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Gigabyte X99 UD4 Won't Boot Into Bios Problem (I found out the cause it)

kangking

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I am brand new to GIGABYTE MBs after years of really good luck with ASUS.

I build systems for clients (low volume) and for myself - both mostly as a hobby.  This is my first Gigabyte build.

HAVING THE EXACT SAME PROBLEM - GOING INTO BIOS at boot HANGS THE SYSTEM AT A BLANK SCREEN! I have tried bios versions F12, F11 and F10 - all producing the same result.

My system:  Win 7 x64 SP1; X99-UD4 MB; i7 5820K; PNY GTX 780; 850watt Thermaltake; some model of Titan CPU cooler    (well, it works well); 8GB ballistic sport DD4 2400 (will add more ram when everything works)

EVERYTHING works great except for getting into BIOS, which is a big deal to me.  The overclocking available between the MB, CPU and cooler is incredible.  About to try booting with all drives connected to see if this looks exactly like what you all saw


==================

And removing all the SATA hard drives (all NTFS) DOES indeed allow me to get into Bios.  Setting the type to RAID (instead of AHCI) does not help me as I do not have a RAID arrangement.

WOW....Cannot believe that after more than 1/2 year Gigabyte has not fixed this!  Surely, if the BIOS is accessible without drives, there is someway to get into when they are connected...UNLESS...there is hard-coded instruction that looks for drives before they reprogram-able instructions begin to execute...hard to imagine, but maybe THAT's why there was a rev 1.1 board issued.

And IF that is the case, they sure as heck better not leave the early buyers hanging.  That is something you expect from a cut-rate supplier.  (Almost three months since any BIOS update.  Not hopeful. )  If in the end they don't fix this and they don't swap out the boards (assuming no bios fix) I will never use them again and make darn sure as many people as possible know about what they did....we'll wait and see.....

yeah I hear you. I know a lot of people have this problem. I would go as far as to say this is a widespread problem. Like how NVidia had that issue with their GTX 970s only really having 3.5 gb of usable ram instead of the advertised 4gb, it was really a 3.5gb partition and a .5gb partition. I'm not sure why, but companies love to act like their s*** doesn't stink! Even though I knew this already, I still bought a GTX 970 lol. It's still a great deal, personally I never cared about that as long as it performs as advertised.

Gigabyte is a great company and personally I think they make the best motherboards. I've tried most brands including Asus. Their boards are good but have problems as well, any manufacturer can. The power consumption on this Gigabyte board is better than the competition. this board is 100w more efficient than companies like ASrock and MSI watched a youtube video on this board comparing it with those. Nice to know they use higher quality components, with better efficiency, the board runs cooler too. Easy, Stable overclocking too!

This Bios issue is a stupid bug that they are not fixing because of their stubborness. and maybe their reputation for actually being a good brand. After going back and forth with them for months they want me to RMA the board. No way im going to do that. If I do that, i'll be without a computer for who knows how long, and who knows if that will even fix the issue. It's not a hardware issue judging from the symtoms. It's some stupid bug with the bios that can be fixed with an update I'm sure. they are ignoring it though, and they don't care it seems. It's really annoying I agree.

The only way I fixed it was, like I said, to get a PCI E Sata card and just hook up any NTFS Drives to that. It sucks if windows is your main operating system, not sure if that would slow it down @ all. I can't notice any difference though! I'm Using this board to run Mac OSX which is why I have a lot of HFS Drives. Mac is my main operating system so I'ts not too big a deal to me. I'm running this computer mainly as a hackintosh, but I dual boot into windows about 10-20 percent of the time. If i was a hardcore windows user I'd be pissed. Actually I would take the board back and not ever buy Gigabyte products again, the way they are acting. I mainly buy Gigabyte Boards because they are the easiest to use on a hackintosh. This is my 2nd gigabyte I am personally using. I've done a few builds for others with gigabyte boards, a few asus hackintosh's, and built Windows systems, AMD based systems. I have built with many motherboard brands. Only one I havent tried is yet ASrock. I still think Gigabyte is the best (when it works right). I read a lot of reviews on a lot of X99 motherboards even from Asus (in my opinion the only competition). All of them are buggy it looks like. Asus's customer service doesn't seem any better judging from a lot of online reviews. Looks like they pull the same B.S. as gigabyte. I think thats just how it goes in this field
« Last Edit: April 20, 2015, 11:45:07 am by kangking »

