Need to Fix Bad BIOS Update for Gigabyte GA-990FXA-UD5 rev. 3.0

[apjack]

Hi I am looking for help restoring the BIOS on my motherboard:

Gigabyte GA-990FXA-UD5 rev. 3.0

http://

I put the entire machine together, socketed with an AMD FX-6300. I installed Windows 7 Pro and updates, then the MOBO drivers and utilities, including Easy Tune 6. I wanted to test the Turbo and some performance features, so I installed current versions of CPU-ID and HWMonitor.

The Easy Tune 6 software was acting buggy, but not in the way of being sloppy performance software. The only thing I used it for was to adjust some fan speeds. But right off it had anomalies such as not wanting to open without rebooting.

Other Gigabyte utilities had minor issues as well as some software. For example, Windows changed my CPU-ID and HWMonitor icons to icons resembling generic white pages with a corner turned down and a blue square in the middle.

I looked for reasons for buggy utilities online. A plethora of the advice suggested updating the BIOS to the most recent version. That is when I had my current problem. I used the Gigabyte BIOS Updater utility to install the newest version for Revision 3.0 from the link above: FCh BIOS date 11/06/2014.

When it restarted, Windows would not boot. In looking through BIOS, I can see that either the SATA ports or the hard drives plugged into them are no longer recognized by the motherboard. Only the optical drive and the USB/Removable storage hubs are available as choices to boot from.

I have tried two things to no avail. First, I unplugged the machine and tapped the jumpers with a tweezers. That reset defaults, but not the BIOS version. Lastly, using a different PC, I went to the Gigabyte link above and put the first release version, FA, on a flash drive. I successfully flashed the BIOS from version FCh to FA, but continue to have the problem – MOBO does not recognize the drives.

If anyone knows how I can revert this Gigabyte GA-990FXA-UD5 rev. 3.0 back to how it was before taking that disastrous advice, I’d greatly appreciate it.

Thanks.

 

[RaDiKaL_]

Try reconnecting your SATA devices one more time, maybe try different sata ports this time.

In BIOS right where you select first boot device there's another option, something like "legacy hard drives BBS", enter that option and make sure your HDD that contains your OS is selected, then it should appear available in the first boot device option.

 

[Shaun o]

The board contains a dual bios feature, this is used in case of a bad flash or used to down grade a firmware update you applied. In your manual it will tell you what process or sequence you need to perform for the backup bios to flash the primary bios back to the prior revision.

Basically it copys the bios firmware from the second bios and flashed the primary bios.
When it does the the procedure all setup that was done, is sent back to factory defaults.
That means depending on how and where you connected your Sata devices the interface may need to manually be set up again, it is likely that you have two chip sets that deal with Sata devices. Based on what sata ports you used on the mobo so you need to check both chip sets are enabled after a factory default. The same is true when you perform a bios update, factory defaults in most cases apply. but it is the reason why some sata devices no longer show ok. You need to dig through the bios and the second chip set for Sata will be found in a extended menu or the advanced option of the bios. There will be a section also that lists the devices and what sata chipset is used. Or the sata ports in the manual should list what Sata chip set is used relating to where the drives are connected to on the sata port side of the mobo. Normally you have an Intel Sata chip set controller, and a Mediatek. one is simply not enabled after a flash or bios reset to factory defaults. and must be setup again.


http://www.gigabyte.com/microsite/55/tech_081226_dualbios.htm

 

[apjack]

Thanks for the replies. I've been a bit busy and could not try any of these troubleshooting methods yet.

I want to try using Dual Bios. But have one quick question about it. Does the back-up BIOS always contain the one that came with the board -- the factory BIOS? Or does it store whatever was the previous version and the current version?

If the latter is the case then it will restore it to the one I first flashed, and did not want. I want the BIOS version that was on it when I unboxed it. I am going to give that a try shortly and will reply with the results, thank both of you.

 

[justajohn]

Hey apjack

I was wondering if you finally figured this all out as it's been a few months since your last post.

But just to answer that last question of yours in case you haven't fixed this yet... yes, it has the original bios version for back-up only and will never overwrite this bios with any updates you can perform to the primary booting bios. It's a good fail safe option that the back-up never gets tampered with so the board can always be able to be set back to factory original settings.

