nForce4M-A v3.0

Here are the issues my mobo has. Is there anyone who has encountered
them and found a solution?

1)
I bought two Samsung Spinpoint F3 500GB harddrives (HD502HJ) and this
motherboard fails to detect them after a restart - any kind of
restart: CTRL-ALT-DEL during boot, proper restart from the OS or a
RESET. They are only detected after the primary power-up.

I find it hard to believe that it's the HDDs that are troublesome.


2)
I can't power-up this motherboard straight after shutdown. I have to
wait some time before it works again.
Sometimes, pressing the power button lights up the Green led and all
the fans start spinning, but the screen stays blank - no boot.


3)
Is there an alternative BIOS I can install on it (I couldn't find one
yet)? The current one seems to be the cause of all my problems.


Thank you!

 

A BIOS update fixed the first problem (I used the latest official
version), so what I learned today is not to always trust changelogs.
There was nothing similar to my problem listed in them, so I shouldn't
have had a reason to flash it.