GA-Z77-D3H bios gfx corruption, slow, and unresponsive

[micronaut]

Hi,

I recently put together a GA-Z77-D3H motherboard with an i5 3570k, and 8gb Crucial DDR3 PC3-12800C9 (2x4gb) Ram.

The system booted fine, and I updated to bios F11 using @Bios.  The software reported no problems but after I rebooted, the system has become extremely slow to respond.  It attempts to boot windows 7 but the startup animation runs at about 1 frame every 5 seconds, and I can't see if it's progressing past the animation.  The bios is also extremely slow to respond, taking over 5 minutes to appear while holding del.  q-flash is the same.  When it does load the bios, the graphics are corrupted and it extremely slow to move the mouse or select menu items.  

I am currently attempting to load the F13 bios on Q-Flash but it is taking over an hour to load from USB.  Updating from F11 to F12 made no difference.

Has anybody else experienced this issue?  I can't work out at the moment whether it's the CPU that's defective, or the motherboard, but I would imagine if the CPU was faulty, it wouldn't post at all.

I can't get the motherboard to boot the B_BIOS backup.  It doesn't seem to be doing this automatically (is there a method of forcing a restore on the backup, or is that likely to be dead as well?).

Does anybody have any similar experience or advice on fixing the problem?  I would like to avoid an RMA and having to dismantle the whole system.

Thanks for any assistance.

EDIT:  Same problem on F10, F11, and F12.  No way to repair. Must be defective.  Will have to RMA. 

[kangoo]

i would not recommend using @BIOS for upgrade, there are several reports of problems with this utility, but to be honest i have never heard of such strange results which you experience now

this can be also caused by incompatibility with some of other components therefore i strongly advise to upgrade to bios F13 using Q-Flash:
http://www.gigabyte.com/products/product-page.aspx?pid=4140#bios
after i browsed this and other forums i found out it helped many  users with different problems

even waiting a few hours for bios update to F13 will be faster then doing RMA :-)

backup (dual) bios - please check if this mobo has switch for setting which bios is bootable
if there isn't one then:

"You can try to kick in the backup BIOS by shutting down the PSU from the wall, then hold down your case power button in and then turn on the power supply button, a few seconds later the board will start, shut off the power supply then.   Then you can turn on the power supply again and power up the board normally and DualBIOS will kick in."

[Dark Mantis]

Hi

I take it that everything was working alright until you did the first BIOS update. If so it is possible that something went wrong with the update especially as you used @BIOS to do it. This is always more suseptable to problems as it runs on top of the operating system. QFlash is a much safer bet.

Anyway after running the update did you load Optimised BIOS Defaults ? Also did you keep the DMI settings when you did the upgrade ?

[micronaut]

Hi,

Thanks for the replies to my questions.  I'll try the PSU on/off idea tonight to try to get the backup bios to kick in.  I tried powering on and off rapidly before and it didn't change anything.  I flashed to F13 with q-flash but it didn't change anything.  I'm unable to change the DMI settings when I use q-flash as the screen is corrupted.  (I click on a bit of the corruption I imagine is the "yes" button to get it to flash at the moment.  Clicking on the right splurge seems to cancel, and clicking the left splurge starts the progress bar).  Also, it doesn't prompt to reboot or shutdown after the update. It just drops back to the file select menu. 

I've not been able to find anybody that has corrupt graphics or slow system type problems.  It has been quite bizarre as the system effectively post boots, which it wouldn't do if the bios got corrupted. It's like the motherboard isn't compatible with its own bios, or @bios has corrupted it such that it's knackered the CPU, although I would imagine this definitely wouldn't post boot.

  

[micronaut]

update:  Holding down the power button and switching on the mains power did invoke the BIOS backup.  I am using an Apple cinema display monitor and noticed that I had left the USB hub connector plugged into a USB port on the motherboard.  I removed this and the motherboard BIOS started to respond quicker.  The graphics corruption persists on the Apple display but I was able to navigate through it and update to the F13 bios.  This corrected most of the graphical problems and the machine is able to boot into Windows again.

Thanks for the assistance, this has been a great help.  I'll keep an eye out for more BIOS updates.  It looks like the GA-Z77-D3H has issues with the USB ports or controllers on the Apple screen.  

System is running now though so RMA avoided  

[micronaut]

Still having problems with the cinema display and corrupt bios.  Same as here:

http://www.tomshardware.co.uk/forum/311840-12-cannot-enter-bios-blue-screen-gigabyte-ud3h

and here:

http://www.overclock.net/t/1252984/my-gigabyte-ga-z77mx-d3h-has-some-serious-bios-issues

Has anybody else encountered a corrupt bios screen?  At the moment, I can only access the bios when the PCI-e card is removed and the monitor is plugged into the internal graphics port.  If the graphics card is in, and the monitor plugged into it then I get a black screen during startup with no bios splash screen, and entering the bios results in a solid bright blue screen. 

The 3D bios is functional on internal graphics, but the advanced screen is completely corrupt.  The boot options menu is also corrupt, as in the picture in the 2nd link above.  Currently, I suspect the display range of the Apple monitor, but I don't know if it's something more serious.  All of the bios updates so far haven't made any difference.

[Dark Mantis]

Have you tried it with a normal monitor ? If not I would sugest that as your next option. At least it will take away one variable.

[micronaut]

Unfortunately I don't have access to another monitor at this time, but yes that would answer the question.  I just wondered in the short term if Gigabyte or anybody else had seen this problem on specific brands of monitors.  I heard from one of the people on a forum above that they had tried it theirs on a number of alternative monitors and it worked, so it does look like it's the monitor.

[Beekeeper]

tried with F14 bios?
http://download.gigabyte.eu/FileList/BIOS/mb_bios_ga-z77-d3h_f14.exe

what happens if you use add-in vga, not integrated on?

[Vovan]

This morning I got the same trouble after update to F14 with @BIOS - no Windows boot (obviously SATA mode changed from AHCI to IDE after flash), no entering to BIOS, no Q-Flash, i.e. nothing works.

even waiting a few hours for bios update to F13 will be faster then doing RMA :-)

But I found better solution - just make DOS bootable USB disk (Google for this), download F14 directly from GYGABYTE site, open it to USB. Disconnect all disks from board, insert USB pen and turn on computer. System will load from USB disk and automatically updates BIOS. This saved my board.

[Vovan]

Addition: I tried flash all available on GIGABYTE site BIOS version - from F10 to F14. The latest working is F11. F12-F14 don't work - i.e. can't enter BIOS, though booting. It doesn't matter how to flash - from DOS or by Q-FLASH. Probably there was miracle on morning with F14. )))

Changes in F12-F14 include some improvements 

[Vovan]

This issue seems to be related to some USB device connected. Just unconnect all of them.