Phantom Maelstrom

Gigabyte GA-G31M-ES2C Motherboard

Right after a friend toasted my ASUS motherboard by experimenting with it, I bought a new one to replace the broken motherboard. With Solid-capacitor, Energy Saving, Dual-BIOS, etc. features and a colorful board, the Gigabyte model GA-G31M-ES2C Motherboard caught my attention. Of course, those kind of features seem enticing, as it seems to rival and even excel the previous one.

Everything went smoothly at first, but after at least 3 weeks of use, I notice the CMOS password-sealed area automatically reconfigured, and the password disappeared. It was kind of odd because I didn't even touched that area. I ignored it because I thought it was just a minor system error, however, after approximately 3 months of use, my PC hanged all of a sudden, and the CPU went berserk; going into an endless loop process.

I rebooted the system, and it took me 3-4x of turning it on and off, before I manage to get it back to work. Since then, my PC randomly hangs; sometimes it works and sometimes not. There's no beeping sound or anything to warn me of the problem. At first it start out with occasional random hangs (sometimes the CPU just suddenly stops processing, sometimes still active while hanging), but as time goes by, it turns out to be persistent.

I cannot figure out the problem, but my hypothesis is that it has to be the BIOS chip that seems to be defective. My guess is base on my experience wherein sometimes my PC boots without recognizing a Hard Disk (I had two), although it is properly connected and configured, while sometimes, the mouse just suddenly stops responding although it is connected and previously working; it's as if it was suddenly unplugged. This led me to unplug and replug the mouse, which seems to solve the problem until later on, in which it stops responding again. I already did the troubleshooting procedure found on their manual. I updated the BIOS to the latest version (G31M-ES2C v.2.0 - FJ), I flash it, I even discharged it by removing the PC's internal battery but to no avail. I even hired a tech and he also wasn't able to figure out the cause and thus, wasn't able to repair it.

There are also other symptoms that's worth noting. For example, sometimes, when I start my computer, the front graphics that shows up on boot appears distorted, with only the Award logo appearing and the rest of the texts gone, then it hangs up. Sometimes, it fails to initiate memory test and hangs up; sometimes, the part where it displays "Verifying DMI Pool Data..." is out of place and appears blurred then it hangs up; and to top it all, just recently, I encountered a CHECKSUM ERROR, then it says "Recovering BIOS.....", all of these seem to confirm my hypothesis that the problem of the motherboard is in fact BIOS related.

I have contacted Gigabyte with regards to this problem, and I am still waiting for their reply, which seems to take days. On the other hand, I could simply not hope for an answer just to prevent frustration in case it doesn't get a response.

I also tried looking for solutions in different forums, and it appears that although rare, I am not the only one who encountered this kind of problem. By no means I am degrading Gigabyte here, it's just that, of all the motherboards I encountered, this is the only one that failed on me. It's actually more like a factory defect, and I was one of the lucky ones to have acquired the defective product.

What is BIOS and CMOS?

Now for those who do not know what BIOS and CMOS are here's a brief explanation...

BIOS stands for Basic Input Output System, it is the part of the computer that handles the Hardware-Software integration. It serves as the liaison for the two, while the CMOS stands for Complementary Metal-Oxide Semiconductor, it is the technology that handles the configuration of all the Computer's hardwares.