I am trying to use the hardware watchdog timer that is built into the chipset used on this board. I want to use it to reset the machine if it hangs. It isn't working - the Linux Kernel driver is saying that it has been disabled by the motherboard. After looking at the chipset specification I have determined that this is indeed possible. The driver works on a board with an earlier chipset version that uses the same program interface, suggesting it's not a fault in the driver, and the actual code looks correct anyway.
Gigabyte support have been giving me the run-around over this. They say that the watchdog timer is supported, but won't say what software they've used to verify this. They say they don't support Linux, and want evidence that this doesn't work under Windows. My difficulty is that I've been unable to find anything to indicate that Windows makes any use of the hardware watchdog timer, which makes it difficult to demonstrate that it doesn't work under Windows for this board.
Is anyone aware of any "official" Windows software that I could run that would show that, on this board, the hardware watchdog timer cannot reset the machine?