dmdilks

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  • "If it isn't broke don't fix it"
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I'm just saying the reason they might have not fix it. That it might not be a big problem. I myself have not had that problem. Plus I have USB stuff plugged into and not having the USB problem too.

The only reason I'm at the bios I'm at was to see it fix the BSOD problem, but it didn't. The BSOD is a driver problem from Ati. I can't update to the newest driver because I run a 39" LED TV. The driver makes the screen look really bad.

I would still be at the first bios on the board when I got it. I'm not saying it isn't a problem. But I don't know when they decide when a problem like this and when they will fix it.

Plus I have said before that they were to quick to come out with the X99 boards too. I just can't wait to see what is going to happen when they start selling all boards that will support DDR4 memory.
« Last Edit: April 20, 2015, 07:07:12 pm by dmdilks »
X299X Aorus Master, i9-9940x-3.30Ghz, 64gb G-Skill DDR4-2400, MSI RTX-3070 8GB, Cooler Master case, Thermal-take PSU 850w, 1-M2-NMVe SSD-512gb, 3-Pny 1TB SSD, 2-WD Raptors 1TB, Win 10 pro 64bit, Asus 35" 144Mhz Monitor.

kangking

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I'm just saying the reason they might have not fix it. That it might not be a big problem. I myself have not had that problem. Plus I have USB stuff plugged into and not having the USB problem too.

The only reason I'm at the bios I'm at was to see it fix the BSOD problem, but it didn't. The BSOD is a driver problem from Ati. I can't update to the newest driver because I run a 39" LED TV. The driver makes the screen look really bad.

I would still be at the first bios on the board when I got it. I'm not saying it isn't a problem. But I don't know when they decide when a problem like this and when they will fix it.

Plus I have said before that they were to quick to come out with the X99 boards too. I just can't wait to see what is going to happen when they start selling all boards that will support DDR4 memory.

can you verify that you can access bios in AHCI mode with NTFS drives connected?

Hans

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Well, Gigabyte tech  support has been very responsive.  They insisted it was NOT NTFS drives, despite apparent findings.

I went along and we swapped many drives around.  SURE ENOUGH, could get into BIOS (no hang) with combinations of NTFS drives attached, independent of SATA connectors.

There is a particular drive, in my case a 1.5TB Seagate drive (model ST31500341AS\ST315005N1A1AS-RK) that, once connected, hangs attemps to access Bios.  Doesn't matter whether it is one of three drives or the only one.  If it is connected, it hangs the system on bios access. This drive has the latest firmware (CC1H).

Gigabyte indicating this appears to be a firmware issue with some drives out there.  I know in my case, this drive is the oldest of the three and the most recent firmware seems to be quite a few years old. 

Gigabyte is still working with me to explore.  I will post as we (hopefully) learn more

dmdilks

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  • "If it isn't broke don't fix it"
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can you verify that you can access bios in AHCI mode with NTFS drives connected?

I just tested it doing AHCI, IDE, or Raid. It doesn't matter which way I have it set too. I can get into the Bios no matter what.

Like I said other than the BSOD, this board has been great. Plus having installed the video driver 4 or 5 times. It hasn't BSOD on me for over 2 months.
« Last Edit: April 23, 2015, 06:43:22 am by dmdilks »
X299X Aorus Master, i9-9940x-3.30Ghz, 64gb G-Skill DDR4-2400, MSI RTX-3070 8GB, Cooler Master case, Thermal-take PSU 850w, 1-M2-NMVe SSD-512gb, 3-Pny 1TB SSD, 2-WD Raptors 1TB, Win 10 pro 64bit, Asus 35" 144Mhz Monitor.

kangking

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Well, Gigabyte tech  support has been very responsive.  They insisted it was NOT NTFS drives, despite apparent findings.

