Issues after new VGA?

[S7ewie]

Hey guys,
This is my first ever post on here. I apologise in advance for the length but I wanna get as much info in as possible. This could go in the VGA section but I think it's a problem with the mobo.

Specs:
Windows 7 64 bit
Gigabyte GA-Z77P-D3
i5 3570k
EVGA GTX 770 OC
8GB Corsair DDR3
OCZ Vector SSD
2x Seagate HDDs

Since installing my new GTX 770 my boot up takes aaaages. It used to spend only a second on the mobo splash screen, now it spends about 3 minutes. It also seems to be preventing me from accessing bios.

Yesterday a friend suggested I try resetting CMOS, so I did. After doing so I got a black screen after the usual 3 minutes on the splash screen every time I tried boot up. Tried removing usbs, sound card, HDDs etc. Eventually I tried my old VGA and was immediately greeted with a screen telling me I'd just reset CMOS and asking if I wanted to reset to default settings. After passing that I put everything back in and it worked as normal again. The VGA must have somehow been preventing me from seeing that bios screen.

Had me in a bit of a worry because I was considering reinstalling windows, until I remembered that I couldn't access bios. So if I hadn't of kept my old VGA. I'd of been screwed.

Another strange thing to point out, though I can't think of how it could be related, is recently I bought a corsair k95 RGB keyboard. It's lighting profiles haven't been loading up properly, the default is not the actual default (if that makes sense), and a lot of the extra buttons don't work. But when I put my old VGA in it immediately loaded up the profile and settings that it was supposed to. First time it's done that. Donno how that's related but I guess it could be?

I've done some looking around and the only thing I can come up with is that my new VGA isn't supported by my mobos bios?

Other than that I'm clueless.

Any help or suggestions would be much appreciated.

Thanks

 

[uplink-svk]

Greetings,

You seem to suffer from similiar problems that I was wrestling with for week and a half with my new rig. Any chance You're on Windows 8/8.1?

First things first. USB's and GA mobos hate each other. They iRQ [interrupt] themselves with other peripherals, which is a disaster, eventhought they shouldn't. I know that on my old GA mobo, I had 12 USB 3.0, and each one needed to be in precise one port, when I switched them I had the same issues.

Secondly, did You try Your VGA in different PCi-e port on Your mobo and/or setup/rig/computer? Those black screens are very often omen of bad VGA :/ which I hope it isn't.

Thirdly, did You try running cpu + ram + vga + clean windows install on external HDD? Or clean install on different HDD?

As to Vengeance K95, being my ex-keyboard, which I returned after 7 hours, it's a...I love corsair, I love their memories, and their mice, but their keyboards are a fu*king disaster. I'd avoid it totally :/. It's mechanical, I know, and it types well, but the firmware/software link is a disaster. In my arms, two Vengeance M95s died, on one died the wheel, on second some of the side buttons. I really loved those mice. I loved those buttons, on newer rev. the buttons were not that good, eventhough they said they fixed them, they didn't, they screwed them.

Well anyway, try to solve issues with Your keyboard after, You fixed everything else up. It's a solo chapter.

 

[S7ewie]

Greetings,

You seem to suffer from similiar problems that I was wrestling with for week and a half with my new rig. Any chance You're on Windows 8/8.1?

First things first. USB's and GA mobos hate each other. They iRQ [interrupt] themselves with other peripherals, which is a disaster, eventhought they shouldn't. I know that on my old GA mobo, I had 12 USB 3.0, and each one needed to be in precise one port, when I switched them I had the same issues.

Secondly, did You try Your VGA in different PCi-e port on Your mobo and/or setup/rig/computer? Those black screens are very often omen of bad VGA :/ which I hope it isn't.

Thirdly, did You try running cpu + ram + vga + clean windows install on external HDD? Or clean install on different HDD?

As to Vengeance K95, being my ex-keyboard, which I returned after 7 hours, it's a...I love corsair, I love their memories, and their mice, but their keyboards are a fu*king disaster. I'd avoid it totally :/. It's mechanical, I know, and it types well, but the firmware/software link is a disaster. In my arms, two Vengeance M95s died, on one died the wheel, on second some of the side buttons. I really loved those mice. I loved those buttons, on newer rev. the buttons were not that good, eventhough they said they fixed them, they didn't, they screwed them.

Well anyway, try to solve issues with Your keyboard after, You fixed everything else up. It's a solo chapter.

Wow that was a quick response! I like this place XD

Not running windows 8. I'm on windows 7 (can't stand 8 😛)

The mobo is pretty rubbish to be honest. I always skimp out on the mobo and then regret it later when I find that it doesn't support half of my case plugs, doesn't have anywhere near enough usbs, fans port and sata ports. So I really wouldn't be surprised if that's the problem. It's probably about 2-3 years old now too.

