HA65M-D2H-B3 - Windows 7 reboots without pci-e graphics card

[biddy]

I am wondering if anyone has any advice or heard of this before as I'm tearing my hair out.

I have a HA65M-D2H-B3 with i5 2500 processor and built the PC with an Nvidia 6800 graphics card installed.  After a while, I decided to remove the card and put it in another PC and thats where my issues started,  Suddenly Windows 7 (32-bit) stared crashing whilst booting during the "starting windows" screen.  This was an infinite loop, it would cause a reboot each time without getting into windows.

Not putting 2 and 2 together (ie the graphics card) I reinstalled windows from scratch.  All was good, working perfectly, until Windows updated and installed the Intel graphics drivers.  At that point the crashes started happening again.

I then put on Windows 7 64-bit and exactly the same thing happened.  Tearing my hair out, I decided to stick the graphics card back in and lo and behold Windows booted.

So, long story short, even though I am NOT using the separate graphics card, I HAVE to have it installed or windows will no boot.

Is there something I need to tweak, kill or try to let me take the card out and put it in another machine?

[Dark Mantis]

Hio and welcome.

The first thing to try is to clear the CMOS.

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 Optimised 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.

[biddy]

Thanks for the quick reply and the suggestion.

I have now tried that and no luck, still the same reboot during loading. 

[Dark Mantis]

Ok, next go into the BIOS and check to see what you have got set as your Primary Display Device . Make sure that it makes sense.

Chances are you have it set to PEG or something like that.

[biddy]

Nope, primary display is onboard and I have forced it to be always enabled.

Do you think it is a motherboard/BIOS problem?  As I say, this only manifests when the Intel Graphics drivers are installed under windows.  If I build the machine without the other GPU, it installs, runs fine, then updates then crashes.

But I can't find anyone else that has this problem so I can't see it being the drivers or Windows totally at fault.

[Dark Mantis]

It's not something I have seen anyone else complaining of on the forum.  It could be a BIOS issue. Is there a newer BIOS version that you can try installing ?

[absic]

Just a thought but, even if there isn't a new BIOS for your motherboard it might be worthwhile reflashing the BIOS without the GPU installed. Use QFlash to run the update and disable the "Keep DMI data" option on the QFlash homescreen before running the update/reflash.

[Dark Mantis]

Yes good point absic I should have thought of that one.

[biddy]

Thanks for the suggestions guys, still didn't work unfortunately.

Oh well, I guess theres only the sledgehammer for it. (or just leave the GPU in there and buy another for my other system)

[Dark Mantis]

This is realy stupid as there are only a few places that store information like that. A complete wipe of everything should clear the memory of the old graphics card and allow it to run with the onboard only!