Asus P5Q and EVGA 8600 GT BIOS Update Issue

Another quick one….. If you own an Asus P5Q3 Deluxe Wifi/AP and an EVGA 8600GT, you may want to reconsider updating to the latest 1103 BIOS released on July 14th. Basically after updating the BIOS, you can no longer get the system to post. If you have an alternate card, you can use that to get a display again and revert the system back to an older BIOS. You may not be able to ’reverse’ the update, by flashing to an older BIOS, through the Asus EZFlash utility in the BIOS. In this case, download the BIOS utility, Afudos, from from the motherboard download page for your motherboard. One note, when you use Afudos, make sure that you type in the BIOS ROM name right after the ‘i’ without spaces. So the command to update the BIOS is “afudos /i<ROM filename>”.

I’ve also seen this issue with other P5Q series and the most recent BIOSes for these boards. Don’t know if it’s due to the board or the firmware of the video card but I’ve sent off a message to Asus and havn’t heard back yet. If they reply back, I’ll update this post.

If anyone else has seen this problem with other brands of 8600GT’s, or any other video card, please share, and leave a comment!

EVGA 780i SLI Reboot Issues with Vista

Another FYI post. This time specifically for those of you that have EVGA 780i SLI motherboards and are experiencing issues with the system locking up at the Vista logo after a reboot. EVGA has issued a BIOS (P6) as of last Thursday to address the issue.

http://www.evga.com/support/drivers/

Select ‘Mainboards’ in the first column, then ‘BIOS Updates’ in the second column, and then ‘NF78 – Intel 780i SLI’.

Asus M3N-HT Deluxe Boot Issues with Phenom 9850 and 9950

There is an issue between the Asus M3N-HT Deluxe and the AMD Phenom 9850 and 9950 CPUs that has been addressed with their most recent BIOS update (901). Although not uncommon for motherboard manufacturers to release BIOS updates to address issues, I thought this one should be posted just due to the unusual problem that the system exhibits.

Basically, with either a Phenom 9850 or 9950 CPU, this motherboard upon powering up will power on and off anywhere from two to twenty times before finally posting and booting to the operating system. Most would assume an issue with the power supply or just assume that the board is bad and needs to be replace when in fact all that is required a BIOS update. Some systems run fine for several days or weeks before the problem arises. So it would seem to make sense to update the BIOS beforehand.

The BIOS has been out since the end of May and some of you would question the necessity to post this now. The reasoning behind this is the majority of the Asus M3N-HT Deluxe motherboards available out in the retail chains still carry an older BIOS and you will probably need to update the BIOS when you receive it.

Asus Eee PC Adapter – Check First

As I work on computers as a profession, I thought I’d add some content based on issues that may not be commonly known that I come across on a daily basis. They’ll probably become quite old pretty quick but I thought it would be best to share with everyone so they don’t make the same mistake….

In regards to the Asus Eee PCs, there is an issue with the introduction of the new 900 series of the Eee. The newer Eee PCs require a 12v 3A adapter. The current ’slim’ Eee PC adapters on the market (90-OA00PW0100 and 90-OA00PW0000), which are sold as a seperate accessory, only provide 9.5v 2.5A which is not sufficient to run the 700 series of the Eee PC. Most people will have the units fail to detect that the unit is plugged into an electrical outlet. Some E-tailers are selling the 900s bundled with this adapter so it will be interesting to see how many people start complaining about this issue.

That said, information I have been provided with says that Asus is producing the new adapters with the correct power requirements and they will be available soon. Furthermore, these adapters are supposed to work with the 700 series as well. I’ll try to remember to post up if this is true that the new adapters work with the Eee 700s.