Bios Corruption?

[chubby bunny]

Hi guys. Here's the background information.

 

I started off by removing the IHS on my 3400+. After I reinstalled my HSF and my fan that cools my ram, and I rebooted and hopped into the BIOS to see what my temps where at. 85*C OH NO! So I quickly turned it off and remounted my HSF. I rebooted once again and attempted to check the temps through the BIOS. All of the fan speeds and temperatures, instead of displaying normally as they would, just displayed gibberish. So I turned the computer off quickly again. I finally realized that my fan used to cool my ram, was forcing the HSF off of the die of the processor slightly on one side.

 

After removing the fan from my ram and remounting my HSF yet again, I booted'er back up and was greeted by 39*C in the BIOS. Yay! Or so I thought...

 

I attempted to boot WinXP and during the XP logo screen it stopped loading. Perplexed, I rebooted it once more, only to have it stop in the same place. No BSOD, no error, no automatic reboot, nothing. I have Temp Shutdown in the bios set at 65* (After my run-in with 85*C, I decided I should turn this on...) so it's (probally) not the processor overheating.

 

I then figured, well, maybe I somhow corrupted my Windows installation. So I grab my Windows install CD and proceed to attempt to load Windows. After the install finished the first loading screen of drivers from the CD, the "Starting Windows" screen came up and stopped. I rebooted and tried again, thinking this was a freak accident. Nope, still wouldn't work. I couldn't reinstall Windows. Thinking somthing else might be wrong, I decided to reset the CMOS. No go. I then decided to MemTest it to see if somthing else might be wrong.

 

When MemTest boots, instead of showing the frequency my RAM is running at and the DDR rating, it displays "0", so it looks like this:

 

Settings RAM: 0 MHZ (DDR 0)

 

Odd. But, I needed some sleep, so I decided to let MemTest run overnight. It ran test #5 with NO errors whatsoever for just under 8 hours.

 

This is where I guessed my BIOS might've been corrupted. So I downloaded the

latest stable BIOS release from the DFI site, (04/05 (or somthing like that).) and used this guide to make a bootable CD-Rom with the new BIOS on it, as I don't have a floppy drive to do it from. When I insert the CD, it reads the CD and then hangs before I get to a command prompt. Grr. Guess that won't work.

 

My last ditch effort, was to try a non SATA drive. So I wired up an old 40Gb IDE disk and tried to install Windows on it. No go. Installation dies at "Starting Windows" screen as it did above. I figured I might as well try a Linux installation (even though I'm pretty convinced it's a hardware issue now) so I whip out my SlAMD64 installation disk (64bit Slack-Spinoff) and try to install. The cd boots up fine, detects hardware fine and gets to where you work on your partition tables (type 'fdisk' or 'cfdisk' yadda yadda yadda...). So I type 'cfdisk'.

 

Computer hangs.

 

Reboot, try again, same deal.

 

And this is where I'm at. I'm currently running MemTest86+ for crap and giggles 'cause I hate seeing my computer sit there and do nothing. I'm out of ideas and the only thing I can think of, is to RMA the board, or try to find somwhere to buy a new BIOS chip from. It seems to me, that the computer hangs whenever I try to read from a Harddisk. It's odd though, becuase it'll read for a few seconds when I try and boot Windows and then stop. But it'll also read CD's just fine. There doesn't seem to be any issue reading CD's. But as soon as I try to read from any HD (SATA or IDE) BAM! Hangs.

 

I know that was a lot to read, but does anyone have any ideas? I'm open to almost anything...

[OceanSeasforMe]

The guy in this thread sells bios chips. http://www.dfi-street.com/forum/showthread.php?t=9886

*(I am planing on getting a spare eventually also.)

 

Have you tried the various bios clear methods ? (jumper and also long cmos clear ) ?

 

Also, just for grins, while you have it out, check the strength of your cmos battery with a multimeter/elec tester. Should be 3.01 at the very least.

[chubby bunny]

Previously, I only cleared it (switching jumper and removing battery and power) for 2-3 mins. I'm currently leaving it longer ATM. I don't have a multimeter handy to test the battery, but last time I was in the bios, it was above 3.1 IIRC. I'll check it again when I get done from this CMOS reset.

 

I'm going to drop that dude a PM right now. Thanks.

[Guest Slack]

I had the exact same problem on my Abit 1c7. I tried everything and nothing worked. I was also in the same state with an SATA disk... tried IDE, nothing.

 

Out of a question, what size SATA is it? Over 137gb? Can you try to raid the disk? Does it show up ok?

[OceanSeasforMe]

EDIT, DUh, Ignore that. (I removed the whole post.)

 

Its a nf3 board and I was thinking nf4 and they do not the same requirements.

[chubby bunny]

I had the exact same problem on my Abit 1c7. I tried everything and nothing worked. I was also in the same state with an SATA disk... tried IDE, nothing.

 

Out of a question, what size SATA is it? Over 137gb? Can you try to raid the disk? Does it show up ok?

 

It's actually 2x 74GB WD Rapters in RAID 0. It shows up fine. It actually begins to load Windows for 2-3 seconds (while the little scroll bar at the bottom moves), but then abruptly stops.

 

Edit: Haha, So did you ever get it working? I think I'm going to try to get a new BIOS chip from that dude above, and hopfully that'll fix things.

 

For a while I almost thought it was the RAID BIOS, but then I realized the IDE HD's don't work either, so the only thing I can think of is that it's just the MB Bios, I guess.

[THunDA]

I would also try bare bones out of the case also..

 

Rest your mobo on a box out of the case.. hook up ONLY cpu,one stick of ram,video card and one hard drive.. Then see if it loads windows..

 

OceanSeasforMe is right also.. while the NF4's are more demanding with PSU's the NF3's still require a good power supply.. try to get another just to test maybe yours kicked the bucket..

[chubby bunny]

EDIT, DUh, Ignore that. (I removed the whole post.)

 

Its a nf3 board and I was thinking nf4 and they do not the same requirements.

 

Haha, Thanks. It happens.

 

I would also try bare bones out of the case also..

 

Rest your mobo on a box out of the case.. hook up ONLY cpu,one stick of ram,video card and one hard drive.. Then see if it loads windows..

 

OceanSeasforMe is right also.. while the NF4's are more demanding with PSU's the NF3's still require a good power supply.. try to get another just to test maybe yours kicked the bucket..

 

I'll give this a go. I was actually planning on buying a new PSU today, oddly enough. As soon as I started having trouble with this, I figured I'd hold off, in case I have to replace the board *tear*

 

Oh, the problem is that my HD's are in Raid0, so I'll need 'em both to load Windows, but I'll giv'er a throw anyways.

[THunDA]

Oh, the problem is that my HD's are in Raid0, so I'll need 'em both to load Windows, but I'll giv'er a throw anyways.

 

 

Well even if you have a old IDE drive just to try..

[chubby bunny]

Right on. I see what your're getting at.

[red930]

TMod, can you flash BIOS's for other manufacturer's boards as well? There is an Asus P4P800 Deluxe (not the "-E" though I would surmise they are similar) that I need a BIOS flashed for it. PM me if you can! Thanks!

[chubby bunny]

Welp, THunDA, No go. I tried running a bootable linux (overclockix, to be exact) and she was having none of it. Is it possible I borked my CPU removing the heat spreader even though it'll run Memtest for hours?

 

Edit: I also tried a backup PSU-- No luck =/.