Bios question for Bobby or Bob or anyone.

[Clayton]

I have an asus P5E3 Deluxe wifi motherboard. I am having continuing problems with Win7 (have installed it for the 4th time). My question is my bios is version 1303 (6/11/2008). I went to the Asus site and checked on this motherboard bios. 1303 is the last offical bios listed, but they do list one (I believe it is 1415, but it says it is a beta). Bobby have you updated your bios? I am hesitant to update it with a beta. Anyone out there with a similar experience. The windows problems are seperate from this but I am working the issues on the Windows 7 forum.

[Bobby]

No I haven't updated from (I believe) 1303. (I will check the next time I turn on the video editing PC).

But I would hesitate to install a beta, especially since ASUS has made it obvious that they are no longer supporting the board. Good company, great boards, but rank a D or F on customer care.

I have Win7-32 installed, and will probably install -64 when the next version of PRE comes out, assuming it supports 64 directly. But what I have runs fine.

What issues are you seeing?

[Dave McElderry]

But I would hesitate to install a beta, especially since ASUS has made it obvious that they are no longer supporting the board. Good company, great boards, but rank a D or F on customer care.

Man is that ever the truth. I know their reputation in motherboards, but I once had an experience dealing with their "Customer Service" department. I won't go into the details...don't want to hijack the thread....but it really soured me on ASUS.

[Bobby]

Yes Clayton, I am at 1303. I did in fact do a BIOS upgrade to that level when I first got the MB because as I recall there was some issue supporting my processor. But no issues since then.

[Clayton]

Thanks for the replies Bobby and Dave. I have been trying to install Win7 64 bit to support CS5. I am having several issues but don't know which is the true problem. I add 4GB (to 8 GB) at the time I added the second os with Win7. The first issue I noticed was XP wouldn't boot or did it very slowly. I removed 2GB and all was well. Win7 seemed okay but I was not familar with it so I am not sure. After I loaded CS5, it would freeze up after less than 15 minutes. So I removed all and reformatted the drive. Later I loaded Win7 again, all looked okay, so I installed Norton and CS5 again. Well I have a book "Windows 7 inside out", so I proceeded to go thru it learning about Win7. I then noticed two things: (1) many of the updates downloads failed with and error of 800B0100. I checked this error and found the preceived fix. I didn't work. (2) under contol pane/ programs there is a "turn windows features on/off" selection. When you select this you are supposed to get a list of features you can check if you want or not. Well my box was empty. This is also a known problem. I downloaded the fix for it but it failed to work. (I forgot to mention there was an installation before this one and windows 7 would continue to freeze. I removed another 2gb and I cleared up). This is the main reason I was checking on the bios. Anyway I have removed everything again, reformatted and reinstalled with no other programs yet. The windows features are now in the box. I am just working on the updates. Another problem I am now incurring is at boot. When I select XP it is much slower than before going to XP (several minutes to open). As for Win7 startup is even worse. It gets to the logo and "starting Windows" but may or may not stop there. Sometime I have to reboot 3 or 4 times before Win7 opens. Needless to say verrrrrry frustrating

[Paul LS]

I had similar problems with one of my computers, not sure it is the same though. It started by freezing during running programs. Then when I tried to restart it would lock up, eventually after trying a few times it would start. It would then run ok for a while (sometimes for a few days) and then lock up when running a program. I tried removing RAM and it would run OK, then after a while it would lock up again. When I tried to start the computer it would get so far and then stop. I then tried substituting the video card, swapping the SATA power connectors for the hard drives... again it would run OK for a while after the changes but then start locking up again. So I updated the bios to the latest release and still the same thing happened. In the end the only thing I hadn't swapped was the hard-drive so I removed the OS drive and I loaded the OS onto the data drive. Since then it has been running with out issue... pointing to a flaky hard drive as the fault.

[Bobby]

Hi Clayton and Paul.

There is obviously something flakey going on, but where? There are some conflicting symptoms.

My best bet is a RAM problem, or a MB problem related to RAM timing. Generally when you have odd, intermittent problems like that RAM is the cause. A second factor might be poor thermal characteristics of the CPU fan or heat sink but these would only occur when the unit is hot and not high probability. I don't give a bad HD credible marks - data errors on the HD should be detected.

