help with Dual BIOS & Xpress Bios rescue

[GigThug]

hi guys

i have the GA-MA 785GT-UD3H

 gigabyte says it has these to features which can help in case of BIOS failure or coruppted BIOS... (i have both as gigabyte says)

but the problem is that gigabyte doesnt provide any information about them, how it works , in which conditon etc.......

do i need to activate these features? or to install he xpress?

by what condition the bios chose which of the 2 protection to activate, i mean will the bios try first to use the Xpress bios and then use Dual?

[Dark Mantis]

Hi

The Main BIOS is the one that is used every day to boot from and is the one you can update as you want to.

The Backup BIOS is simply that. It just sits there and isn't meant to be messed with by the end user. It will automatically kick in when certain situations present themselves. It is possible to force it to update etc but unless you need to I would leave well alone as it is a safety harness.

[GigThug]

Hi

The Main BIOS is the one that is used every day to boot from and is the one you can update as you want to.

The Backup BIOS is simply that. It just sits there and isn't meant to be messed with by the end user. It will automatically kick in when certain situations present themselves. It is possible to force it to update etc but unless you need to I would leave well alone as it is a safety harness.

what about the Xpress BIOS Rescue? how does it work? do i need to enable it?

[GigThug]

i need help one this since i use bios ^^^

if anyone expert

[Dark Mantis]

Hi

I think you mean Xpress Recovery 2 which includes the BIOS utility. You can get it here:

http://www.gigabyte.com.au/support-downloads/Utility.aspx

[GigThug]

Hi

I think you mean Xpress Recovery 2 which includes the BIOS utility. You can get it here:

http://www.gigabyte.com.au/support-downloads/Utility.aspx

no dude, i mean for the "BIOS", i just wanted to understand how both of 2 this protection work

like i wrote in the previous replays

[absic]

Hi,
if you are referring to how the BIOS actually works there are 2 BIOS chips on the motherboard. The main BIOS is the one that you use automatically every time you start your PC and it is the BIOS chip that gets updated when you flash BIOS.

If this primary BIOS becomes corrupted then the Back-up BIOS should automatically kick in and restore the back-up to the main chip.

Both of these are pretty much automatic with the only user input being the updating process.

There is a third method which will actually write a BIOS Image to your Hard-drive. this needs to be enabled in BIOS under the heading Advanced BIOS Features. If your main BIOS and Back-up BIOS chips both become corrupted then the system will try and reload this BIOS image to the main BIOS chip. However, although your BIOS is only 8Mb's the BIOS image that is written is actually over 100MB's and is held on a hidden partition on your HDD. Aprat from the intial setting in BIOS this back-up is once again, pretty much hands off  when it actually comes to the restore process if it is needed.

[GigThug]

Hi,
if you are referring to how the BIOS actually works there are 2 BIOS chips on the motherboard. The main BIOS is the one that you use automatically every time you start your PC and it is the BIOS chip that gets updated when you flash BIOS.

If this primary BIOS becomes corrupted then the Back-up BIOS should automatically kick in and restore the back-up to the main chip.

Both of these are pretty much automatic with the only user input being the updating process.

There is a third method which will actually write a BIOS Image to your Hard-drive. this needs to be enabled in BIOS under the heading Advanced BIOS Features. If your main BIOS and Back-up BIOS chips both become corrupted then the system will try and reload this BIOS image to the main BIOS chip. However, although your BIOS is only 8Mb's the BIOS image that is written is actually over 100MB's and is held on a hidden partition on your HDD. Aprat from the intial setting in BIOS this back-up is once again, pretty much hands off  when it actually comes to the restore process if it is needed.

hi absic

i must say you reply is very helpful cover everything i wondered

but now i have other question to your reply  ..

yes i did saw the "copy bios to hard drive" in the BIOS , but do i need to let it be enabled all the time for the protection or i can enable once and after it (probbaly)

copied the bios , i can disable? (most of the chance that i will disable it when i "LOADING OPTIMIZED DEFAULT")

after the "copied image" loads it fixes only the main as you said what about the Back up?

[absic]

Hi there,

I have to say that in over 10 years of building PC's with Gigabyte motherboards I have never had a problem with the BIOS and have never had to use the back-up chip or an image for recovery and I would say don't get too hung up on this subject.

