Hi y'all, first post here as this is the first Gigabyte-based system I've built in, well, a while. Liked the feature set and build quality of the Z68-UD7 more than any of its immediate competitors so here I am.
Anyway, while I'm generally very happy with the system, I've been tangling with a couple of issues with the BIOS (both F8 and predecessors/betas) and TouchBIOS that make it less good than it could be. It seems from reading down the boards that some of you have encountered variations on the same themes. Thought I'd put this post up both in the hope that it might solve some head-scratching in other threads, or generate evidence to formulate a bug report to GGTS. Probably worth noting at this point that I've reproduced this behaviour with both the F8 and F7 BIOSes (as well as the F8 betas). So, here goes...
The "The system has experienced boot failures because of overclocking or changes of voltages" warning. I've seen quite a bit of mention of this elsewhere in the forum - and the advice to anyone experiencing it is almost invariably to change some settings to make the system "more stable".
On my setup at least I've noticed that it is possible to trigger this warning (and associated BIOS settings confusion) without either overclocking
or changing voltages - and on a system that is otherwise absolutely, unperturbably, 100% stable in operation.
For example, when I first built this system up on the bench (would probably have had the final F7 BIOS), as you naturally do, I got into a situation where I had to restart it a number of times within a relatively short space of time after installing drivers/ software. I'd initially set the system up stock clocked, everything auto/default. After about the fourth or fifth restart, the system suddenly shut down midway during POST, waited a couple of seconds an when it restarted gave me "that warning".
Slightly confused I checked the BIOS, got the warning again when I went into the MIT section, saved settings and then booted into the OS, confirming that all the voltages and temps were within expected ranges. Didn't see the warning again, even after getting everything set up and worked up to an initial mild but still perfectly stable overclock.
Then, a couple of days later, system still on the bench, I ran some precautionary advanced drive fitness tests on my hard disks. This involved running the DFT utility from a bootable USB stick. I set up a low power configuration beforehand - only one core enabled, 16x multiplier, everything switched off. In order to swap from one disk to the next I had to shut the system down - or reset it, and of course because I was booting from USB, I had to use the power button to turn the system off (or the reset button/Ctrl-Alt-Del to restart it).
Anyway, cutting a long story shorter. I discovered during this that resetting the system with the reset button (or Ctrl-Alt-Del) will, after about four or five cycles, prompt the system to shut down during POST, and then restart a few seconds later with "The overclocking warning" - and it will do this whether the system is overclocked, running stock, underclocked, or whatever. The system stability warning (and its consequences) are being falsely invoked, in other words.
Again, a few days later, I had cause to boot repeatedly from USB stick for some video card BIOS flashing. Sure enough, after four or five successful boots from USB, with the reset button or ctrl-alt-del to cycle, I had the shutdown during POST and "the warning" - even though the system was set up in a configuration stable enough to withstand anything I throw at it within the OS.
I've also found that using TouchBIOS to change system settings (even minor ones like disabling integrated peripherals or the full screen logo) and then using TouchBIOS's own "restart" button to apply them will cause the system to power down - and then restart with "the warning" and default performance values. However, if I make the same settings change in TouchBIOS, and then use the main OS Shut Down command (and then power back up), it will behave itself - starting properly and applying my changes.
Trying to boil this down, it seems to me as though the BIOS doesn't respond properly to some powerdown/power cycle scenarios. Looks like it assumes that any multiple repeated use of the reset button, Ctrl-Alt-Del, or the power button is the result of a failed overclock and reacts accordingly. It furthermore seems from my experience that using the "Restart"command inside the OS, or from TouchBIOS (instead of shutting down the system under OS control, and restarting it), will similarly prompt the BIOS to think that an overclock has failed.
I can't believe that this is intentional on Gigabyte's part. The board *should* store a flag in CMOS to indicate when the OS has successfully shut down/restarted, and thus should at very least be able to tell the difference between an unprompted restart after a BSOD/critical failure, and a user-initiated OS restart. Other motherboards don't freak out when you boot them to DOS a few times either.
I really don't like the way the board suddenly powers down midway through the POST sequence in these circumstances - as it withdraws power from the hard disks just as they're spinning up and running their self-test procedures. This caused one of the disks in a RAID 0 array to lose its configuration info last night. Luckily I was able to recreate it without losing any data.
So, how does this experience play with what other people have noticed? Have you ever got the "The system has experienced boot failures..." warning when you weren't overclocking (or when you were overclocking at settings you otherwise found to be stable)? Can you cause it by booting (and cycling) through DOS a few times?
Oh, just realised I was going to talk about a couple of TouchBIOS-related issues too, but figure I'll hit 'post' and leave my keyboard to cool down a bit. Over to you!
