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78LMT-S2P Bios problem, need help updating

78LMT-S2P Bios problem, need help updating
« on: September 18, 2013, 05:29:51 pm »
I'm desperately hoping someone can help me out here. I have had this board running in a machine for a couple weeks. I only just got around to running @bios to see if there was a new bios available, and there was, which according to @bios is version F3.

After installing it, my computer has become extremely sluggish. I'm running an AMD FX-6300, 8 gigs of ram (2 sticks corsair ddr 1333), seagate 500 gb sata 3 drive. It's really just a work machine so nothing fancy. Window 7 Pro.

After the bios update, the machine gets more and more sluggish. I loaded optimized defaults in the bios before rebooting, and then reset all options as needed.

I went to the motherboard page on the site and there are 2 newer bios versions, which I downloaded. But @Bios can't use the files. It downloads self-extracting executables for each bios version, inside are a copy of autoexec.bat and flashspi.exe, and the file which I assume is the bios file, with an extention like .F5a. @Bios tels me "Bios Partnumber(AWARD) not correct" when trying to use this file to update, as it does the same with each other version.

I want to try to update to a newer bios to see if this sluggish performance goes away and I can't seem to figure out how to properly flash manually. I can't seem to locate the file in qflash in the bios to do it that way.

**Update** I freshly formatted a flash drive as fat 32 and put the extracted .f5a file on it. Qflash sees the flash drive, and properly reports the drive size, but sees no files on it, nor will it let me save a backup of the bios to the flash drive. Still no luck.
« Last Edit: September 18, 2013, 05:45:05 pm by lblacklol »

Tiger

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Re: 78LMT-S2P Bios problem, need help updating
« Reply #1 on: September 18, 2013, 06:30:31 pm »
It seems to me you are trying to use a BIOS file for a GA-78LMT-S2P that is a different REVISION than the one you are using. The Revision number is printed in the lower left corner of the motherboard. What Rev. is your motherboard?

The FX-6300 supports the use of two DIMMs of memory at 1866MHz speed. What is your memory part number? What changes to the BIOS settings have you made besides loading optimized defaults?
1) GA-Z97X-Gaming 7, G3258,
2) GA-990FXA-UD3 Rev. 1.1, FX-8350
3) GA-AM1M-S2P, Sempron 3850 Kabini

Re: 78LMT-S2P Bios problem, need help updating
« Reply #2 on: September 18, 2013, 06:53:23 pm »
Well I'll have to pull the case off and whatnot to tell for sure, I ordered it from newegg who listed it as revision 5. It'll take a bit til my phone calls calm down here until I can crack it open.

As far as changes, I noticed the sluggish performance immediately after the bios flash. No changes were made, I've run everything at default since the board came, all stock, no voltage bumping, no overclocking, whatever was default.

Now there is a hiccup. The reason I bios flashed was because when this board came, windows was not detecting the onboard ethernet. Also in the bios, in whatever section that is where it's supposed to pick up a signal, it didn't. I haven't been able to flash the bios previously, so I went out and bought a gigabit pci ethernet adapter for the time being, and disabled onboard in the bios. However I kept the receipt for it should I be able to get the onboard to work. Well, I flashed the bios hoping to get that working (never know, right?).

Anyway, after loading defaults, I forgot to turn off the onboard. Windows went through a fit trying to find the onboard again like it did originally during the system build, and that's when I noticed the sluggish behavior (I doubt the enabled onboard nic was responsible for the sluggishness, just a coincidental happenstance.)  I rebooted and killed it in the bios, all was good, except things lag.

When I say lag and things are sluggish, sometimes there's a serious delay trying to open files or programs, literally waiting seconds where before there wasn't. Other times... it's that sluggish that only the "enthusiast" crowd will recognize. You know what I mean? that quarter second delay in the UI, that extra pause clicking the start button or waiting for a mouseover to work, that extra second explorer takes to open, those weird things that tell you that something isn't right, but you've got no idea what.

Re: 78LMT-S2P Bios problem, need help updating
« Reply #3 on: September 18, 2013, 07:08:08 pm »
I didn't realize the revisions of the boards were classified differently. After looking at that, I went back and sure enough there's a different page for the higher revisions (as I'm sure you already knew). the only higher bios available is a beta bios, not sure it'd fix this weird crap I have going on anyway.

Another thing that I realized... I have my sata drive running with AHCI. I set it up as such prior to installing win 7. Obviously on bios flash, it reverted, and I did change it before going into windows again. But out of curiosity I checked out the registry key that lets you flip on AHCI after windows is installed, and mine wasn't set to "0" to enable AHCI, it was a 3. No idea what that means, I did put it at 0 and reboot to ensure AHCI was still enabled (not that there's a whole lot of gains with a single non SSD drive, but still). No idea if something there is borked up or what.

Tiger

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Re: 78LMT-S2P Bios problem, need help updating
« Reply #4 on: September 18, 2013, 07:17:18 pm »
The f5a BIOS is not for Revision 5 of the GA-78LMT-S2P.

The Atheros LAN Driver for ethernet is available in the downloads section as is the VGA driver for onboard graphics.
1) GA-Z97X-Gaming 7, G3258,
2) GA-990FXA-UD3 Rev. 1.1, FX-8350
3) GA-AM1M-S2P, Sempron 3850 Kabini