Official GIGABYTE Forum

Probably need an rma. Really don't want the down time. UD5. Fairly knackered.

jonj678

  • 31
  • -2
My UD5 is refusing to boot, in an issue which I believe to be distinct from the normal cold boot issues these boards suffer from. I have some CAD work due in halfway through next week which I do not wish to do on a netbook, so assistance in getting this running would be much appreciated. At least I'd like advice on whether this is board, cpu or ram.

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Symptoms
With dimm slots 1,3 or 5 occupied, the board does not post. With dimm slot 2,4 or 6 occupied, the board posts, will allow access to the bios, but reboots shortly after. Specifically it makes it partway through the bootloader then gives up and reboots, this cycles indefinitely.

With multiple slots occupied, as long as one of the occupied slots is 2,4 or 6, the board posts then reboots much like before. With multiple slots occupied, none of which are 2,4 or 6, it refuses to post.

LCD poster cycles through numbers rather swiftly. It seems to settle on 96, then on FF before rebooting. If no stick is in slots 2,4,6 it sits on 69 for a while, changes to 6F briefly then flickers through a few to come back to 69. I have a suspicion the time between changing from 69 to other numbers is approximately the same as time between reboots when it has ram in slot 2,4,6.

The manual suggests 69 is L2 cache, 96 is loads of things and FF is try to boot. This leads to fears that my processor is dying, which I'd really rather it doesn't as common knowledge is processors don't die, making rma a challenge. I don't have a spare processor with which to test.

This remains the case on optimised or failsafe defaults, as well as on previous stable settings. Cmos reset between each test, some repeated without cmos reset with no change.  It also occurs whichever stick/combination of sticks is used from the two triple channel sets. Finally this occurs whether trying to boot from hard drive, usb or cd rom. OS reinstall is inappropriate given I can't get it to boot from disk or usb stick to attempt this.

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Specification
Gigabyte UD5
Intel 920
Corsair dominator, 12gb
PC P&C 860W (tried backup psu also, both run a different system fine).
8800gt

Strangely it was absolutely fine yesterday. I left it idling overnight.
« Last Edit: December 07, 2009, 10:46:16 am by runn3R »

Pottypete

  • 686
  • 15
Hi,
Have you tried mem tests onl all ram sticks,
Are you running the latest bio's ,
Have you set your ram to manufacturers settings in bio's,
Might be worth checking if you have a high temps on CPU and system,
Have you downloaded any  win 7 updates overnight whilst idling,
Just trying to help,
cheers

jonj678

  • 31
  • -2
Apologies for leaving this for so long, thank you for your replies.

It seems my UD5 flatly refuses to boot without ram in at least one of the white slots. I think this is exceptionally odd, but both of my friends UD5s do the same thing. The issue is either with faulty ram, or faulty motherboard, or faulty mains ac. I'm pretty certain it's the last option, but my landlord is being difficult about this. My circuit breaker shouldn't go as easily as it does, I think it's failing at around 1200W rather than 5kW or so.

I'll answer your questions though

Have you tried mem tests onl all ram sticks, /yes, though only at stock speeds
Are you running the latest bio's , /yes, tried the latest official and a few unofficial ones
Have you set your ram to manufacturers settings in bio's, /yes, along with various other settings
Might be worth checking if you have a high temps on CPU and system, /nope, it's water cooled
Have you downloaded any  win 7 updates overnight whilst idling, /nope

Of course any of the above would have been rather difficult to answer at the time as the machine was failing to make it past the bootloader. Trying the system on a different mains socket helped considerably, enough for me to get answers to the above at least. There's still something wrong in the machine, it's freezing at apparently random times at stock or clocked. Doing my best to work out which component/s are misbehaving.

Cheers