Okay firstly, make sure you try the basics before assuming you have a bad flash. Clear the CMOS for several minutes at least probably several hours (when you took out the battery did you remember to turn off or disconnect the PSU and clear the caps by pushing the power on?). Unplug everything except the essentials, single stick RAM, CPU, video card and perhaps floppy. Replug everything (except the CPU perhaps) i.e. take out everything and put them back in. If none of this helps, you likely you have a bad flash. There are is a variety of ways to recover from this. Get a new preflashed bios chip, hot flash your bios (you need a second board), use a flash programmer, etc. Technically if you've been flashing with a non-official bios your warranty is void. However I don't think any manufacturer bothers to check what you tried to flash. They just reflash the bios so RMAing it should be no problem even if you've technically voided your warranty. You might want to consider a second bios chip or one of those two bios things you can buy. However I'm pretty sure many Gigabyte motherboards have dual bios or virtual dual bios anyway. Yours may too. Look in the manual or Gigabyte support for bad flash recovery. If you do have dual bios then you should be able to try again without problem once you've restored your system to perfect status quo. It's important to get what I mean here. Please don't change to the second bios then kill your second bios! As for what went wrong. Well firstly you used a windows flash utility I believe. Using a DOS one is usually safer. Secondly, you're sure your mobo is a P35-DS3R. If it's slightly different it could need a different bios. Have you tried the F4 version of the P35-DS3R bios on your computer? This should be the first thing to try. If the P35-DS3R F4 doesn't work on your computer, it's pretty dumb to try the modded P35-DS3R F4 bios... I suggest you download the original one first, flash it, and make sure it works fine. Also try and find out who requested this bios, if anyone and ask them if it worked for them.
okay thanx for your help. I did leave the battery out for 2 hours, and i turned off the swtch from the back and unplugged the cord. i did take out the video card and put it back in, i tried booting up without the hard disk, and the dvd drive. i also tried booting with only 1 memory stick and another time without any. I was reading up on my motherboard and the bios chip is non removable so i think i cant "hot flash" anyone dealt with rma'ing gigabyte MB's? on the manual it say they are not responsible for a bad flash. I still have warranty with the store so i think i'll try there first then. I have read my manual and it does have a feature called virtual dual bios. However there is nothing in the manual or the website that explains how it works or what does it really do. I also tried googling it and there ain't any info about it. to flash it, i did not use the windows utility but the one that is from the bios. (you enter it during post or in the bios) I am very sure that this is my MB and i downloaded the correct fw, as i made sure i read even the serial code from the box t make sure i did not get any new revision (i got rev. 1.0). i did not try the original f4 bios and i am regretting it every time but I did check to see if anybody had any sucecess with this flash and there was 1 person who said it was succecful. his name is txspete but he hasn't been online since july 1st. I would really like to know quickly as i would like to do a rma tomorrow if there is no solution to this. I need a computer and right now im using somebody else's laptop, and they would need it back. any other help?, thanx
Well theres only the one disk that it comes wit but it only has drivers and "xpressrevovery2" which is for hard drives and backing up the files. I still tried it to see if it does have that virtual dual bios on the cd but my computer won't read it(even though the dvd drive light is on when i start the computer) I guess i'll send a msg to gigabyte and claim i used the oringinal f4 bios. thanx for the help and more will great.
I just sent a board back to Gigabyte with an RMA. I don't think it was modded BIOS. It ran over a month with the mod, but died after I tried to upgrade the CPU. It took between 3 or 4 weeks for the turnaround.
Unfortunately, this board does not have the Dual Bios feature. The GA-P35-DS3P is the next step up and has dual bios. After seeing this thread, I'm seriously considering spending the extra $20 to get that instead of the DS3R. This feature will apparently automatically overwrite the bad BIOS with the backup so no discs are used (and you can't overwrite the backup).
Ohh i did read up about virtual dual bios and well it does look like a good thing but gigabyte was stupid to not provide an explanation about it on their manual and website. What your supposed to do before flashing is run the xpressrecovery2 cd in windows and it creates a copy of the flash in the hard drive and if the flash fails it will just read this file. I still don't know if this would have helped me as I don't notice my computer reading anything. Oh and my motherboard still doesn't work. I asked a few other forums and well i did try everything they said to do but still no luck. The last step for me to do is take the MB out of the case and take the cpu off and just boot with one memory stick. If that doesn't work then i'm RMA'ing it and im wondering if they would allow me to get the DS3P because like Drexl said it has 2 bios chips. Maybe then would have success's flash the firmware with a moded bios. Also i would like to still know what could have went wrong with this bios file. I mean when i get a replacement I would like to try again but i'd rather be certain that im doing everything right and it should go perfect. To anyone that flash their gigabyte motherboard before did you use the Q-flash utility from the bios or did you boot into ms-dos? Thanks again
Looking at the manual, I don't think Xpress Recovery has anything to do with the BIOS at all. It's just for backing up and restoring your hard drive. Obviously if the BIOS is toast you're not going to be able to access anything on the hard drive or CD.
Ohh yeah thats the page. Thanks for the clarification, and i do think your right. Even if i had done that before i think the flash just went bad and you won't be able to recover from it. Well I'm RMA'ing the board now but i did some reading about the P35-DS3P which has dual bios. If i was to try something like this with that motherboard, i guess it would have just loaded up the spare chip instead. Or would the whole motherboard be bricked? Also if the DS3P model is pretty much flash safe then why don't more people buying a new MB look into this model. I would have if i knew about all this before.
Yeah, the Dual Bios feature will copy the backup BIOS onto the main BIOS chip on the next boot, so you'll again have 2 working BIOSes of the version on the backup BIOS. What I'm going to do is take note of the version number of the BIOS that comes with the board, so that when I flash I'll know if it worked by checking to see that the version number changed.
Just a little update for anybody who wants to know. Well i Decided to Return the DS3R and I picked up a DS3P which has dual bios. Installed everything and today i tried the F4 Bios that China4Ever moded and it WORKED! Installed the asus oem activation and now my windows is genuine. Thanks for all the help people and maybe it was just a bad mobo. I did everything exactly the same as last time except i used a USB stick to flash instead of a Floppy in the Q-Flash Utility. Thanks Again.
I received my DS3P today and got about halfway through my new build. For now I just have the CPU/HSF, memory, and video card set up. I haven't installed any drives yet because I'll be using the same drive I'm using now. Anyway, the BIOS update went without a hitch. Badman, it's the F5 version so you may want to update. However, my copy of Vista hasn't arrived in the mail yet, so I won't be setting it up until tomorrow I suppose.
Drexl- Did you use the one that antec modded? Some other person said it worked as well. Do you think it will have any problems with overclocking? I got mine OC and i would like the overclock back. Also what happens when I updated my bios. Do i need to reapply the oem certificate and key? Or will windows just remain activated? Also what version motherboard you receive?. I got a rev. 1.1
the F4 bios is for the GA EP35-DS3R not the GA P35-DS3R. Notice the E, the E version is the energy version which is on rev F4 of the bios. it will NOT work on non-E board. the non-E board is different bios and at rev F13
Uh, this thread was started 2 years ago, when the recent version of BIOS for the board was indeed F4.