Bios update failure - Recovery methods?

[caracortada_uk]

Hello o'wise ones i come seeking your knowledge!!

I have a Gigabyte Ga-P67A-UD3-B3 motherboard which has been working away fine for 3 years. But i decided to update the BIOS to the latest non-beta of version F9 to help solve a minor niggle of it getting locked into a reboot cycle when not used for a while (i.e. when i come back from holiday) and only solved with a CMOS reset.


However since using the QFlash option on power the system will not load past the BIOS. I can get to the BIOS POST screen where it then restarts and keeps doing so. System powers up -> BIOS -> Restart -> Black screen -> Restart -> Bios -> Restart -> Black screen... and so on and so on.

I can not access the bios or QFlash at all. I have tried:

CMOS reset using jumper + pulling out the battery + replacing the battery
I have tried swapping round RAM sticks + trying them in different slots
GPU pulled out
HD pulled out
DVD drive pulled out
PCI sound card pulled out

All to no effect.

The last hail mary i think would be the Dual BIOS option. The advertising guff on Gigabytes website says it has one, but i can not find mention of it in the manual or anywhere online. Can anybody shed any light?

Also is there a key-combo to load QFlash prior to the BIOS loading as part of a virus recovery method?

Thank you in advance.



Edit to update
I managed to get the dual BIOS recovery to activate by pressing power+reset buttons. The recovery program activated, detected a checksum error and promptly restored from backup. Computer then re-started but now it will not even get to BIOS! There is a surge of power as though the system is powering up then suddenly shuts down, a few seconds later it tries again but seems to be caught in the loop. I have tried the power+reset button combo to no effect. Looks like the board is dead

[Agent]

Keep pressing the END key as fast as you can - with any luck, it'll drop you into QFlash.

Also put a pendrive, fat32 formatted, with a single file that is the BIOS uncompressed (not in a zip or anything). If it sees this, it might try to auto recovery.

Dual BIOS normally always kicks in when something has gone wrong, but it sounds like it's failing here. On some boards there is a switch, but recent ones not so much.

You can flash the BIOS via an external flasher, but we're starting to get a bit more complicated now. Try the above first

edit - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HhI-t5lh_38

Apparently you can use power cycles to get the the other BIOS.

[SUMMONER]

If all else fails you can read here about forcing it to switch over to the 2nd bios chip.

[caracortada_uk]

Thanks for the replies guys. Please check original post for an update. Looks like the board is dead.

[Agent]

Make sure you do the usual - totally unplug it, take CMOS battery out, one stick of RAM and so on....

If it's just a bad flash, you can ask someone with an external flasher to fix it for you. You probably don't know if that is the case at this stage though

[caracortada_uk]

Given that the back up BIOS failed, and made it worse im going with the board being dead. Also i do not know anybody with an external flasher.

As i said i have had problems with the CMOS needing reset when i come back from holidays with the system not booting. So i am pretty sure there has been an underlying problem for a while.

Thanks for the help all.

[Lucio]

One thing to try which hasn't been mentioned, try a new CMOS battery. After 3 years it's plausible for the battery to have reached the end of it's usable life, and a low voltage on the battery might contribute to your woes.

[Kumagoro]

It might be worth leaving the battery out over night and then trying.