exactly do you mean? Are we talking the BIOS suddenly reverting to initial defaults for no apparent reason,  showing garbled/impossible settings, failing to save settings when you hit F10, failing to even POST, or...?

Dark Mantis:
Hi

It is hard to say exactly what is happening when the CMOS gets corrupted but usually the system fails to boot and then the Backup BIOS flashes over the Main BIOS which if you have an older version in the Backup you find that suddenly the BIOS that you are booting from is out of date and needs configuring. I would just suggest that you try searching this forum for other examples. ;)

Wigpo:
Hello

I'm experincing the same thing or something very similar. I've just put together my new system,

Z68x-ud7-b3 BIOS F4/F8
i5 2500K
G.Skill 2x4GB 2133mhz
Gigabyte GTX 580 SOC
Corsair AX1200W

My memory defaults at 1600 and whenever I change the to XMP(2133) or manually sets 2133mhz, I may boot and use windows without problems.
However if Windows wants to restart and I restart the system powers down and powers up again after 3 sec and says CPU and memory clock reset due to overclocking. If I shut down and hit the power button there is no problem at 2133.
I haven't encountered any other stability issues at 2133mhz memory clock than restarting.
If I run at 2133 and uses ctrl+alt+del during POST it powers down and resets CPU/memory clock.
If I leave the memory at 1600 and raise the multiplier on the cpu, it allows me to restart.

There is no difference between BIOS version F4 and F8
I have also cleared CMOS without any further success.
I don't believe the CMOS gets corrupted since all other settings are the same except CPU(if changed)/memory clock.

Any ideas are welcome

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