Gigabyte EP45-DQ6 problemo

Hello All,
Looking for some inspiration here....
System specs:
Q6600 @3GHz
Mobo as above
8GB corsair XMS RAM
750W Jeantech PSU (I know)
2 x 4770's

New build comp within last 3 months, everything going fine until today. I was web browsing when I restarted (intentionally) to boot into other HDD with 64bit Vista on it whereby my computer began to continually POST then restart and so on. I can't get into BIOS (although intro screen appears briefly) except after CMOS reset but this makes no difference whichever settings I choose, as soon as I leave BIOS the cycle restarts.

I have swapped out EVERYTHING in my system leaving only the mobo as a possibility, I write this from my backup rig. I have googled for known probs with my mobo, there aren't many reports of probs but 3 people (including one on Newegg with almost exactly the same prob) have same or similar. I am thinking this is a critical goof and I have already begun the returns process (I bought it from Microdirect so it should be ok) but what I am asking is: Is there anything I have missed?? Anybody had this prob/heard of this problem before? Are there any mobo tricks people know that might help?

I know I am asking alot but I thought I would ask before I am motherboardless for a couple of weeks
Any help appreciated
AC

Have you recently plugged in a USB device that you hadn't been using before? Well-know cause of re-boot looping for GBs...

Press "End" to enter Qflash

Always welcome! Why GB has not documented this syndrome is beyond me. There appear to be two intertwined problems. The first is the BIOS setting on the "Integrated Peripherals" page, generally called "Legacy USB storage detect" (in recent BIOS, they appear to be migrating this to "USB Storage Function", but it seems to [mal-]function the same...), which needs to be set to "Enabled" if you intend to boot from a USB device (say, to perform a BIOS flash from a keydrive); the problem with this setting is that, once enabled, if you attempt to boot with any USB device plugged in, but no bootable device, the BIOS 'burps', and re-boots over and over again, apparently trying to find that USB bootloader... The second appears to be that GBs are 'picky' about strict adherence to the USB specification; we surmise this from the fact that most offending devices are older, often dating back to the original days of USB, when every third device you bought simply did not work as documented. With newer devices, I have to guess about their compliance, as often there'll be 'streaks' of people having problems with a particular device (some months back, I heard about six times from various people with the same make and model USB DVD drive). This problem, too, appears to throw an unhandled exception in the BIOS, causing it to abort POST and reboot endlessly...

HoHo! You'll probably be amused to learn that sitting on my 'next' shelf is "The Handbook of Transcranial Magnetic Stimulation!" I'm fairly 'driven' to study modern cognitive neuroscience - I'm bipolar, and spent a lot of my life pretty nuts until I discovered CBT... I actually did teach for a couple years - worked for a firm that did intensive one and two week seminars on industrial logic and interface design software.
I try to write things up clearly, concisely, and completely, as I feel that the computer media has (along with everything else published these days) fallen down on the job. Everything has been 'dumbed down' to the point of absurdity, and they are so afraid of offending an advertiser that they are incapable of citing, much less explaining diagnoses of and solutions to, common problems with common workarounds. Our local newspaper has gone so far as to limit submissions for 'guest' editorials to six hundred words; hell, for most issues that I'd feel compelled to write about, I can't see adequately defining the problem in six hundred words - let alone the evident response. The industry, in general, laments about the absurdly high rate of 'tests good' RMA's, but neither their publicity arms, nor their tech support staff do much of anything to combat it. I know I'm sometimes pedantic, and go into too much background detail; however, I believe Heinlein's quote from Lazarus Long, "If 'everybody knows that...', it probably isn't so..."

United States - the same! Can't remember how much therapy I had (mostly AODA - I wasn't accurately diagnosed until my mid forties, am fifty-five now), but all of the AA-based variety: "to turn our will and our lives over to the care of God" .” I don’t know if you are a person of faith, so please do not be offended if I conjecture that, from long, disastrous, personal experience, God would appear to be ‘out to lunch’ regarding this matter. After a trip to prison, for DUI, I rooted around on the web to find a psychiatrist versed in both AODA and mental illness - and I hit the jackpot. Cost me $200 per hour, but he had a background in cognitive philosophy. neuroscience, and, of all things, Zen! Took about four or five sessions 'till I found out about 'reprogramming the robots' (My favorite quote: "Si, abbiamo un anima. Ma e fatta di tanti piccoli robot." Yes, we have a soul. But it's made of lots of tiny robots. —Giulio Giorelli -Philosophy of Science at the University of Milan- commenting on a Dennett book...

I don't know if it's the same there, but the dumbing-down here interacts with the rabid political correctness: the PC idiots have promoted the idea that everything (and everyone) is equal; that a PET scan (based on particle physics, and incredibly complex computer geometric analysis), Christian Science (based on faith that some possible omnipotent being will take responsibility to heal you), and homeopathic medicine (based on consuming poisonous ‘antidotes’ at dilutions beyond one molecule per MORE than the number of atoms in the WHOLE KNOWN UNIVERSE), are equally valid – are simply a difference of opinion. Well, IT'S NOT!

I was amused at 'dumbkoff' (or is it 'kopf'?), as I am, fifty years later, still mad at my grandparents; they spoke German around the house, but didn't want the kids to 'catch' it, so carefully avoided it when we were around - I could have learned it for free, with no effort, as a child! However, when grampa (a farmer) would, say, hit his thumb with the hammer - boy, then we'd learn a whole bunch of new words! So, to this day, I can't understand a word of conversation, but I can swear up a blue streak - and dumbkopf is certainly in my vocabulary!