I went along and we swapped many drives around.  SURE ENOUGH, could get into BIOS (no hang) with combinations of NTFS drives attached, independent of SATA connectors.

There is a particular drive, in my case a 1.5TB Seagate drive (model ST31500341AS\ST315005N1A1AS-RK) that, once connected, hangs attemps to access Bios.  Doesn't matter whether it is one of three drives or the only one.  If it is connected, it hangs the system on bios access. This drive has the latest firmware (CC1H).

Gigabyte indicating this appears to be a firmware issue with some drives out there.  I know in my case, this drive is the oldest of the three and the most recent firmware seems to be quite a few years old. 

Gigabyte is still working with me to explore.  I will post as we (hopefully) learn more

good! Thats good to hear. Unfortunately that isn't the case with my board! I have 2 fairly new drives of high quality, so I have no idea why they wouldn't work, these are my ntfs drives - 1 samsung 840 evo 120gb ssd & 1 Western Digital 1tb Caviar Black. Both should work no problem as they are both pretty new and widely used, but unfortunetly they dont.  And as soon as i convert either drive that doesn't work to HFS it works no problems!!! lol. My workaround was just to use an old pci e sata adapter I had from my old system. Now I have 0 problems with the board.

can you verify that you can access bios in AHCI mode with NTFS drives connected?

I just tested it doing AHCI, IDE, or Raid. It doesn't matter which way I have it set too. I can get into the Bios no matter what.

Like I said other than the BSOD, this board has been great. Plus having installed the video driver 4 or 5 times. It hasn't BSOD on me for over 2 months.

Good! If your having a bsod problem try setting xhci hand off to disabled in bios see if it makes a difference. Also change xhci mode from "smart auto" to "auto" or "manual". Also make sure your copy of windows is fully updated with latest hotfixes! I had a few bsod with some usb devices before this, now I have 0 blue screens and system has been smooth for a while!

Well, Gigabyte tech  support has been very responsive.  They insisted it was NOT NTFS drives, despite apparent findings.

I went along and we swapped many drives around.  SURE ENOUGH, could get into BIOS (no hang) with combinations of NTFS drives attached, independent of SATA connectors.

There is a particular drive, in my case a 1.5TB Seagate drive (model ST31500341AS\ST315005N1A1AS-RK) that, once connected, hangs attemps to access Bios.  Doesn't matter whether it is one of three drives or the only one.  If it is connected, it hangs the system on bios access. This drive has the latest firmware (CC1H).

Gigabyte indicating this appears to be a firmware issue with some drives out there.  I know in my case, this drive is the oldest of the three and the most recent firmware seems to be quite a few years old. 

Gigabyte is still working with me to explore.  I will post as we (hopefully) learn more

Hello Hans,
did you solved your problem?
As i understand, gigabyte says, the problem could be the firmware of some drives.

I got the same problem, BIOS won't start if my two new SSDs (Samsung EVO 850 1TB) are connected to the SATAs. My PC expert change the SATA ports many times, but no luck.
I have Gigabyte X99 UD 7 WiFi Rev 1.0.

If there is someone who solved the problem with the hint by kangking, connect the drives to a PCIe SATA Card, please write in this thread.
My OS: Windows 7 64 Bit Professional
Thanks
« Last Edit: July 21, 2015, 08:45:47 am by rubbersoul »

I have the exact same problem like rubbersoul.
If my Samsung EVO SSD 512Gb is connected I can´t go into bios!
If I disconnect my sata cable for SSD I can go into BIOS!

It is a OS from Acronis clone Win 7 64Bit Ultimate from my last PC.

