GA-Z77-D3H failure to boot following bios update

[lenbowers]

Wish I hadn't tried!

Updated my bios this morning to F22. Since then, no boot. At best boots to a windows repair screen that doesn't work. I was running windows 7 x64 professional.

I have set the HDD to AHCI - this solution seems to have worked for a lot of people, but it doesn't work for me.

I was even driven to consider reinstalling windows, but it won't do an installl from the DVD drive, as even when I boot from the windows disk and try to install, it tells me it can't to the HDD because it's partition type is GPT.

In the boot order section of the bios I have UEFI myHDDname. There is an alternative myHDDname option, but if I try to boot from that, it is not recognised at all.

I am out of options. Any suggestions?

Len

[autotech]

use a usb to redo the bios. If that doesn't work unplug computer and take out battery for a couple of hours then retry. It works sometimes.

[lenbowers]

Thanks for the advice.

Yes, repeated flashing the bios starting from step one, downloading the file, using a different mirror. No joy.

Then tried rolling back to the backup bios using the power switch on an off method. Strangely this results in the old gigabyte splash screen, but not quite the old bios version - the interface is still new. Anyway, no improvement.

Any other suggestions, anyone?

Len

[lenbowers]

Doesn't really look like many people are around here to offer support, but here is an update just in case.

I managed to get some access to the HDD by booting up with a Windows recovery disk inn the DVD drive. At first this would not work, and gave a message "This version of system recovery options is not compatible with the version of windows you are trying to repair". After a bit of internet investigation I brought up the boot choice on bootup to find there were two entries for the DVD drive, one preceded by UEFI. The windows recovery disk would then fire up. Windows startup repair did not, of course, work. Neither did a system restore (but I did not expect it to really).

I got access to the command prompt and was able to establish that my HDD had not failed, neither was it obviously corrupted. All my files were present and I was able to back up the more recent work since my last backup to a usb stick. So I am secure that I have all my files, which is more than anyone else in this position.

I daresay I could now manage to reinstalll windows, but I am not sure that would solve the problem. I am now convinced the issue is in the bios settings. I reflashed back up to F22 to root around again in the boot order etc, settings. UEFI MyHDDname is number one. Then my DVD drive, then USB. I disable the last which was showing PO MyHDDname, as this does not work. I made sure SATA was set to AHCI.

And, I am still in the same position, unchanged. Power on the machine, bios splash screen, then it powers off and restarts, bios splash screen, then windows splash screen, then to startup repair wich as I already know from many tries, does not work.

Are there any other SATA or boot settings I should change? It just seems to be an issue of bring the bios into the right state to set my HDD into proper boot up motion.

Len

[autotech]

I am taking it you only have a sata hard drive. Here is a trick I used in the past. Unplug all sata devices and any IDE also except for the hard drive you want to boot from. If that works then go to disk management by right clicking my computer then click on manage then on left click on disk management.
Make sure your hard drive is listed as c drive or you can just click on computer and look that way.

Then shut it off and add 1 sata item or ide at a time, restart each time and make sure drive letter is correct and doesn't change your hard drive.

[lenbowers]

In case anyone should have the same problem and look here for an answer. After much effort, investigation and tweaking with no outcome, I swapped the bios setting from AHCI to RAID. I have only one HDD, and it was not setup with RAID. Nevertheless, this cleared the problem and the machine immediately booted up to windows in pristine condition.

My interpretation is that flashing the bios and selecting optimised defaults always chooses IDE as the setting. This does something to the setup of the HDD or its controller. Setting to RAID cleared whatever the problem was. A bigger guess on my part would be that this has something to do with plug and play, but I don't know what I am talking about really.

I am happy nevertheless.

I hope this helps anyone else who passes this way.

Oh, and the computer is working much better with the updated bios.

Len

[warewulf]

In case anyone should have the same problem and look here for an answer. After much effort, investigation and tweaking with no outcome, I swapped the bios setting from AHCI to RAID. I have only one HDD, and it was not setup with RAID. Nevertheless, this cleared the problem and the machine immediately booted up to windows in pristine condition.

My interpretation is that flashing the bios and selecting optimised defaults always chooses IDE as the setting. This does something to the setup of the HDD or its controller. Setting to RAID cleared whatever the problem was. A bigger guess on my part would be that this has something to do with plug and play, but I don't know what I am talking about really.

I am happy nevertheless.

I hope this helps anyone else who passes this way.

Oh, and the computer is working much better with the updated bios.

Len

I know, old topic...

I just had a similar problem --

I know this is an old thread, but I recently ran into this problem with this motherboard while working on a customers PC: I upgraded the bios to the lastest non-beta version and then wasn't able to boot Windows 7. After trying every bios listed on their website, it still wouldn't work. I was about ready to tell the customer to buy a new PC since this is a few years old...

I looked through the bios settings since it would still load. The hard drive was defaulted to IDE instead of AHCI. Since all modern PC's should be AHCI, I changed it. Once I did that, the PC was able to boot. This should be the resolution for most having this problem after a bios update.

Irresponsible for Gigabyte to change this setting since I'm sure many either did a clean install or replace their PC's after it wouldn't boot.