ASUS Support Issue

[[Grevane]]

Hi, I'm kinda hoping someone on these boards "might" have either a suggestion about how to actually get ASUS to deal with support requests OR maybe someone will have a suggestion about how to "recover" my nice new 2month old P5B Premium.

Before I go any further, I will hold my hands up and say I made ONE "schoolboy" error... I used/trusted a "Windows-based" BIOS Updater. I've NEVER trusted these before... and so it seems for good reason.

My main system (<--) is currently dead as the proverbial Dodo. The long and the short of this is I was doing a resinstall to take a nice fresh "Ghost Image" off my PC at a "base" level (i.e. drivers, updates/defrag software) and store for later use when Windows eventually goes into "Go Slow Mode" as it always does after a period of use and with X amount of software installed.
Anyway, since the 0604 BIOS update had just been released for the P5B Premium, I thought I would throw that on at the same time.

Stupidly, and I'm still not sure why I did this, I did it through the ASUS Updater software rather than the usual USB Stick or DVD or floppy method. Needless to say it "appeared" to finish successfully. The message said it had and asked to shut down.

The board powered off as expected, powered back on and to my suprised started screaming at me about the TPM Module not being present (one of the updates to the 0604 BIOS was the "auto" enabling/disabling of that BIOS function) which was a "feature" of the 0403 and earlier BIOS.
I F1'd to check this option and strangely, it "appeared" like I would imagine it would in 0604 i.e. there were no changable options as it should do it automatically, but outside the SETUP screen, it still behaved like 0403 BIOS i.e. screamed about not having a TPM module.

Needless to say, I began to worry at this point, I checked the Sys Info screen and it claimed to be 0604 so I crossed my fingers and setup the BOOT Order etc... usual new bios setups and saved and exited...

That was the last time I saw my lovely BIOS setup screen... *sobs* and this PC is only 2 months old and ASUS are trying EVERY trick to work out of having any responsibility to help me as one of their customers. (Downloads are apparently used off their site at MY own risk and BIOS updating invalidates the warranty etc...)

I work in IT, do contracts mainly, and am right in the middle of the time when I am sorting out new work so this is an extremely inconvenient problem and pretty much I cannot afford to wait 4-6 weeks just for ASUS to replace the EPROM or flash the existing chip.

Does anyone (hopefully) have any other suggestions or potentially an email address for somenoe in ASUS. I've been posting "Technical Support Requests" on their websites for 3 days now and ALL i've had so far are default replies such as....

"Please contact your dealer and let him test P5B Premium for you. If the problem still exists, please let him send the motherboard to ASUS RMA, we will test it and help you to resolve the problem. Sorry for any inconvenience."

I used to work for my supplier so I know what they will have to do. They will send it back to their wholesaler (Computer2000) who will then send it back to ASUS, who will then leave it sat on a shelf for 4-5 weeks and in week 6 they will quickly swap over the EPROM and send it back... Then C2000 will probably loose it, and 3 months later, I "might" get my mobo back.

I just can't believe I am in this situation because of ASUS provided software... I'm kicking myself for using it but either way, it's still not broken because i did something stupid like poor coffee over it... Arghh, how frustrating...

One last thing to add was... my "recovery" attempts so far...
1. CMOS clearing - power off/power cord out/battery out/jumper swap (for both 4-5 secs as per the manual AND longer attempts)/jumper swap back/battery back in
2. CrashFree Utility - Unfortunately, I can't tell if anything is actually happening, I would say there isn't as there is zero activity from the HD or DVD's and certainly the activity light doens't blink at all. The board powers up, but the screen stays black and there is no obvious signs of activity.
3. Removed the CPU and powered up for 10secs which is apparently an old "ASUS trick" for defaulting back to factory settings.

None of these methods have given me any glimer of hope or indication there is any life left in the board.

Anyone, please? Any suggestions? Both with ASUS Support and maybe even a gem of a trick to reflash my mobo or recover the existing mobo bios...

[shaithis]

I am suspicious....The sequence of events does not sound right for a bad flash to me.

I have never ever seen a BIOS flash go wrong, where it lets you in the BIOS fine on a reboot, only to go wrong later.

IMO, Either there is something odd like a "Shutdown if no fan" option in the BIOS (attach 3-pin fans to all motherboard fan headers) or the board has died.

