Gigabyte GA-M57SLI-S4 Rev 2 BIOS trouble

[llewislink]

I updated this motherboard BIOS from FF to FHH by a Floppy disk image. All went well and it showed success. I then chose to power off and now whenever I power on, there's a message saying scanning for hard drive BIOS image. It doesn't go past this message, it simply powers off and goes through the same cycle all the time. I can't even get into the BIOS.

I reset the BSOD by pulling the battery and jumpering the two pins near the battery, but this doesn't help. Anyone have a resolution that will help?

Thanks

 

[bilbat]

I need a bit of information about your system; I have a suspicion, but it will be a little tricky to confirm, and Gigabyte's documentation for this thing (out of the seventy or eighty manuals I have downloaded here...) gets second prize in the 'worst idiocy' contest! Can you, after having pulled the battery and shorted the reset CMOS pins, now at least get into the BIOS with a <DEL>, or are you stuck without access? If this is the case, try pulling the data plugs from the hard drives (the narrow ones if they are SATA drives; the wide ones if they are IDE drives), and see if you get access to the BIOS then...

I need to know if you are seeing this screen:

or this one:

??

 

[llewislink]

Thanks for your reply and valuable effort in helping me resolve this issue. Unfortunately nothing worked to get me into the BIOS so I did the old radiator cap thing. I pulled the radiator cap and drove a new Mobo under it. Since this was my very first Gigabyte board, and after having suffered many, many operational issues with it since I bought it a couple years ago, I decided to go with another brand. I've had very good results from MSI, Asus, Biostar and others, but this Gigabyte takes the cake for being the most troubling product I've ever seen. And you are correct about the manual, pure idiocy.

I'd love to find another MSI K9N-SLI Platinum, but they are scarce.

 

[bilbat]

The 'radiator cap thing' is hilarious! I've had two of those - once 'cause I had a dent in the hood (was put there by a rod coming through the valley cover and manifold...)!

 

[llewislink]

I tell you what, I am having a bad run of luck these days. I got my computer put back together and decided to use WinXP Pro 64 bit for the very first time and I had issues straight out of the gate. I had a heck of a time getting the NVIDIA display drivers installed. Issues with other drivers. And to top them all off, after having used the current CD ROM drive...actually a DVD-RW...to successfully install the OS, and planning this computer speciffically for multiple CD drives for efficiently ripping my music CD collection, tthe system now doesn't have drivers for the CD drives! LOL. There isn't any possible way of installing the drivers, even though Windows has them natively. The only thing I get is an error message that the drivers aren't installed because they have been corrupted. Then, after having run the OS repair procedure, it won't finish because...while inside windows, mind you...it can't access the files needed because the CD drive drivers aren't installed.

Needless to say, I am done with the XP Pro crap.

 

[bilbat]

I have always thought of XpX64 as Microsoft's 'red haired bastard child'... Was, I guess, a necessary first baby step at the time, but never did have a thimble full of support. (And I still think somebody at nVidia needs to be shot!)