[SOLVED] Graphics card disappears after BIOS upgrade

[Prlaba]

I have an Asus P5B-E motherboard. I just flashed the BIOS to v1807 (it was a running a very old version, 0706) and after rebooting, Win7 no longer sees my GeForce 9800GT graphics card. Instead it loads drivers for some low-res generic VGA controller.

If I look in Device Manager I no longer see my graphics card listed; instead under 'Other Devices' I see 'Video Controller (VGA Compatible)' with a little ? In the icon.

I went back into the BIOS to see what settings might have caused this. The only settings that seems even remotely connected are the 'Initiate Graphics Adapter' (PEG/PCI or PCI/PEG) and 'PEG Force x1’ options under the Configure Chipset menu.

I even did a 'Load default settings' but that too made no difference.

I'm not doing anything exotic, no over clocking, etc. My SATA drives are configured as AHCI but that's it.

I then tried restoring the BIOS to the previous version, but EZFlash complained 'Version in ROM file is older then existing board!'. Say what??? I even tried flashing an intermediate version, with the same error message. So it appears I'm now stuck with the 1807 version.

Help! Anyone have any idea why I suddenly can't see my graphics card after flashing my BIOS to the latest version?

Thanks,

[UPDATE]

Clearing CMOS got everything back to normal (eventually).

 

[cl-scott]

Sounds like the video card is being detected, but for reasons unknown the drivers were wiped out. So you'd just need to install the latest drivers supporting the 9000 series cards from nVidia.

 

[Prlaba]

As it turned out, I had to clear CMOS to get the BIOS to recognize my video card. Not sure why, but once I did that (and reconfigured all my BIOS settings again), the video card was recognized again in Windows.

 

[Prlaba]

Solved.

I has to clear CMOS to get my graphics card back. Of course, that proved to be a challenge as well; after clearing CMOS I ended up with NO video (I had to switch to a VGA cable to see anything) and had no USB ports (I had to switch to a PS2 port for my keyboard to be recognized).

But after rebooting into the BIOS about a thousand times and getting my BIOS settings right, all my missing hardware reappeared, and when I started Windows my graphics card showed up normally.