Bluescreen_Of_Death

Okay, here's my issue in a nutshell:

I recently got a Q9300, installed it in my machine, and windows was only recognizing 2/4 cores [already started a thread in intel processors about that]. I was running BIOS 401, so I flashed to BIOS 907 and my PC started throwing fits at me in startup [randomly crashing]. I went onto the ASUS website and saw that support for the Q9300 was "beta" so I assumed that I needed to flash the 1004 BIOS [turns out that my watercooling pump got unplugged, so my system was shutting down to avoid damage]. well, as luck would have it, the system crashed mid flash, and the BIOS recovery started up. I downloaded the 401 BIOS, renamed them to FORMULA.ROM [as this is what the recovery was looking for] and stuck them on a flash drive. Plugged flash drive into pc, booted up, it started jumping through its hoops, and the recovery told me that I needed to shutdown and restart system to recover. Shut the system down, waited for 10 sec, turned it back on, and the system hangs. on my LCD poster, it starts hanging on "CHECKCMOS." I have cleared the CMOS through the clr cmos button on the back of my MB about 3 times to no avail. is it RMA time?

trueg50

Have you tried the flashing method listed in the "THE Asus x38 thread"?

FYI the issue with Vista can be resolved by running opening up the device manager and under processors, "scan for hardware changes" for the two old CPU's showing up. Then run "msconfig" and then under "Advanced" and "boot options" check off "detect HAL". Uncheck this once you have rebooted.

I believe the Maximus has a non-removable BIOS chip, so if the BIOS did get corrupted, then you would have to RMA the board.

Try unplugging the mouse, keyboard, everything except the power cord, 1 stick of RAM, the video card, and the monitor plugging into the video card, also remove and reinsert the RAM, video card, and CPU. So no hard drives, minimal RAM, if it still gives you the same error, unplug the computer, and pull the CMOS battery for 10-15 minutes and try this again.

If that doesn't fix it, then you will probably have to RMA the board.

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Bluescreen_Of_Death

Well, I'd give something like that a shot, but the system dosn't even POST anymore. all it does when I press the power button is crank up the fans and lights, the poster says "DET DRAM" then it swaps to "TESTCMOS" and hangs.

so I need to slice and dice my machine and RMA the MB?

Bluescreen_Of_Death

Just to close this forum, I called ASUS and they confirmed my fears. My pc is lying in tatters on my floor as the MB gets flashed at the ASUS RMA place T_T I'll be sending it off today, and I'll have to wait 10 days to get it back, then probably another 3 or 4 to assemble the watercooling with no bubbles xD