Bios/post intermittent failure GA-Z68X-UD3H-B3 motherboard no bios backup.

[whyme?]

Greetings:

First of all to note that all the bios and flashing software use were the official Gbytre ones for this particular motherboard.

I was able to run flash to UEFI to my GA-Z68X-UD3H-B3 motherboard, however even if the SPI registered as properly flashed with correct check sums the bios is not working.

Here is what happens.

A: The motherboard does power on and it does send a video active signal to the monitor for either the on-board video or a VGA card in the pci-e slot. So the monitor stays active and doesn't go to sleep.

B: Blank dark gray screen upon boot.

C: If i lightly tap the reset button the system does warm reset you are given for under two seconds a gigiabyte UEFI logo screen all be it distorted. You can make out  at the bottom of the screen " P/Q flash F9 System info  F12 Boot menu" then the  screen goes dark again and you get a typical flat flashing cursor at the top left of the screen for a split second and then its' back to the blank screen.

D: The keyboard does cycle in the post so that is working and yes its' in the PS2 port. However there is no way to get the F12 key to work.

E:  I have tried the myriad of PWS power button and reset button combinations to get the backup bios to engage. However i have been unsuccessful . Yes i have removed the battery remove and cmos clear for over 24 hours and still no luck. I did try the single stick of ram in slot 0 boot trick as well as a different vga card and still no luck.

F: I have a flash drive ready with the previous ami style F12 version of the bios ready on a bootable usb flash drive, however i can't get to the point where i can flash since it's locked up.

Any thoughts on how to resolve this issue and get the backup bios to engage?

Thank You.

[whyme?]

I tried all the pins 1:6, 4:7 bios chip tricks and it still won't boot the backup bios.

[shadowsports]

Greetings,
I'm afraid I cannot ascertain the actual state of your system.  Your subject line states "Intermittent".  This means sometimes to me.  So does the board boot sometimes or never? This is unclear. 

I get the sense the current system state is a result of a failed flash?  Or flash attempt you believe or were told was successful, but now the system won't start with U1n?  I don't want to assume? 

I doubt you can use BIOS Synchronization in this case since the UEFI is so different from legacy BIOS. But that is ALT+F10 from a cold boot

F12 (Xpress Recovery2)..   What are you hoping to accomplish with this?  This allows you to recovery your OS partition from back up.  If this is something you ever created.  Based on your description, your issue appears to be BIOS related.

Have you tried the <End> key from a cold boot?  press and hold.

Other things to try:

Power on (wait for 4 sec) press and hold power button until system powers off. 
Wait 4 secs
Power on system (wait 4 secs) now turn switch on supply off
Wait 4 sec
Turn power supply on and press power button

This should invoke the back up BIOS

But success depends on the state of the BIOS chips. 

Boot block recovery on a Z68 chipset is limited.  It is also sometimes possible to initiate boot block recovery (Z68) using ALT+HOME or ALT+INSERT from a cold boot. 

If none of the above options work, a BIOS re-programmer with leads (since the chips cannot be removed from a socket) is likely the only solution.  At that point, its time for a new board.   

I hope one of these suggestions can help you.

[whyme?]

Thank you.

I did try your additional suggestions with no success.

It's clearly hardware since i can see that the backup bios is trying to engage but it can't and defaults back to the u1n and that is where i get the gigabyte logo before it locks up. I have my doubts that the flash did both main and backup
with the u1n bios but it does look possible since the backup bios won't boot after five attempts at rebooting itself.

Secondly the cmos clear jumper is now the power switch (i'm not joking).  Also the keyboard stays powered with the num-lock light on even if with the motherboard powered off via the power button.  Until i shut off the pws or pull the 24pin connector.

So thanks  for the assistance however  it's become as waste of time to deal with this motherboard and it's already in the recycling bin.

By the way the F12 key at post has always been boot menu as to which drive (cd-rom, usb, floppy, hdd, network) to boot from.  The original bios was version f12 (just a coincidence that it has the same version number as the function key).

Everything worked well before the flash to u1n except it couldn't find a certain sata driver that windows ID under scsi.
Ran games, image editing, hd video.  And by the way i did test the cpu and ram on another board and they work.

A word to the wise for any one trying to flash to uefi on this motherboard " DO NOT DO IT ".  I did look up other attempts of this from other people and success or recovery from is random at best.   

The reason for my u1n update was better support for the nvidia gtx 1080 graphics card.  It was not worth it.

[shadowsports]

Ah yes.  Thank you.  One time boot menu.  Now I see where you were going.

The Z68 was one of the best boards I ever owned.  Mine was an Asus Pro version that had a legacy BIOS.  It was stable and reliable, that is until I needed to flash it in order to support a IvyBridge chip.  This wasn't a let's flash to have the latest BIOS move on my part. 

SandyBridge only supported PCIe 2.0.  I needed Ivy for PCIe 3.0 which was supported on the Z68 and my video card.  I played a lot of Command and Conquer, Warcraft and Diablo back then.  Like you, I went through a manual flash, with the system connected to a UPS, and made a backup of the existing BIOS. 

I performed the flash which said it was successful, but ended up with a brick (like you).  Black screen, flashing cursor and a dead unresponsive board.  Asus boards had something called CrashFreeBIOS which was promised to allow the system to be booted from the MB CD and re-flashed/recovered.  That was a bunch of marketing BS.  It didn't work.  In fact nothing worked.  I spent a week searching for a solution.  So I contacted Asus and got the run around.  In the end, I purchased another chip (from Asus) with the BIOS rev needed for Ivy.  However, the experience left a bad taste in my mouth.  One that ultimately cost Asus my business (13 yrs) worth.  This was primarily due to their handling of the case and supreme lack of customer service.  So 6 yrs ago I walked away.  These types of issues happen, but how a manufacturer handles a claim while a product is under warranty matters.

So what's next?  Z390, 490?

[whyme?]

Indeed.   I've not had a problem with "certain" Asus motherboards that have the hardware relay button re-flash, however they are isolated chip sets which makes sense and i wish it would be more common even if it adds a few dollars to the price
As for what is next for that case will be a B550 motherboard with an amd 3300x since that is roughly the same value as the i7 2600. I don't know which brand of motherboard yet since there isn't any out yet.

My 3960x server/workstation has an msi creator trx40 motherboard and it too doesn't have the best bios redundancy either so i keep an eye on it especially since it costs almost 1000$

I'l reuse the recovered  z68  system components when i find a motherboard that is worth it and it is almost a decade old now so...

Thanks again.

[whyme?]

The fact of the matter is that we had eproms years ago that you could literally torture and they would still recover and they had more than enough ram capacity to run today's boards. Talk about irony.

I'l keep an eye out for what Gigabyte has in B550 motherboards and hope they have some semblance of reliable bios redundancy.