Cannot update my BIOS on Gigabyte motherboard GA-MA69G-S3H

Hi:cool

I have bought a 1 TB Western Digital Western Digital WD Caviar Green 32 Mb Cache WD10EADS as a secondary internal drive.

I already have a SATA 3.0Gb drive as my boot drive and an internal IDE drive but needed more space.

My pc only sees this 1 TB as 32 Mb (yes Mb) and it will only format as so.

I saw a few forums which pointed me towards thinking it was my BIOS else I could reset the drive using Ultimate Boot CD (UBCD). Also I downloaded the WD disk utility and that took a while to set it up as a 32Mb drive too.
When I checked for a BIOS update I noted that I have F3 and the latest is F7.

F5 states “Fix: Some of 1000 GB (1TB) HDDs will be detected size error” so that looked promising.

So I tried updating my BIOS but each time my PC will not boot past the BIOS, it states “OS Error” or something beginning with OS.

I Tried F3, F4, F5, F6 & F7 but no joy, only when I reinstalled F3 did it work again.

Can anyone shed any light on this as surely my start is to update the BIOS before I try other things such as formatting the drive externally or using UBCD.

I have been using the Q-Flash utility to upgrade the BIOS. This is embedded in the BIOS and accessed on boot up. Each time there is a Checksum error. The motherboard manual recommends I do a Load Optimized Defaults in BIOS after a BIOS update which I did.

Sadly was getting nowhere and had to put F3 back on to get the pc to work. I am using XP Pro and my mobo is a Gigabyte GA-MA69G-S3H.
:confused
Cheers

 

Here is the bios update you need, should update from windows,

http://www.gigabyte.com.tw/Support/Motherboard/BIOS_Model.aspx?ProductID=2554

 

Thanks tunered

I have now managed to resolve the problem and (I hope) another longstanding problem.

I emailed Gigabyte who suggested flashing the bios by removing the battery for a short while and then trying again.

Please try to reset the CMOS -
1) Disconnect the power cord from the power supply. Remove the CMOS battery (the flat silver disk) from the motherboard using a screw drive or similar implement. Leave it out for a minute or two, then replace it and power on the system. The BIOS settings should have been reset, allowing the computer to boot.
2) Go into the BIOS - “Load optimized default”
3) Save settings and exit.
4) If this doesn’t work then try "Load Failsafe default"

Try to reflash the latest BIOS and check the result.

What I discovered after lots of trial and error was that if I followed the motherboard manual instructions (or the emailed instructions of Gigabyte) in so much as after installing the new bios I did a Load Optimised setting then I would not be able to boot properly. It would stall just after the post screen stating OS Error. This even happened with version 3 (my original) bios.
The solution was to ignore that step and just reflash the bios. It booted up OK and saw my new sata drive as 1 TB (that was the original goal) BUT the pc was now "unstable". The PC froze up after 2 to 10 minutes with or without the sata drive fitted.

This exact "freezing" has been happening for 6 months or so especially in the summer. The screen would go blank but the fans were all running. Numlock / Capslock did not do anything and the only way out was a reset (on/off didn't work unless you held it in for a few secs).
It seemed strange that with the new bios I was getting this same problem but within minutes rather than a few crashes a month. I was thinking power supply (not a heavy memory user or a gamer) and my dad suggested the power plug. So I unplugged the pc power plug from an extension in an extension all fed from 1 double plug and moved it (via a 33 foot extension) to its own socket.

Hey presto, several hours later it is all running swimmingly.

Hope this thread helps someone and I will update in future just to confirm all is working well with the new bios and the well connected power cable that is now a tripping hazard at the top of the staircase!
:-D
macker6464