Help with DFI LANParty NFII Ultra B, quick!

[Quickbeam177]

Alright, so I was changing some settings in the BIOS, and all was normal. This was right after a CMOS reset. I was using a modded Hellfire BIOS on it. I thought: "hey, since I already have almost all of these settings saved through the CMOS Reloaded feature, I'll just load one of my saved profiles!"

Makes sense, right? Wrong. When I loaded the BIOS settings the computer rebooted as normal, and never booted back up. Now I've tried three different processors in the socket, and neither one boots. A Barton 3200+ with older stepping, a Barton 3200+ with newer stepping, and my old T-bred 2000+. So I didn't inadvertantly fry a CPU. The motherboard is not dead, I know it isn't because I hear the hard drives and cd rom drives initializing. It makes all the normal sounds upon powering on, except the beep indicating a successful post. The reason I think its not posting is due to a corrupted BIOS, and here's how I think I corrupted it:

I saved the BIOS settings through CMOS Reloaded when using the standard BIOS. I loaded the settings with the modified BIOS. Of course I had forgotten this at the time.

So I think its just my BIOS that is corrupted as I said. What I was wondering is, how can I fix this? Is there a relatively easy way to fix this? I absolutely refuse to get a new board :P

I -really- need to get this fixed... because I'm running a RAID0 configuration on SATA, and none of my files are backed up. I have to use the same RAID controller or I'm screwed, and I have tons of things that I need on my hard drives.

So... help!

[hoinar]

if your bios is corrupted you can rewrite it with a cmos writer or buy a new bios chip for your board (it should be 20-25 USD) and use the same mobo. You must have a computer shop that can help you

[Aedan]

Yeah, as pointed out, you have a few options. Find someone with a FLASH programmer, buy a new FLASH chip, or find someone who is willing to hotflash your BIOS for you.

As some of the settings are not stored in the CMOS, but stored in the FLASH, the CMOS reloaded feature could quite happily have trashed your BIOS. This is because some of the settings have to be written back to FLASH, which is also where the BIOS lives...

Also, the hard disks and CD-ROM drives would initialise quite happily, even if the motherboard was dead. They have their own onboard processors and are not reliant on anything being connected for them to get up and running.

[Quickbeam177]

Originally Posted by hoinar

if your bios is corrupted you can rewrite it with a cmos writer or buy a new bios chip for your board (it should be 20-25 USD) and use the same mobo. You must have a computer shop that can help you

Where can I get one of these "CMOS writers"? It would make sense that they aren't found very easily because it would leave a lot of money to be made for many companies... but I'd like to have one considering how much I play with BIOS'.

Are there any other ways I could fix my BIOS on a more personal level, rather than getting some company to do it for me? It doesn't really matter because I've already ordered one from recoverybios.com (rip off) but I'd like to know for future reference.

[Quickbeam177]

Do ya think hotflashing might work? Or would I tear up my board by trying that?

(I have several computers in the house, so I can easily hotflash if there is a high success rate)

[tottyspotter]

I'm having a problem with mine at the moment too - had to send it back to DFI in the netherlands (was still under warranty) as it was randomly powering down under load - worked out it was the motherboard by testing the rest of my bits in a mate's pc. They sent it back and now it doesn't even boot - all four LED lights just stay constantly lit, cpu fan powers up as do all the rest, but nothing doing on the screen. Contacted DFI and they've said they'll send me another BIOS chip for me to fit myself. Hoping it will solve my problem, otherwise it's another £15 carriage returning it to them. Have ordered another one anyway as it's been driving me insane not having my PC up and running (had problems with other bits too - CPU going back and forth with overclockers.co.uk)

[Hodgstar]

what red diag leds are showing?

[Quickbeam177]

Alright to give an update, hotflashing didn't work. Uniflash successfully flashed the new BIOS, but unfortunately the BIOS seems not to be the problem. I got the reprogrammed BIOS from recoverybios.com yesterday, and put it in. It didn't work either. The 4th LED on the bios was lit up, after it went through the boot sequence. DFI says this means that the BIOS is being read at this point. So... I'm not sure what is wrong. I was hoping it was a simple corrupted BIOS, but that was wishful thinking. I assumed it was the BIOS because after I used CMOS Reloaded the computer never successfully booted back up.

So now I'm coming to grips with the reality that... my 1500+ mp3s and countless hours of text documents saved on my hard drives are gone, because I didn't back them up (stupid me). Starting to hate SATA and RAID0...

But I was wondering if anyone else knew why the board is dead? I've done nothing really extreme... besides run the board in a consistently overclocked state at 231 FSB and higher voltages. But that shouldn't kill it as fast as it did. I've voided the warranty... should I go ahead and contact DFI anyway?

I really don't want to lose my stuff but I'm getting tired of spending and spending on the socket A platform. I've been through 4+ motherboards for a single processor, and this is getting ridiculous. Mainly I'm too lazy to RMA because in the past they've always found some odd reason why they won't repair/replace the product free of charge. If I think there is hope in me recovering my data I will RMA though...

But I think maybe this is the time to jump on the A64 ship. What do you guys think? I'll ask about A64s in another thread.

Please respond! Thanks for the help so far!

[dolanenwindrift]

Hmmm not sure why it died. But 4 motherboards is BAD. Having said that, I have a friend that is on her THIRD DFI board, and honestly I am thinking the problem is poor quality. I know that DFI is everyone's darling at the moment, but my friend does not overclock at all on this machine - and has top quality components throughout the system.
As far as the RAID thing, I am sorry to hear that you are likely going to loose data over this. I don't run RAID, and don't recommend it for home use. truthfully, as cool as it sounds, RAID doesn't gain you any performance in most situations. That may be contrary to what many people believe, but recent testing by Tom's Hardware, Anandtech and others have shown that RAID setups actually incur a minor performance penalty in most cases. If you are running a huge SQL database or doing video editing, RAID can give you a large performance boost, but if you are gaming (which is what I do 90% of the time on my PC) it buys you nothing.
All that said, I would RMA that board - just see what they do, you never know.

[Quickbeam177]

This board is still dead, I've contacted DFI and gotten no answer as well. I'm starting to doubt that I did the hotflashing procedure correctly and if so that could be why hotflashing didn't work. I don't see how it couldn't be the BIOS based on what I did.

Can you hot flash with Winflash?

Can you bypass the error that awdflash gives you if you try to flash with a mismatched BIOS/mobo combo?

I don't think uniflash supports what I've got...or something.

[cadaveca]

Boot block on the DFI's are having issues. Buy a bios guardian if you buy DFI.

[Quickbeam177]

Because the NF7-S v2 uses the same RAID controller as my old DFI board, I was able to boot into windows WITH the previous RAID setup, as the controller detected it automatically somehow.

This means... that I did not lose my data!!!

Wooooo!!!!!!

[Staz]

I love a happy ending

[dolanenwindrift]

Great! Glad to hear that you were able to salvage the data, it really sucks to loose stuff.Now, go back thatstuff up heheh.