Gigabyte EP45 UD3R intermittent crashes

[sugaki]

Hello,

I've had this mobo for a couple years (with Intel Q6600 chip), and I get sporadic crashes that drive me nuts.

I encounter them the most when browsing the web (maybe once a week), like say checking email. When playing games it's actually rare for the system to crash. It sometimes gives a BSOD, sometimes just hangs, then shuts down. When it shuts down, it continually tries to reboot, but fails. There's a very distinct sound too. When rebooting I hear the fan going on very strong, then shutting down after about a second. It continues this until I have to pull the power plug from the PC (reset button, off button etc don't do anything).

I've tried updating bios, drivers, etc etc. It's not a temperature issue either. Anybody have any idea? I looked at the event viewer, and it's a different file that causes the crash each time, leading me to believe there's some hardware issue.

Thanks for any help you can provide.

[Dark Mantis]

Hi and welcome.

You seem to have tried most of the usual things already. How long since you did a fresh install of the OS ?

The next 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.

[sugaki]

Appreciate the reply. Could CMOS be the issue? Basically I've been having this problem since day one. If resetting the CMOS doesn't work, would the problem likely be a defective motherboard? Could it be the PSU?