GA-H77M D3H Bios missing ?

[Albert55]

Hi all,

My pc ran fine untill I wanted to do a clean install of W 10 About 1,5 week ago.
When it needed to restart it suddenly didn't boot up anymore. Surprisingly I got a blue screen, saw a cursor blink once
in the left top corner and in the middle top it shows "Gigabyte - UEFI Dualbios".
Have done all I can think of. Clear Cmos. Disconnected all hdd's/ssd's. Disconnected all cables and reconnected them.
Doublecheck if all ok. Removed all memory except 2Gb in bank 1. Removed Cmos battery, shortened the Pins with a screwdriver for 5-10 seconds and inserted battery again.

Now the backup bios should take over when the main is corrupt or missing. But apparently that is not happening!
The mobo was equipped with bios Version F14, which is a beta. So I've downloaded F12, grabbed an old 1 Gb, formatted it to FAT32 and extracted the download to it. It shows 2 files:Efiflash and the biosfile.
The USB stick has a led showing activity or not (out then)

When I press the power button the fans start turning, I hear 1 beep, the led on the stick lights up, I very briefly see the start up logo, at same time the led on the stick blinks and then I'm shown the blue screen as described above.

THen the pc turns off and the whole procedure starts all over again. It seems Efiflash isn't starting and so the bios cannot be flashed nor does the back up bios do what it is supposed to do. Anyone got any idea what more options there are available ?

RGds,
Albert

[shadowsports]

Greetings Albert,

Formatting a USB stick Fat32 and copying efiflash and a BIOS image to it doesn't make it bootable.

Try this.  Remove the USB stick.  Press and hold the power button to turn the system off.  Now turn the switch on the power supply off.  Press and hold the power button on the case for about 20 sec.  Now release.  Wait a minute or two. 

Turn the switch on the PSU back on.  Press the power button the case.  Immediately press and hold the ALT and F10 keys.  Hold for about 30 sec.

What happens?

[Albert55]

Oke! The main bios is corrupted the system will be recovered from the back up bios.
Load optimized Defaults and then reboot is next. But I had not attached any disks yet-
Will add two and revert

[Albert55]

DVD Rom and SSD added. Guess what ? I continues with the Installation of W10!
Thanks a lot! That was the trick that did it!

Rgds,
Albert

[shadowsports]

DVD Rom and SSD added. Guess what ? I continues with the Installation of W10!
Thanks a lot! That was the trick that did it!

Rgds,
Albert

Glad I could help.

Remember to implement a back up solution moving forward.

[Albert55]

Now logged in from the up and runing pc.
One question left. Just curiousity. When bios was restored from back up it showed version F9
(while before crashing it had beta F14) I have now updated (from within Windows 10 using @bios)) to F12.
I know, potentionally risky, but it worked. After restarting bios showed version F12.
Is version F12 now also written to back up bios or will that remain F9 ?

[shadowsports]

Now logged in from the up and runing pc.
One question left. Just curiousity. When bios was restored from back up it showed version F9
(while before crashing it had beta F14) I have now updated (from within Windows 10 using @bios)) to F12.
I know, potentionally risky, but it worked. After restarting bios showed version F12.
Is version F12 now also written to back up bios or will that remain F9 ?

Greetings,
That's a good question.

If your board has BIOS switches, and they are not set for Dual BIOS operation, its possible to maintain two separate BIOS revisions and start the system from either depending on switch settings.  If no switches exist or Dual BIOS mode is set active, the BIOS will synchronize, so both would be F12 (if this was true in your case).

My advice, don't use @BIOS.  You are asking for trouble.  Risky, yes, it introduces another potential point of failure.

You can back up and flash within the existing BIOS.  Safest way, not going to harp on it any more.

One thing I will reiterate though...  Back up, Back up, Back up.

Macrium, Acronis, CloneZilla, even window back up..  just pick one    

Cheers