Is it possible to change the default settings in the bios file without ModBin?
In my case ModBin does not work correctly. As is the case with other gigabyte award bios(es), it does open the bios file as it should and I can make the desired changes but when it saves the file it becomes corrupted. It goes from 1024KB to 1025 and it can't be opened again.
I also tried Award bios editor to no avail. The saved file can't be opened again.
Another thing I tried was to simply remove the BIOS module for the realtek 8111B lan chip (PCI ROM[D], rtegrom.lom) with CBROM195 (some say it is the version that works best with gigabyte award bios). With this bios the monitor never showed anything and the board kept restarting as I noticed from the fans.

I am ready to try to learn more stuff and fix it the hard way but I'd like to know if there really is such a way!

The motherboard is a Gigabyte EP35C-DS3R(http://www.gigabyte.com.au/products/prod...spx?pid=2740#ov) and I need to disable the onboard lan. The chip is broken and when the bios fails to initialize it it reboots so the system is stuck in a loop. This video explains the situation well:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JxdlOrpB5kg
As it is shown there once the lan is disabled the system can boot just fine. The only problem is that in the bios the option to disable it has disappeared since the chip broke down.

Thnx in advance!

If you can return your original bios you can try to remove the Realtek 8111B chip from the motherboard and that should do the trick. It is not something that you wanted to do but it will solve your problem with booting of the MB.

thanks for the idea, but removing it, I believe, wouldn't help. If I understand things correctly, if the main bios code sees the lan enabled (as is the default), it executes the module for lan which then tries to initialize it. Of course it fails because the chip is destroyed so it returns with a flag set, indicating that there was a problem with the initialization and then the main bios code foolishly restarts because of that error before you can enter the bios settings and disable the thing. So I bet that removing it would not change the initialization attempt and subsequent restarts.

I finally did it, after maaany hours of search, thought, trial & error mostly thanks to ideas of @Fernando from the request thread. I will post a guide with what I did in case anyone else is interested (haven't done it so far cause I don't think that these things are relevant nowadays, so no hurry!).


PS:stupid GB bios cost me so much time & effort, had it been another version, or an AMI, this would be a matter of seconds. But then again, I learned a few things about this obscure piece of code & had the satisfying sense of achievement so it wasn't all that bad!

mind to ask, did you post a guide on how to solve the problem?