My understanding is that once you have copied your BIOS image to the hard drive you can then disable the option in BIOS. You would only need to copy it again when you update the main BIOS. This image is accessed automatically if your main BIOS becomes corrupted.

You can copy the main BIOS to the Back-up Chip by pressing the "ALT" key & the "F12" simultaneously during the BOOT Process. I would recommend that you use a PS/2 keyboard for this and also be aware that it can take a couple of attempts to get it to work. Do not hit any buttons or turn of the power to the PC whilst you are copying the BIOS from the main chip to the back-up chip.

If you press the "F9" key when you are on the BIOS homepage it will show you the versions of BIOS in both the Main chip and the Back-up chip.

Hope this helps

[GigThug]

Hi there,

I have to say that in over 10 years of building PC's with Gigabyte motherboards I have never had a problem with the BIOS and have never had to use the back-up chip or an image for recovery and I would say don't get too hung up on this subject.

My understanding is that once you have copied your BIOS image to the hard drive you can then disable the option in BIOS. You would only need to copy it again when you update the main BIOS. This image is accessed automatically if your main BIOS becomes corrupted.

You can copy the main BIOS to the Back-up Chip by pressing the "ALT" key & the "F12" simultaneously during the BOOT Process. I would recommend that you use a PS/2 keyboard for this and also be aware that it can take a couple of attempts to get it to work. Do not hit any buttons or turn of the power to the PC whilst you are copying the BIOS from the main chip to the back-up chip.

If you press the "F9" key when you are on the BIOS homepage it will show you the versions of BIOS in both the Main chip and the Back-up chip.

Hope this helps

ok now i  understand it all , i see you also add bonus feature in your replay thats great

thank you very much absic

*just to say when you started building   10 years ago they didnt have Xpress bios & dual bios

things changed man

peace man

 

[absic]

*just to say when you started building   10 years ago they didnt have Xpress bios & dual bios

things changed man

No, you're quite right about that and I remember how worried I was the first time I needed to do a BIOS update. And of course, things are about to change again with EFI BIOS being introduced to Gigabyte motherboards. That's what makes this whole subject so enjoyable, every day something new to learn and time needed to find out how to screw it up properly. Gosh I love computers and technology! 

[jabberwocky]

not far off though surely ,the first PC that I built had a gigabyte board ,if I remember correctly it was a GA7-DXR+  and at the time a state of the art althon  1800xp processor .
that board had dual bios and that was around 8 years ago ,early 2003. I believe Gigabyte was using dual bios a year or two before that .

as far as Express bios is concerned I have never heard of it ,and all my PCs  "around 80ish " so far have had exclusively Gigabyte boards ,and only once in that time did I ever have a corrupted bios and was able to recover .
I think Gig Thug is mistaken and that he is actually thinking of Express recovery ,that is a utility to create a backup of your OS at the end of the drive .and can be used in the event of a damaged OS to restore the OS back to the time of the Backup . this utility has nothing to do with the bios ,to the best of my knowledge .

[Dark Mantis]

Yes that was what I said earlier but he said no. I seem to remember that Express Recovery 2 has a BIOS backup part to it that puts a backup on your hard drive.

[jabberwocky]

I dont know ,I have never used it due to the fact it does not support raid/ahci , so I cannot comment on its use ,but the guide in the m/board manual makes no mentin of anything to do with bios eccept to point out the obvious "set boot order before use"
the online info does not have anything to do with bios either .
and backup to HDD is supported withing the bios on most later boards .
while I am here ,to save starting a new thread ,does the problem that exists regarding AMD athlon/phenom chips regarding memory with speeds above 1333. exist in the newer 6 core chips .

[bytheway_r]

They seem to be noticeably better than Deneb controllers but officially they're still rated at 1333 Mhz max supported frequency. From what I've seen they overclock better ( CPU-NB seems capable of reaching 3 Ghz reasonably often ) and work properly with higher frequency memory than Deneb controllers. What I know is that Deneb had trouble working at all somewhere around 1800 Mhz and Thuban works alright till about 2000 Mhz. Not 100% sure about these numbers but I remember reading about this on overclock.net.

I'm willing to risk saying that Thuban chips should work long-term with RAM up to 1600 Mhz. Though, in the end, this is all an assumption on my part.