I didn't try it in a different slot but it only has one PCI-E x16, the next is x8 I think. So I'd be at a disadvantage even if that did work.

And no I haven't tried it on a clean windows install. I don't have a spare HDD at the moment. Windows is currently installed on the SSD and worked fine with my old VGA. It still works fine now apart from the fact that I can't access bios and still have the odd other issue.

Yeah keyboard is a shame, I love it to bits but the whole lighting/programmable keys/profiles etc is letting it down. Though I think that's the software as opposed to the keyboard. I does work on occasion, just seems to be not working more often than it is. It's still usable without the profiles but makes me wonder why I spent the extra money on it. It's not the priority at the moment but thought I'd mention in case it was related.

Thanks

 

[uplink-svk]

Greetings,

Well, I lost it, and I got 400 euro Z77X-UP7 two years ago, and now I got Asus Maximsu VII Formula, for over 300 euro, actually without VAT it was only 280 or so, 260. I can't stand mid-range, they're always having issues. Low-end and entry are always perfect, tuned up and working, and entry-high end and beginning high-end are always crap. It runs me nuts.

Well, now to Your problem.

Please do try the 8x port anyway, it will be great to find out whether it's the VGA problem, or the mobo problem. Don't look for performance now.

Since Your OS is installed on Your SSD, if I may suggest, hit it with Acronis True Image USB version [it can be created as bootable media from Acronis True Image] just pirate it for now, if You like it buy it, yarrr. And clone Your OS to the external/secondary drive. It's a 100% copy of Your system. Cloning if 120 GB takes 7 minutes, 240 GB takes 14 minutes, spitting out data the same. Not much work. And hit it with clean install.

Please don't forget to disconnect other drives, in order not to lose iSO of Your genuine installation/and/or work on Your secondary drive, while installing new OS. I do have really bad experience with this.

If it crashes in 8x PCi-e, it's most likely VGA, You should try her at friends build, or diff computer at home. This is pretty much how nvidia s die...:/

Hope this helps a bit.

P.S.: We can resolve Corsair after VGA

 

[S7ewie]

Greetings,

Well, I lost it, and I got 400 euro Z77X-UP7 two years ago, and now I got Asus Maximsu VII Formula, for over 300 euro, actually without VAT it was only 280 or so, 260. I can't stand mid-range, they're always having issues. Low-end and entry are always perfect, tuned up and working, and entry-high end and beginning high-end are always crap. It runs me nuts.

Well, now to Your problem.

Please do try the 8x port anyway, it will be great to find out whether it's the VGA problem, or the mobo problem. Don't look for performance now.

Since Your OS is installed on Your SSD, if I may suggest, hit it with Acronis True Image USB version [it can be created as bootable media from Acronis True Image] just pirate it for now, if You like it buy it, yarrr. And clone Your OS to the external/secondary drive. It's a 100% copy of Your system. Cloning if 120 GB takes 7 minutes, 240 GB takes 14 minutes, spitting out data the same. Not much work. And hit it with clean install.

Please don't forget to disconnect other drives, in order not to lose iSO of Your genuine installation/and/or work on Your secondary drive, while installing new OS. I do have really bad experience with this.

If it crashes in 8x PCi-e, it's most likely VGA, You should try her at friends build, or diff computer at home. This is pretty much how nvidia s die...:/

Hope this helps a bit.

P.S.: We can resolve Corsair after VGA

Okay just to point out firstly because I might not have been very clear. I CAN get through to windows, right resolution, just about everything works and I CAN play games and stuff. As far as I'm concerned, the VGA Is working perfectly. The blank screen I was getting was after I reset CMOS. However I cured it when I put in my old VGA which shew me a bios screen asking me if I a wanted to reset to default settings. Obviously something that my new VGA was hiding because it just wasn't working with the bios.

Now everything works fine EXCEPT the bios. I still get the 3 minutes on mobo screen (as opposed to 3 seconds) and I still can't access any of he bios features etc. Just wanted to make that clear in case I was giving the impression that I'm still stuck at the blank screen.

That "might" render this info pointless.. But even so I put my New VGA in the other slot. Turns out it's PCI-e x4 and using it overlaps all the sata ports but one .. Useful 😛 Anyway it's exactly the same as the PCI-e x16. Everything works except bios.

I'll work on the next step now assuming you still want me to?

Thanks

 

[uplink-svk]

Woa, frozen pre-boot for 3 minutes. That's a hell. So there's no way You can enter the bios.