[[Grevane]]

Yeah i know what you mean... The board (apart from the annoying but bareable issues with ASUS software and Vista) seemed stable... seemed to be running ok. But since, I have read about quite a few people having issues with this windows based ASUS Updater pretty much doing the same thing as has happened to me - killing the mobo.
But yeah basically, the sequence of events (as accurately as I can remember) was...
1. Installed ASUS Updater
2. downloaded the 0604 BIOS Update
3. Used the ASUS Updater to apply to BIOS Update
4. The program completed all 3 stages successfully (or claimed to)
5. It asked to reboot. I allowed it to.
6. The board powered off.
7. The board powered back on.
8. Straight away it failed to boot due to the TPM module not being present - a lovely feature of defaulted BIOS settings in 0403 and earlier BIOS's.
9. I pressed F1 to check the setting
10. The setting was not changeable (as I would expect in a 0604 BIOS)
11. I setup boot order etc.. usual changes to make to a defaulted BIOS.
12. Saved and Exited...
14. And that was the last time I saw the board post.

The only thing I can think of is that the BIOS didn't actually successfully write to the EPROM or something using this windows based tool.

I too have NEVER had a BIOS update fail on me, but then again I have never used a Windows based tool before.

And the thing that really sticks in my mind is the behaviour of the TPM module warning which was exactly the same as the 2 earlier BIOS's (0403 and the 03xx original one) and that was part of the reason I applied it was due to the "fix" 0604 did for stopping this from happening.

It's just too coincidental that this happened immediately after a Windows based BIOS update imho... far too coincidental...

[shaithis]

Well, I've used the Asus update tool to flash numerous boards and every time it has said successful, it has been *shrug* (Not that its any consolation to you )

You were in the BIOS after the flash and reboot, that tells me either the flash was successful or that it did nothing and just reported a successful flash.....or somehow it had a shadow copy of the old ROM in RAM and it was still accessible after the reboot.....I am not even sure if that's possible with modern boards though, for starters ROM shadowing either is not selectable or defaults to off in every board I have seen in the last 5+ years.

Hopefully, you bought it from somewhere like Scan that will turn around an RMA quickly....

[Clunk]

If the bios is corrupted, and the crash free bios thing doesnt work, then there isnt a lot that you can do, other than RMA it.

Try all the fixes here, you might get lucky.

[[Grevane]]

Well, I've used the Asus update tool to flash numerous boards and every time it has said successful, it has been *shrug* (Not that its any consolation to you )

You were in the BIOS after the flash and reboot, that tells me either the flash was successful or that it did nothing and just reported a successful flash.....or somehow it had a shadow copy of the old ROM in RAM and it was still accessible after the reboot.....I am not even sure if that's possible with modern boards though, for starters ROM shadowing either is not selectable or defaults to off in every board I have seen in the last 5+ years.

Hopefully, you bought it from somewhere like Scan that will turn around an RMA quickly....

Well, in windows, using the windows based Updater, NOT the usual BIOS non-windows BIOS updater, it reported the wiping and flashing of the BIOS as being successful. But when it rebooted it forced me into the setup screen because it still reported the TPM module as missing in the same way earlier BIOS's like 0403 did (this was the thing i thought was odd and started to worry me). The option wasn't available to change anymore (greyed out like i expect it to be in 0604) so I couldn't understand why it wanted me to change the option when it posted... if you see what i mean...

However, this all might be a red herring since the board has had occassional shutdown issues similar to the ones Windows 98 1st edition had (shutting down when you chose restart and restarting when you chose shutdown etc...).

Fortunately, I bought the board through a support company I used to work for who I believe got it from www dot computer2000 dot co dot uk - Computer2000 - one of their distributors they purchase from so hopefully getting a replacement shouldn't be a problem. However, directly communicating with ASUS is worse than getting blood out of a stone...

If the bios is corrupted, and the crash free bios thing doesnt work, then there isnt a lot that you can do, other than RMA it.

Try all the fixes here, you might get lucky.

I'll have a read of those tips Clunk and thx. And if you didn't read my hello post, then nice job on that C2D stickied thread. I'm sure lots of people have said the same and rightly so. Nice1

EDIT: just had a quick look at those tips and I've done most of them. The removing of the CPU and bootup, I only did for about 10-12 seconds before powering it off so i'll give that another try and the extended CMOS clearing, I didn't try the 2hrs+ as suggested or the button pressing so I'll give those a try as well... but my gut is beginning to tell me to accept hte fact the board is a "gonner"... and RMA'ing is the only realistic option.

Thanks again for the tips and chat of course. Nice to meet you both!