Both Shaun o and RaDiKaL_ gave some spot on advice for trouble shooting the drives. You know that the right most 2 SATA ports which are grey and seperate from the 6 black standard SATA-3 ports are designated G-SATA and are controlled through a different controller which can be manually enabled or disabled in the bios. This could be causing your issues. I would recommend that you connect your Hard drives to the first two left most SATA ports 0 and 1 in the black hub of 6 SATA-3 ports. When that's been done you should reset your bios to default settings then restart the PC to see if there is any changes to your problem.

I currently have a ga-990fxa-ud5 running with an FX-8320 @ 4.32Ghz and I had to learn the hard way not to try and manipulate the bios through easytune6 or even install this software. It's a shame really that Gigabyte didn't do a more polished job with this software as it would add a lot more value to their hardware as a whole if it worked. My belief is this may be at the root of the problems you were experiencing. It is buggy and glitchy at best and not a very easy intuitive process to be used by a complete novice for overclocking in any case. I wouldn't even install it as a monitoring option as you can do that with the AMD Overdrive Utility instead. You're better off googling a few how-tos or looking at some walk throughs on youtube so you can get to work directly in the Bios. I would be happy to give some advice with my experiences directly if you need as well.
Here's the link to the manual if needed [url=http://download.gigabyte.us/FileList/Manual/mb_manual_ga-990fxa-ud5_v.3.x_e.pdf]http://download.gigabyte.us/FileList/Manual/mb_manual_ga-990fxa-ud5_v.3.x_e.pdf [/url]

This is one of the best 990FX boards out there in my opinion if you can look past the less than desirable performance of the software applications it's bundled with. It is able to be fully tweaked in bios easily with a good understanding.

Hope to hear back from you on your luck.
I hope this could help.

-John

 

[apjack]

Hello justajohn, and the others that have responded.

All apologies that I have not had up keep with this thread. But the primary reason is that I have not resolved the issue. A secondary reason is that troubleshooting became so exasperating that I had to put the project on a shelf, in favor of more pressing and promising endeavors.

That being said, what I encountered when attempting to use the tool being hailed, by Gigabyte and the www, as the solution -- Back to BIOS or Dual BIOS -- is that it fails to fix the issue. As stated above, after attempting to "update" the BIOS, the board no longer recognizes that there are drives plugged into the SATA ports. Dual BIOS is intended to automatically kick in when a problem is detected. Certainly, I sure wish that I could reset the BIOS to main, or factory, manually.

See, I myself, know there is a problem. But apparently, the junk BIOS installed by the agreeably trash Easy Tune 6 application, is a wonderful imposter of a functional BIOS. The main BIOS does not recognize any problems. And upon reboot -- the only way to actually use the Dual BIOS tool -- the board is simply being instructed that I have no drives plugged in.

So due to this delicious bowl of cherries I was given, I took a break from this project for a while. Again forgive me for detaching from the thread for a bit. But there was really no point in posting when I had no intention of getting back to the fix, for the time being. However, if any info I have presently provided could help, I currently have some free time to do more troubleshooting.

Thank you all. 🙁 😉

 

[Lucho Gonzalez]

Just in case anybody reads this in the future. Somebody wrote something wrong : " it has the original bios version for back-up only and will never overwrite this bios with any updates you can perform to the primary booting bios. It's a good fail safe option that the back-up never gets tampered with so the board can always be able to be set back to factory original settings."

It is not really like this. We can also update the backup BIOS. There is a procedure to copy the main BIOS to the back-up BIOS. It is not useful to not be able to modify the backup BIOS and have there always the original factory BIOS. I can give a good example, that actually happened to me :

I have rev 1.1 that I was using with some Athlon processor. When I upgraded to FX-8350 I realized that the BIOS in my board did not support it and I had to update, so I booted with my old processor, updated, and then it recognized the FX-8350. Anyway, some day "something" happened, my computer never started again. After many tries and google I found out that for some reason, the DualBIOS was activated. Most probably the main BIOS became corrupted, the board detected it and copied the backup ("failsafe") BIOS to the main BIOS. But the original factory BIOS did not support the FX-8350!!! So it never booted again !!
The solution was to borrow an old processor from a friend, update the main BIOS again, so I could boot with the FX-8350, and after checking that everything was right, I copied that updated BIOS to the backup BIOS. I don't remember the procedure, just that I needed a PS/2 keyboard. It does not work with USB keyboards.
And so I have the latest version on the main BIOS, and the same BIOS on the backup BIOS. NOT the original from factory!!