Okay, try the following. Remove everything from computer, except motherboard + cpu + ram. Even VGA, disconnect all drives. Clear CMOS [reffer to the users manual, how to], and do it thoroughly [with turned off power, etc.]. Turn it on on onboard VGA [HDMi port for that one only :\ or old VGA] now it should work just fine, right?

Now, You connect Your new VGA to Your motherboard, and if it does the 3 minutes stuff, You disconnect it, turn it on again on HDMi [onboard/or old VGA]. And now try the 8x PCi-e port for new VGA.

Will it still do 3 minutes pre-boot wait?

 

[S7ewie]

Woa, frozen pre-boot for 3 minutes. That's a hell. So there's no way You can enter the bios.

Okay, try the following. Remove everything from computer, except motherboard + cpu + ram. Even VGA, disconnect all drives. Clear CMOS [reffer to the users manual, how to], and do it thoroughly [with turned off power, etc.]. Turn it on on onboard VGA [HDMi port for that one only :\ or old VGA] now it should work just fine, right?

Now, You connect Your new VGA to Your motherboard, and if it does the 3 minutes stuff, You disconnect it, turn it on again on HDMi [onboard/or old VGA]. And now try the 8x PCi-e port for new VGA.

Will it still do 3 minutes pre-boot wait?

Yeah that's basically what I did.

As soon as I installed the new VGA I was getting the 3 minutes on splash screen and no access to bios, none at all, I've tried pressing all possible buttons multiple times for the entire period. No access at all.

I left it for a while assuming that it could just be a driver update. Got to the point where I was getting fed up with it so spoke to my mate and he said do a CMOS reset.

Unplugged everything, reset CMOS.

This is where the blank screen started happening. Now I realize that what was supposed to happen was that I should have been shown the Gigabyte bios screen prompting my to reset bios to default. Without doing that it wasn't letting me pass. The problem was that with the issues my new VGA is having with the bios .. it wouldn't show me that screen. It was getting stuck and couldn't get past, hence the black screen.

It wasn't until I put my old VGA in that i was given the screen and the option to reset. Which I did, blasted straight through the mobo screen in just a couple of seconds and booted up fine. I then swapped everything back and back to the 3 minute mobo screen and no bios access.

 

[uplink-svk]

Allright. Any chance You flashed Your motherboard with newest bios/uefi?

 

[S7ewie]

Allright. Any chance You flashed Your motherboard with newest bios/uefi?

No i haven't tried that yet. Never done it before and it sounds a bit risky. Wanted to be sure it was worth doing before I attempted it.

 

[uplink-svk]

I don't wanna be prophet here, but that'll most likely and certainly fix Your issue. And don't worry my friend, Your motherboard support DualBIOS™, but please do research how it works, how to engage secondary bios, if first one flashes wrong, and everything around before actually flashing Your new bios!

And mostly and mainly, if possible, do flash Your PC hooked up to UPS, if You don't have UPS, do have it hooked up on most reliable power source in Your house/flat preferably with anti-surge protection. Also don't do it while there's storm out there, or any other aspects, that might cause fluctuation at Your home/flats electrical system/network.

 

[S7ewie]

I don't wanna be prophet here, but that'll most likely and certainly fix Your issue. And don't worry my friend, Your motherboard support DualBIOS™, but please do research how it works, how to engage secondary bios, if first one flashes wrong, and everything around before actually flashing Your new bios!

And mostly and mainly, if possible, do flash Your PC hooked up to UPS, if You don't have UPS, do have it hooked up on most reliable power source in Your house/flat preferably with anti-surge protection. Also don't do it while there's storm out there, or any other aspects, that might cause fluctuation at Your home/flats electrical system/network.

Okay, well firstly it appears that there are two versions on my mobo. A rev.1.0 and a rev.1.1, No idea which one I have. Do you think it matters?

Secondly it appears my mobo has a thing called Q-Flash where I can do it automatically from the mobo screen. Seems a relatively safe way of doing it, although I would have to switch VGAs otherwise I won't be able to access it.

What would you recommend?

Update:
Found the revision, its 1.1

 

[uplink-svk]

Revision is directly imprinted on motherboard, or can be seen directly from CPU-Z. Q-Flash is great, just please do heed my words.

- Don't ever, never, by any chance use ntfs/ex-fat flash disk to store Your bios .rom file.
- Do use only fat32 flash drive to store Your bios, please copy the .rom file [or bios image file with proprietary extension] to the flash disk for 2-3 times, with extension -1 and -2.
- Don't ever, never, by any chance use HDD/SSD to flash Your bios! It works in most of the cases, but in some, it kills the motherboard, not with DualBiOS, not with TwinBiOS, not with CrashFree BiOS, but it does corrupt the BiOS.

