Hello all, I have a Desktop PC with a Gigabyte GA-EP45-UD3P motherboard, Intel E8500 Core 2 Duo CPU, 1 SATA HDD, 2 SATA Optical drives, XP Pro with all updates, and a Floppy drive. The Floppy has never worked (a generic brand). Info from the internet advised "If the floppy light remains on all the time, the data cable is installed backwards". The light was on all the time, I reversed the cable, but no go. I removed the floppy and installed an older Sony floppy, booted. There was a series several beeps, a pause, then several more beeps, then shutdown, then restart, more beeps, then shutdown, at which point I cut the power, disconnected the floppy (it's power cable as well)restarted, but had the same series of beeps and shutdown etc. On the Motherboard,there is a group 6 Phase LED'S which had all lit up. I completely disconnected all the SATA drives, restarted, but the same thing again. During all this, nothing appears on the Monitor. It appears to me the BIOS has been affected. If it is affected, can it be repaired?, or am I in for another Motherboard. I will be very thankful for all answers offered.

Bad News

Hi there, I'm sorry to hear that you have this problem. I had the exact same problem with my Gigabyte mobo, and the same processor about 10 months ago. Our setups sound nearly identical (with a slight variance on the exact type of mobo). Basically what happened in the end was I replaced the mobo (under warranty) with two of the same model and the exact same thing kept happening. Eventually it was worked out that the first dodgy mobo had fried my lovely DDR3 RAM, and then the fried RAM kept taking out my replacement mobo's. Talk about a nasty cycle!

I finally jumped ship from Gigabyte (I had been a loyal user of their products for years) and changed to an Asus mobo of similar specs, and replaced the RAM under warranty. When the dust settled, everything finally worked, though very strangely, my Asus mobo didn't like starting up with the CMOS battery still inserted, though it works fine without it. Weird. Anyway, apart from the minor inconvenience of reset clocks after a power failure, everything seems to be working OK now and has been for 10 months. It's a frustrating problem I know, but unfortunately there was no magic switch that I could flick to make it all better.

If you do manage to find a way to get around the problem without warrantying everything in sight, I will be impressed and curious!
Jacob

Answer to PC fails to BOOT-starts,beeps,turns off,etc

Hello all, I have solved my problem, so I'm answering my own question for the benefit of any who are faced with a similar problem. I disconnected, one by one, the following, (ie, disconnect, restart, if no boot ,shutdown, disconnect another etc) HDD, Optical drives, Dialup modem, all USB connections, Graphics card. After all this, the problem remained. I then cleared the CMOS with the pins on the motherboard. Still no go. I reconnected everything with the thought of bundling the computer off to a repair shop. Then it occurred to me, 'could the memory sticks be involved?' I removed both 2gb sticks which were in slots 1 & 3 and put them in slots 2 & 4. Bingo! Success! Of couse, having cleared the CMOS, you then have enter the BIOS Setup and reset to Optimised Default. My board gives the option of " Recovering to last good setup". Hope this is of help to someone.

Answer to Jacobs reply to my post re computer wont BOOT etc

Hello Jacob, thanks for your answer. I was very interested in your detailed reply.All my desktop motherboards are Gigabyte and I have had a very good run with them. The problem I had was of my own doing. I have posted an answer to my own question to hopefully help others with a similar problem. Regards, Ian.

Learning

Standard practice with fault diagnostics is to disconnect or remove everything not needed to boot and go from there, connecting one item at a time.

One lesson learned, a few thousand to go!! It's all fun though.

Have you tried the ram sticks back in slots 1&2 again just out of interest?

I had the same problem with my Gigabyte motherboard - turned out to be a bad power supply. Replacing the power supply fixed the problem.

I have also the same problem.

I also had the same problem with a Gigabyte mobo, model no. EP45-UD3R.

Worked for for about 3 years then started intermittently failing to boot. Eventually failed to boot at all....

I saw Ian's post above, removed the RAM from slots 1&3 (I had 4x2GB RAM), and the PC booted. Has been working fine for the last few weeks, albeit with half the RAM.

Thanks!