P35-DS3L rev2: Dots on BIOS splash screen

[Tex]

Greetings All,

I have a Gigabyte P35-DS3L rev2 motherboard. When I first installed it, I mistakenly ran the memory with the incorrect settings (researched and corrected with in a few days) , and ever since then my BIOS splash screen has had dots all over it. 







I was using Windows XP originally, and both the XP splash screen and the XP chkdsk screen had dots on the screen.  About a year ago installed Windows 7 RTM x64  on a different hard disk and the dots are still showing up during a chkdsk!








I have upgraded to the latest motherboard firmware - F9 with no change in symptoms. I have tried restoring BIOS defaults too.  I have run both Memtest86 and Windows memory diagnostic with both memory sticks as well as each memory stick with no errors.

I am also getting an event in Windows 7 mentioning firmware:

Microsoft-Windows-HAL(12): The platform firmware has corrupted memory across the previous system power transition.  Please check for updated firmware for your system.


So is my motherboard fried?

[Pottypete]

Hi,
That is a error message that seems to happen when the system awakens from Sleep state,  check here,
 http://www.sevenforums.com/general-discussion/1075-eek-scary-error-message.html
The dots on the screen look like a graphics driver corruption problem to me, check your display properties quality settings,
let us know how you get on,

[R_N_B]

Yip Pottypete has it spot on - dots on screen or any kind of artifact are generally associated with graphic firmware (onboard or discrete cards) and the software (Drivers).  Set fail safe defaults in your bios, boot into your OS in safe mode. Remove all graphic drivers, and all traces of graphic registry entries. Then reset and install the latest drivers for your graphic solution.

The one thing that does worry me is the fact that you did a install of a different OS and still you had the problem. The only time that can happen is if you do not do a fresh install, in other words used the upgrade option when installing Win7.  Which you did not do.

Quick question what could you possibly have done to your ram that was incorrect. Bios settings for ram are quite simple really, either they work and the Motherboard boots up or they do not work and the board does not and needs to be reset. Just interested on that score.

One last thing to try - sure you have tried this already - disconnect all hardware and all power connectors so that you are left with a pretty bare motherboard. Then remove the cmos battery and reset the cmos. It will show you how to do thin in the manual - involves changing pin settings on the jumbers. Leave the battery out for an hour or so and then plug everything back in. Set to default and see if the problem is still there.

[d.chatten]

This is not a driver issue as the corruption also apears on the bios splash screen, to me it looks like the memory on the graphics card is bad, what i would do first is try another graphics card in your system, if the issue disapears then get a new card, to be shure also try the card in different machine.