With these, You can flash the bios ...via Q-Flash. I personally prefer dos-mode, via bootable Windows, or custom boot usb/cd/dvd rom, but Q-Flash is just fine, eventhough it does bad things sometimes. Since You do have DualBiOS, there's literally no need to worry.

 

[S7ewie]

Revision is directly imprinted on motherboard, or can be seen directly from CPU-Z. Q-Flash is great, just please do heed my words.

- Don't ever, never, by any chance use ntfs/ex-fat flash disk to store Your bios .rom file.
- Do use only fat32 flash drive to store Your bios, please copy the .rom file [or bios image file with proprietary extension] to the flash disk for 2-3 times, with extension -1 and -2.
- Don't ever, never, by any chance use HDD/SSD to flash Your bios! It works in most of the cases, but in some, it kills the motherboard, not with DualBiOS, not with TwinBiOS, not with CrashFree BiOS, but it does corrupt the BiOS.

With these, You can flash the bios ...via Q-Flash. I personally prefer dos-mode, via bootable Windows, or custom boot usb/cd/dvd rom, but Q-Flash is just fine, eventhough it does bad things sometimes. Since You do have DualBiOS, there's literally no need to worry.

Okay so i found a youtube guide from Gigabyte on how to do it. Followed it to the letter. Got new bios installed without any issues. Only problem I ran into was that it couldn't detect my OS but quickly realised it had changed the boot order and rearranging that sorted it.

So shut it down, put new VGA back in. Got a nice new mobo screen now which is cool, clearly it needed an update. Didn't get stuck on it and got through to log in screen in about 20-30 seconds which is great!

Reset it, hit DEL to get back into bios and .. it froze 🙁

So it worked, and definitely made an improvement. But I still cant access bios with my new VGA :/

 

[uplink-svk]

Crap :\. Yes, flashing bios always deletes all of Your preferences, even on high-end mobos, besides true high-end like x-99 there it stores Your profiles, etc. Hmm, so now when You want to enter bios You get it frozen again. Didn't help much all in all. Okay, fail safe, set everything You need in bios with old VGA and install the new one. And please try that 8x port, so we'll rule out the 16x. Otherwise, I can't see anything else, besides some trouble with Your bios and new VGA. My GA bios hated all the mice I had there, besides the basic ones. All others were either inverted, od slow.

 

[S7ewie]

Crap :\. Yes, flashing bios always deletes all of Your preferences, even on high-end mobos, besides true high-end like x-99 there it stores Your profiles, etc. Hmm, so now when You want to enter bios You get it frozen again. Didn't help much all in all. Okay, fail safe, set everything You need in bios with old VGA and install the new one. And please try that 8x port, so we'll rule out the 16x. Otherwise, I can't see anything else, besides some trouble with Your bios and new VGA. My GA bios hated all the mice I had there, besides the basic ones. All others were either inverted, od slow.

Okay this is weird,
I tried my VGA in the x4, had to unplug all satas except SSD and sound card. Tried it, couldn't get into bios but it didn't freeze either. Reset, tried again and it worked!

So moved the VGA back to the x16, same again, didn't work first time but worked the second and didn't freeze.

So slowly plugged everything else back in to iliminate anything else as the problem, same again but it works!

I did notice though that every time it didn't work, the lighting on the keyboard changed brightness with the press of any key. So on the time it didn't work it sounds more like the keyboard malfunctioning as opposed to anything else.

I'll keep an eye on it but for now it seems to be working as it's supposed to! 😀
Keyboard still not working properly but at least the bios is sorted 😀

Thanks for your help!

 

[uplink-svk]

This is called the "phantom hardware" symptom/issue. It's something that's saved in bios/or system, and it's still seeing [in a feel way] a hardware in a port, where it isn't. There's a procedure to remove "phantom hardware".

1. uninstall official drivers
2. clean drivers residues with Treexy Driver Fusion [You might know this program as Driver Cleaner, or Driver Sweeper]
3. remove the hardware with "phantom hardware" symptom
4. use different port/slot on motherboard
5. install official drivers
6. uninstall official drivers
7. clean drivers residues with Treexy Driver Fusion [You might know this program as Driver Cleaner, or Driver Sweeper]
8. use genuine port/slot on motherboard
9. install official drivers
10. 90% of the times, this works. It's and idiocity of Windows/Motherboards, but it occurs in Windows most of the time. Met with it only a few times with motherboards.