minor note: using usb female to ps2 adapter allows me to get into MIT in bios (many have this issue). Bios FC does not fix this. yes, i have bios set for legacy USB.
there are a few posts here with similar issues. i just went through a few days of not knowing what was up. bad ram? bad board? psu? bios...do i need to rma? a dark time. but now my machine seems healthy.
long story short: installed windows, all gigabyte drivers, some of the untilities. whatever the default is if you start the install cd and walk away. system seemed ok but one of my audio plugins wasn't being found by my host app. then the host would crash.
everything was in the place (plugins folder had .dll, host pointed to right folder, etc) so i tested ram with memtest86 v4. fail. removed second set of ram (3 2gigs sticks). passed. so i figured second set of ram was bad. problem still persisted. i read lots of things, pulled on hair, tried many things.
at the end i:
1) made sure sets of ram were matched. they were.
2) reseated ram. this was a bit strange. all clips clicked. clips were all the way up. then went through and pushed on each end of ram stick. i swear a few of them shifted a bit more. but clip did not move. so now i wonder if ram seating is tricky on this board.
3) installed bios FC from gigabyte site. used qflash in bios.
success!?
ran memtest86 v4 all tests twice. passed.
ran prime95 for 16 hours. no errors. cpu was <40C when i rebooted into bios. no temp LEDs ever came on.
this isn't conclusive. was it re-seating? the bios update? swapping ram sets? not sure. hope this helps someone.
now i have reinstalled windows. downloaded current lan driver from gigabyte site. have not installed any other drivers. only usb3 seems to be missing in device manager.
i have been told it's a bad idea to install most or all the gigabyte utilities. so i'm not going to install any.
