GA-965P-S3 rev. 1.0 Motherboard - Footprints in the BIOS

[Endorphin]

Hi All,
Im new to this forum and after some help if you dont mind.

I have been looking for a solution for hours..... but no joy.

I have been given a broken PC to try and fix by one of the guys at work.

It has a GA-965P-S3 rev. 1.0 Motherboard with Intel processor, Bios is at F6

The Operating system is corrupt and will not boot, have tried a completely fresh install but it just hangs. (Vista)

The Main problem is I think the BIOS, when the PC starts it looks like foot prints or ! marks all over the screen, but they are in the same position each time.
When you enter the settings, you still have the footprints and some of the letters on the screen are incorrect, for the IDE drives, some say Master and some say Masuer and Slave and Slawe and many variations depending on which screen you look at.

I have tried to Flash the BIOS to try and get rid, but the Q-Flash or Q-Flasi as it appears on the screen keeps hanging after it has checked the flash file, the keyboard stops responding and you have to turn it off and start again.
I have tried using a 2 USB sticks, 1 @ 128M and 1 at 4GB both formatted to FAT32 but Q-Flash does not even see them, I disabled the floppy while trying this but Q-Flash kept saying "Update BIOS from floppy"

Any Ideas?

[Dark Mantis]

Hi and welcome to the Gigabyte Forum.

At first I thought about getting the BIOS to flash from the backup BIOS only problem there isn't one on this board. So next off try an extended clear of the CMOS and see if that helps.

Remove the power cable from the mains supply and then press the power switch on the case for a few seconds just to drain any residual energy in the PSU capacitors.

Once done remove the motherboard battery for at least one hour before replacing it.
 
Next plug back into the mains supply and boot.
 
You will now need to enter the BIOS by pressing DEL and load Opimised BIOS Defaults.

Make any other changes to the BIOS settings to suit your self like disabling the floppy drive, disabling the full screen logo and making the HDD the primary boot device and then press F10 to save and exit.

[Endorphin]

Hi there and thanks for the assistance,

The PC is off and the Battery is out, Im due to finish my shift at work shortly so I will leave it overnight and try tomorrow, Ill let you know how I get on.

Have you seen or heard of the footprint thing before?

[Dark Mantis]

No not exactly. Do you mean they actually look like footprints ?

It might help if we could get some history on this machine.

[Endorphin]

When the screen resolution is low, they do but when its higher it look like "!"

If its still the same tomorrow I post a pic to show you.

[Dark Mantis]

Yes good idea. It sounds like a corrupt BIOS to me but we shall have to see.

[Endorphin]

Nope, Still no joy.

Here are some screen shots.

[Dark Mantis]

Hi

Can you show a bigger (whole screen shot) of the second one please ?

[Endorphin]

Sorry, had to take it with my phone.

[Dark Mantis]

I would say that the GPU  is faulty as it is happening even as it is reading the nVidia BIOS.

Try checking it on another machine.

[Endorphin]

The GPU is a seperate one, I was thinking the same but when you install the operating system and go through all the install screens there are no errors on the screen at all.

[Dark Mantis]

Well you could try doing a BIOS update and see if that fixes it. Use QFlash to update your BIOS to the latest available version.

[Endorphin]

I have tried that from a USB floppy drive, it reads the ROM ok and says press Enter to continue butthe keyboard seems to be disabled after it has checked the rom.
I have tried doing it from a USB stick but Q-Flash does not even see that.

[Dark Mantis]

Ideally use a PS2 keyboard for doing BIOS flashes etc as it is safer and the keyboard will work from the outset. If you don't have access to one and can get into the BIOS you can amke sure that USB Legacy Devices is enabled and that should let you use the keyboard even before Windows loads the drivers.

[Endorphin]

I did use a PS2 Keyboard and the USB Legacy Devices are enabled, would using a USB mouse cause a problem?