System won't boot without BIOS reset

[Angel Blue01]

My main PC, built in December 2011, is having a really strange problem. One day, a few weeks ago, it just refused to boot: literally nothing happens when the power button is pressed. My first thought was a power surge, so I put in a spare power supply, but the problem continued. I then put in a spare stick of RAM, just in case the RAM was bad. No change. On a whim I removed the CMOS battery. Once BIOS was cleared, the system booted! So I bought a new cell battery and replaced the original CMOS battery.

 

To my surprise, the system refused to boot with the new battery, or the old one. It only booted after BIOS had been cleared by removing the CMOS battery. Of course, I had to reconfigure BIOS (enable ACHI, set the clock etc.) each time. But then when the system was shutdown again, it refused to boot up until BIOS had been cleared again. As I had bought this Gigabyte GA-P67A-D3-B3 in 2011, I called Gigabyte support. Once I had explained the problem they took my serial number and said that since the board was still under warranty, I should send it in for repairs.

 

I called Gigabyte a couple of days after they sent me an alert that they had received the board. They said their testing hadn't found anything wrong(?!) but that they'd look into it. A week later, I had heard nothing and called again. They said it was being sent back to me, but no problems had been found.

 

I got the motherboard back yesterday, almost a month after I had initially called Gigabyte. Of course, as soon as I put the system back together, the system booted and I reconfigured BIOS. And as soon as I shutdown, they system refused to boot, just as it had when the problem first appeared.

 

At this point, I'm out the cost of shipping the motherboard to Gigabyte, and almost 4 weeks of aggravation without my main computer.

 

Is there anything I can do so save the system? I want to keep the RAM, the processor, and everything else intact if possible. Should I just buy a new motherboard or can the old one still be saved?

 

Thanks.

 

[Lant]

It might be something to do with the dual BIOS. Perhaps you have a bad BIOS in one of the chips that gets preferred over a good BIOS in another after a reboot without removing the battery.

Perhaps it might be worth trying to reflash the BIOS.

As a final thought, perhaps don't try to reconfigure the BIOS and do a reboot. If the computer reboots then you have at least eliminated your BIOS configuration changes as the cause.

[Angel Blue01]

I flashed the BIOS, but that didn't make any difference. As an experiment I reset the BIOS and reset to fail-safe. It seems to be working so far...

[Eric Veteran]

Sounds like the BIOS battery is dead. Have you tried checking it with a multimeter or swapping it out with a fresh one?

Apologies... I missed that you tried that. Bad caps, maybe?

[FiB3R]

Just change 1 BIOS setting at a time, that should help you pinpoint the cause.

 

I'll take a wild guess, and call it an HDD issue.

[daorbed9]

Bad flash ram.

[Praetor]

so let me check: if you remove the CMOS battery the system boots up, but as soon as you shut it down you can't power on? unless you remove the CMOS battery? Since you have bought a new battery, the mainboard went into the OEM and they didn't find anything wrong with it, i can only assume:

- it's some sort of configuration that you are making that it's provoking this issue.

- it's other faulty hardware that's causing this.

 

So let's dig into it:

- reset the BIOS and all the configurations and just use the factory settings (except for date/time). Is the issue resolved? If yes then it's some BIOS config that it's causing this. If not...

- remove all the hardware and just plugin the necessary: CPU, 1 stick of RAM. Is the issue resolved? If yes then add one component at a time, so you can figure out witch one is provoking this. If not...

- excluding PSU since you said that you changed and the RAM, i guess it's some faulty CPU. If it's possible try to change into another one (i know it can be difficult to get a "spare" CPU just for this test).

Sounds like the BIOS battery is dead. Have you tried checking it with a multimeter or swapping it out with a fresh one?

Apologies... I missed that you tried that. Bad caps, maybe?

 

So Eric, another sneeze eh?  :laugh:  :rofl:

[Eric Veteran]

So Eric, another sneeze eh?  :laugh:  :rofl:

Oh, no... just careless this time. I've seen so many computers behave bizarrely after the BIOS battery died I kinda skipped part of his post. :D

It does sound like you're on the right track.

Maybe try booting with nothing plugged in except for memory? Troubleshooting stuff like this can be a real pain and unfortunately the manufacturer saying it's fine doesn't actually mean it is.

[Praetor]

Oh, no... just careless this time. I've seen so many computers behave bizarrely after the BIOS battery died I kinda skipped part of his post. :D

It does sound like you're on the right track.

Maybe try booting with nothing plugged in except for memory? Troubleshooting stuff like this can be a real pain and unfortunately the manufacturer saying it's fine doesn't actually mean it is.

 

yeah, the fact that the OEM claimed it was OK isn't an end all. Then again OP must assume it was and test properly so he can discard other possible issues; in the end if the only possible hypothesis is a damaged board, then he has to pass that to the OEM. 

 

It's a real burden :/

[goretsky Supervisor]

Hello,

Are you certain the second power supply is working correctly?

I had the same problem, albeit on different hardware, and it turned out the power supply had begun to fail. Once I RMA'd that, I was back up and running.

Regards,

Aryeh Goretsky