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I attempted to RMA my board via gigabytes website, but unfortunately the service area does not work, a bit like my motherboard, and i cannot make an RMA request.
Having used gigabyte board many many times, professionally and personally, my P35C-DSR3 is sadly not up to the high standard i have come to expect from Gigabyte, only having to RMA 1 board in the past for DOA.
Having encountered various random reboots throughout the cycle of bios updates and the requirement to RMA 2 of my 4 sticks of Cruical Ballistix 1Gb DDR2 PC8500 RAM, I hear the bell finally tolling for my motherboard, and am actually glad I have a problem that will take this motherboard off my hands.... My PC at home is for relaxing, not a continuation of my 9-5 job.
At Bios update F7 (to correct Voltages?!) the power LED would no longer light up on my case. Upon the application of update F8 the Power LED returned to normal functioning. Very strange.
Anyway, having just popped into town to buy Crysis yesterday (despite the freezing i have in other games), i returned to switch on my PC only to find that it would POST, but would freeze when detecting IDE devices.
I switched PC off and cleared the CMOS, but still no luck. I then booted up again with just the graphics card and no drives connected. Successfully past IDE detection (0 drives).
I have 3 X Seagate Barracuda SATA2 drives. The 3 Disks and 3 SATA cables (including a never used 4th one) have all been tested as working in another system.
I have an IDE DVD Drive (cable and drive tested as working) that is NO LONGER detected. (Not Bios setting after clear CMOS)
All ports are the yellow SATA ports: Here are my findings using 1 Drive: (with and without IDE Cable connected, and with and without other cards in system)
Connected to IDE BIOS Detection
SATAII0: Channel 0 Master AND Channel 4 Master
SATAII1: Channel 1 Master
SATAII2: Channel 0 Slave AND Channel 4 Master
SATAII3: Channel 1 Slave
SATAII4: Freeze at BIOS IDE Detection NO LISTINGS
SATAII5: Freeze at BIOS IDE Detection NO LISTINGS
NO Device connected:No drives detected successfully
SATAII1 and SATAII3:Freezes at BIOS IDE Detection NO LISTINGS
(2 drives at once on the 2 channels that work on their own)
It should be noted that within the Bios if Channel 4 Master is not set to auto detect then SATAII0 and SATAII2 detect the drive only once and on the correct channel (But does not work with 2 drives connected, just freeze). As soon as this is set to AUTO double detection returns.
I am able to use to my pc at the moment with my boot disk connected to either SATAII1 or SATAII3 with no DVD drive detection, however the HDD Activity LED remains constantly on from boot up to shut down and without disk activity.
Reapplying the BIOS does nothing for the problem.
I can only run 1 hard disk on my system.
Memory and slots tested as working in Memtest. Processor Orthos tested and passed.
Thanks for reading this long post, but im sure you appreciate i put some effort into my troubleshooting before posting and my difficulty in contacting gigabytes RMA dept through the gigabyte website. Is it possible to RMA this board for another model thats slightly less troublesome?
Gigabyte P35C DS3R -F8 | Intel Core 2 Duo E6750 @ 2.66Ghz | 2 X 1Gb Crucial Ballistixs DDR28500 | XFX GeForce 8600GTS 256Mb DDR3 | Thermaltake Soprano W/S | Seasonic S12M Modular 500W | Creative X-Fi XtremeMusic | LG 16X DVD-R-RW | 2 X Seagate Barracuda 320Gb 7200rpm SATA2 | 1 X Seagate Barracuda 160Gb 7200rpm SATA2 | Sony 3.5FDD | Windows XP Pro SP2
I attempted to RMA my board via gigabytes website, but unfortunately the service area does not work, a bit like my motherboard, and i cannot make an RMA request.
Having used gigabyte board many many times, professionally and personally, my P35C-DSR3 is sadly not up to the high standard i have come to expect from Gigabyte, only having to RMA 1 board in the past for DOA.
Having encountered various random reboots throughout the cycle of bios updates and the requirement to RMA 2 of my 4 sticks of Cruical Ballistix 1Gb DDR2 PC8500 RAM, I hear the bell finally tolling for my motherboard, and am actually glad I have a problem that will take this motherboard off my hands.... My PC at home is for relaxing, not a continuation of my 9-5 job.
At Bios update F7 (to correct Voltages?!) the power LED would no longer light up on my case. Upon the application of update F8 the Power LED returned to normal functioning. Very strange.
Anyway, having just popped into town to buy Crysis yesterday (despite the freezing i have in other games), i returned to switch on my PC only to find that it would POST, but would freeze when detecting IDE devices.
I switched PC off and cleared the CMOS, but still no luck. I then booted up again with just the graphics card and no drives connected. Successfully past IDE detection (0 drives).
I have 3 X Seagate Barracuda SATA2 drives. The 3 Disks and 3 SATA cables (including a never used 4th one) have all been tested as working in another system.
I have an IDE DVD Drive (cable and drive tested as working) that is NO LONGER detected. (Not Bios setting after clear CMOS)
All ports are the yellow SATA ports: Here are my findings using 1 Drive: (with and without IDE Cable connected, and with and without other cards in system)
Connected to IDE BIOS Detection
SATAII0: Channel 0 Master AND Channel 4 Master
SATAII1: Channel 1 Master
SATAII2: Channel 0 Slave AND Channel 4 Master
SATAII3: Channel 1 Slave
SATAII4: Freeze at BIOS IDE Detection NO LISTINGS
SATAII5: Freeze at BIOS IDE Detection NO LISTINGS
NO Device connected:No drives detected successfully
SATAII1 and SATAII3:Freezes at BIOS IDE Detection NO LISTINGS
(2 drives at once on the 2 channels that work on their own)
It should be noted that within the Bios if Channel 4 Master is not set to auto detect then SATAII0 and SATAII2 detect the drive only once and on the correct channel (But does not work with 2 drives connected, just freeze). As soon as this is set to AUTO double detection returns.
I am able to use to my pc at the moment with my boot disk connected to either SATAII1 or SATAII3 with no DVD drive detection, however the HDD Activity LED remains constantly on from boot up to shut down and without disk activity.
Reapplying the BIOS does nothing for the problem.
I can only run 1 hard disk on my system.
Memory and slots tested as working in Memtest. Processor Orthos tested and passed.
Thanks for reading this long post, but im sure you appreciate i put some effort into my troubleshooting before posting and my difficulty in contacting gigabytes RMA dept through the gigabyte website. Is it possible to RMA this board for another model thats slightly less troublesome?
Gigabyte P35C DS3R -F8 | Intel Core 2 Duo E6750 @ 2.66Ghz | 2 X 1Gb Crucial Ballistixs DDR28500 | XFX GeForce 8600GTS 256Mb DDR3 | Thermaltake Soprano W/S | Seasonic S12M Modular 500W | Creative X-Fi XtremeMusic | LG 16X DVD-R-RW | 2 X Seagate Barracuda 320Gb 7200rpm SATA2 | 1 X Seagate Barracuda 160Gb 7200rpm SATA2 | Sony 3.5FDD | Windows XP Pro SP2
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