1. I already cleared the CMOS and removed the battery as well.
2. Drivers are updated however this is irrelevant since the raid BIOS does not come up upon cold boot
3. Motherboard does not see Raid card anymore but the BIOS is updated.
I cannot roll back BIOS as the updated BIOS for Windows 8 does not allow roll back. Please see if a BIOS fix is forthcoming for this issue.