I would try going into the BIOS and slowing the PC down (write down the original settings first!). Slow down the processor, and slow down the RAM access speeds and see what happens.

But the slow booting is odd, and may in fact be another problem.

Also, have you checked the Event logs for errors?

[Bob]

From what's been described, I'm leaning towards a RAM/bios compatibility problem. i don't remember how you filled out your memory slots, did you use 2gb ram cards and fill two slots and then add an additional two 2 gb cards for 8gb total in 4 slots?

I have a different motherboard than you, but that's what I did and ran into a severe slowdown problem when I went to 8gb from 4gb. It ran well with 4GB but with 8gb, I thought it either wasn't booting or was freezing, but it turned out to just be running incredibly slow. I resolved my problem with a bios update that provided additional support for the 2gb cards.

I don't normally recommend going with a beta bios, but if that's what's happening with your system, you may not have a choice. From what I gather, the issues being addressed by the bios upgrade do have to do with support of newer ram cards. What bother's me especially is that that beta is over a year old. It would appear that ASUS has abandoned the card and the bios upgrade. You could be up the creek without a paddle.

[Clayton]

Well the updates are now working and the startup time is a little faster. I have now reinstalled norton. THis is a new drive unused before loading windows. The CPU temp may be a problem although it has not caused any problems in XP before. I will go back to the XP drive and check it. Last time I checked I think it was running around 38c. I have some thermal paste and have been thinking about removing the cpu and spreading some new paste. Anyone done this before and if so what do I need to look out for? I will look at the bios and write down readings of the processor and ram speeds. Not sure how to change it but will look. As for the event logs, there is a lot of stuff there but I have to admit I don't have a clue what it is telling me.

[Bob]

Glad it appears to be running faster. Maybe you won't need that beta bios upgrade afterall. Did you get the latest motherboard drivers from ASUS for Win 7 64-bit and install them?

[Clayton]

From what's been described, I'm leaning towards a RAM/bios compatibility problem. i don't remember how you filled out your memory slots, did you use 2gb ram cards and fill two slots and then add an additional two 2 gb cards for 8gb total in 4 slots?

When I built the computer I installed two 2 gb cards in slots 2 and 4. Several months ago I purchased 2 more of the exact cards and installed them in slots 1 and 3. These cards were compatable with the motherboard at the time I built it. They are corsair CM3X2048-1333C9DHX. I removed the two in 1 and 3 and am back to the original configurement. I haven't been to the asus site to download the latest drivers. I guess I was under an assumption that Win7 did that for you.

Also when I went from 7 to XP this last time, I stopped the first time after 15 min without completing the reboot to XP, The second time took 5 minutes to complete.

I checked my temps with the asus pc probe II and it showed my cpu to be 59c and the motherboard to be 41c. All the fans are running.

Bobby I looked at the bios and I dont see when to get the readings or change them as you suggested.

Thanks both for the help.

[Bobby]

Well, if you are not familiar with BIOS tweaking and overclocking it's best to stay out of the BIOS then.

[Clayton]

I am familar with the items in the bios, but don't do any overclocking. I didn't see what you were refering to though. Which heading is it under.

[Bobby]

Sorry Clayton - I wasn't being specific. Just thought about lowering the processor speed (un overclocking) and slowing down the RAM speed from 1333.

I am not going to be around for two weeks - going away on vacation - so I can't get on and be more specific. Sorry - I will pick up when I get back but hope you get things settled.

[roadsideron]

I've used beta bio's before with no problems. I'm not sure about your mobo but it might have a bios recovery feature on it to recover a bad bios flash. You can flash the beta bios to see if it works and if not, you can always reflash back to the first bios. If you mobo has this recover feature than you don't have to worry about screwing up the flash. You should always make sure after flashing a bios that you to into the bios settings and choose optimal settings for you bios. It might be worded differently but you have to use that setting first to get maximum performance out of your mobo.

You might want to read this:

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.a ... 6813131218

Read the feedback section.

One more thing; that memory you're using, you need to check the voltage specs on the sticks and if they are spec'd to 2.0 volts or 2.1 volts, you'll have to go into the bios and reset them. The board it set to 1.8 volts and this could cause problems using more that 2 gigs of ram. On both of my Gigabyte boards I had to do this when I went from 2 gigs in two slots to 4 gigs in four slots. My systems were unstabe until I manually increased the voltage to the ram.