Has my motherboard met it's end? Anything left to try?

Bluesman · 13 Mar 2010 at 18:24

I had been having problems with my asus p5k deluxe for a while now (refusal to post with anything overclocked, failing to start up after restarts) and to up till recently, switching to a different bios seemed to temporarily solve the OC problem. Now though.... I think I took things too far with no way back...

The problem was that whenever I restarted the system, it would begin to start up again (beep), but get no further. Forcing me to switch off/on the PSU and start it up again, when it would then start up and boot into windows as normal. After this however, my overclock would go back to default clocks and the system would refuse to post with anything other than default bios settings. At first, flashing to a different bios seemed to solve this problem, but recently that didn't seem to work anymore..

So today under desperation I somehow decided that purposely crashing the system during a bios flash (activating asus crashfree) might get better results and at least solve the problem temporarily..

So anyway... the crashfree did actually kick in as it was supposed to with no problems whatsoever. Although I was having issues with getting it to read and run the bios versions on my USB stick. So what did I do? I reset the CMOS..

After doing that.. The system get's no further than a blank screen. The fans start up/HDD etc. and visibly everything seems normal, but there is no signal on the monitor.

I'm stumped really... The crashfree feature seemed to be working thus indicated no harm done by the crash.. or at least I thought so??

I'd really like to just get it going so I can at least have use of the system a while longer.. Any suggestions as to what I can try? Or is it hopeless...

Thanks.

PermaBanned · 13 Mar 2010 at 18:44

RMA?

You sure it's not the PSU?

Bluesman · 13 Mar 2010 at 19:04

Superewza said:
RMA?

You sure it's not the PSU?

Unfortunately an RMA is not possible since I have owned this board for more than a few years.. well over it's warranty I would imagine.

And I suppose it could be partly to do with my PSU as I have been having some audiable problems with my power supply (Corsair TX750), fan buzzing etc, but the thing is.. once I get my system booted into windows my overall experience is problem free. No matter what I'm doing with the system. Games run fine without issue (long durations of BFBC2 for the past week was completely flawless). Even prime95 can be run (with OC in sig) for hours on end without failure or crashing.

So that is why I suspect the initial problem was more of a minor issue with the mb/bios, affecting merely the systems start up process. I really just don't know for sure though..

What I really want though is to find a way to get past this no signal barrier I have got myself into and get back into the crashfree so I can return to the BIOS and go from there...

So does anyone know any possible workarounds, solutions to my current problem? I have tried resetting the CMOS a number of times since the system refused to respond, with no luck btw.

thingemajib · 14 Mar 2010 at 17:21

what is the manufacturer of the bios (should say on the chip or somewhere - 3 big makers are AMI, Award and Phoenix)

mame · 14 Mar 2010 at 18:46

I killed my Gigabyte P35 with a BIOS a flash. I knew the moment it wouldn't POST what I had done. I spent half a day trying all the usual but it was dead. The thing that really ****** me off about it was that I hadn't long upgraded from an e2180 to an E8500. If it hadn't have been for that, I would have gone straight in for an i7 (i5 wasn't out then)

So, if I was you I would have a think about selling your RAM and CPU and then buying all i5/i7 because it looks like you will have to have the lot out and build from scratch anyway.

Diggsy · 14 Mar 2010 at 19:42

You could try a bios recovery (blind bios flash)....

http://www.biosman.com/biosrecovery.html

Bluesman · 14 Mar 2010 at 22:38

The manufacturer of the bios is AMI. And unfortunately I don't have a floppy drive so will be unable to try the suggested bios recovery (blind bios flash).

Thanks for trying to help guys but I'm pretty much decided upon new hardware. It'll be a new PSU/x58 mb/RAM/i7 CPU.

Any other suggestions are of course very welcome. Getting my current system going would have course be the ideal scenario, as that way I could avoid spending money on all the new hardware. For a while at least..

thingemajib · 14 Mar 2010 at 22:54

AMi bios recovery also works with ide cdrom/usb floppy/usb drive in exactly the same way as a standard floppy if that helps

Bluesman · 14 Mar 2010 at 23:08

thingemajib said:
AMi bios recovery also works with ide cdrom/usb floppy/usb drive in exactly the same way as a standard floppy if that helps

It certainly does help! Thank you for letting me know kind sir!

I may as well give it a shot tonight with my USB stick. One last attempt at resurrection!

So is this method proven to work, even with issues that involve no signal appearing on the monitor which is my situation?

Bluesman · 14 Mar 2010 at 23:26

Well it didn't work. The method is quite straightforward so I doubt I did anything wrong. Started it up with the file on the USB, pressed down the Ctrl + Home keys and nothing. Still no signal. Monitor light just flashing away.

Any other suggestions?

matthab · 15 Mar 2010 at 00:31

So today under desperation I somehow decided that purposely crashing the system during a bios flash (activating asus crashfree) might get better results and at least solve the problem temporarily..

So anyway... the crashfree did actually kick in as it was supposed to with no problems whatsoever. Although I was having issues with getting it to read and run the bios versions on my USB stick. So what did I do? I reset the CMOS..

After doing that.. The system get's no further than a blank screen. The fans start up/HDD etc. and visibly everything seems normal, but there is no signal on the monitor.

after reading that ive now spat coffee all over my desk at how stupid that sounded. Why would you crash a bios flash ?

To me it sounds like a) your mainboard is on its way out. b) CPU or RAM is failing the test POST intermitandly. c) PSU fails the volt test on post but stabalises later on.

Bluesman · 15 Mar 2010 at 01:09

matthab said:
after reading that ive now spat coffee all over my desk at how stupid that sounded. Why would you crash a bios flash ?

Read it again.

Desperation (nothing left to try). I knew the crashfree would kick in (I had done it before to revert to older bioses), which it did.

Could have done without your insulting post. Why people like you feel the need to make such useless, provocative posts is beyond me.