With a fresh OS installation I can go into BIOS with the same SSD EVO drive!
Why not with an Acronis Clone?
System with the cloned drive runs fine by the way...

I have GA X99-UD3 Rev 1 Mainboard.

I have the PC from 28.February 2015 now  and had two x99-UD3 broken Mainboards in this time.
Hope that the 3rd lasts longer....
« Last Edit: July 21, 2015, 12:23:58 pm by Backbeat »

Kevin

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I have every confidence in kangking's words. 

The BIOS is rubbish, if you cannot open it. 

C: + Optical drive is fine, but once you add another drive, there is no access to BIOS.

My experience is that, even though I am using a PS2 keyboard and mouse I consistently have crashes that cause the graphics driver to fail then load again.  Mouse movements, movies in browser, game.  They all crash.

Reboots end in a blank screen every time.  I should not need to hold down my "on button" to get to a complete shutdown.

The X99 chip is between the inputs (mouse or other OS2 or USB's) and the outputs (graphics driver) and there are too many crashes of the Graphical User Interface.  Even highlight>copy>paste is not working properly.

This is a hardware problem (X99) and the software problem (BIOS).

Come on Gigabyte, fix this folly, or I will return may GA-X99-Gaming 5 to my local retailer, and buy an ASUS !!!!

Kevin

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Re: Gigabyte X99 UD4 Won't Boot Into Bios Problem (I found out the cause it)
« Reply #24 on: August 05, 2015, 12:46:24 am »
I'm sure by now a lot of people who have this board are complaining about not being able to boot into the bios after installing windows or connecting their hard drives. Bios will boot to a black screen if any drives are connected especially after windows is installed. I have now found out the issue as to why it is doing that, but before I explain let me give some background on the situation.

I have been talking to customer support, and while they have been some what helpful, they are dodging the issue. They know some of their boards are not fully working at this time. They are trying to tell me "we shipped a lot of boards with no problems" and I'm sure they did, but when I look at online reviews tons of people seem to have this problem, so it look like they shipped a lot of buggy boards, or shipped them with a BIOS revision that we are not using.

Let me say that I think Gigabyte is a great company and in my opinion I think they make the best motherboards. For x99 systems, none of the motherboard manufacturer's have come with a perfect board yet. I've looked at every board out from every manufacturer and they all have mixed reviews and tons of bugs. I think this comes with the territory of buying the newest technology, so I'm not too upset. I just don't like when they try to downplay the issue to the customer. This black bios screen is annoying to me, but at least it doesn't affect functionality after setup.

Ok so heres the solution. It turns out this is a file system issue. NTFS Formatted drives are the cause. How do I know this? Because I have a bunch of HFS+ drives that work with the system no problem. As soon as I connect ANY NTFS drive bios will not display. Gigabyte tried to tell me "oh only certain drives are compatible" (yeah right) so I reformatted some of my NTFS drives to HFS+ And vice versa. Every time bios would work with HFS+ drives and not with NTFS. I can have as many HFS+ Drives connected as I want and bios boots perfect. If i connect even 1 NTFS drive it will boot to black screen. No matter the bios settings, I have tried each bios page as well. From the starting page, to the classic, to the HD tweak page etc. I have went as far as trying EVERY bios revision from the default (f8 i believe) to F12, no go. Some people are saying if you change SATA Controller to Raid this is a workaround that will make the bios boot right, but I haven't tried that yet, nor does it sound like something I want to try as I don't use raid.

So thats the issue here. Not the drives, something about the NTFS file system and the bios. Seems like this could easily be fixed in a bios update. I hope someone else who I haven't talked to reads this message from Gigabyte so they can release a fix as soon as possible.

If you dont know HFS+ is the Mac file system, NTFS is for Windows. That's all it is. Just a filesystem issue. Doesn't seem too hard to fix at all.

Have a look at my recent post.

http://forum.giga-byte.co.uk/index.php?topic=16246.0