Eggman

I might be wrong but I'm not leaning towards the BIOS quite yet. I'm not getting 4 LEDs of death. Just the 4th one lit after it goes through its initial cycle. Remember this is a totally fresh system, no OS loaded yet. My guess is that the 4th LED stays lit when there's no OS on the HDD. Everything is getting power and spinning up on startup. The monitor just sits there with no signal. Does that add any info to the situation?

Hey all. I had some extra parts lying around and thought I'd get started on a HTPC. I had an unused LP NF2B lying around as well as an unused Barton 2500+ (locked). I've been adding components slowly over several months as funds free up. Well, my vidcard finally arrived (EVGA 6600GT) and I popped that into the new system with a fresh Hitachi SATA HDD and a stick of Ballistix RAM borrowed from my currently working rig. The board powers up, the drives and fans spin, the fan on the GPU spins and the LED indicators go until they stop at LED 4 being lit by itself (which I would assume is what it does when there's a blank HDD). Problem is I can't see any of this because I get absolutely ZERO video. I've tried 2 different VGA cables and one DVI cable which all work with my other system. It's not the vidcard as I threw that into my other LP NF2B and played the Serious Sam2 demo on it. I then threw in my 6800U OC from my main rig into the new system and the fan fired up but I still wouldn't get any video signal. Everything in the new rig is either brand new or tested and working in my other LPB system, except for the Barton chip. I didn't find much on the forums about AGP slots crapping out on these boards so I was curious if anyone else had encountered this. Also, are there any other suggestions you might have? Angry and TMod have already steered me through a 4 LED of Death situation so I was hoping to get some help on this situation too. Thanks! New system: AMD Barton 2500+ (locked) Hitachi Deskstar 160 GB SATA (No OS loaded) Antec SLK case with Antec 350W SmartPower PSU ThermalTake Silent Boost Heatsink and Fan EVGA 6600GT NEC 3540 RW DVD 1X512GB PC3200 Crucial Ballistix (borrowed from working system) 1X120mm Antec cooling fan mounted in rear.

Well, just thought I'd update you all on my progress. After staring at LEDs for far too long, I broke down and bought another LPB NF2. Used all of my original equipment and just transferred it over to the new board and it roared to life. I'm being a little cautious with this one. Not going to fiddle with RAM timings until I have a THOROUGH understanding of hotflashing. I haven't given up on the other board. On the contrary, I"ve now got enough spare parts laying around that I can get another rig going. Thanks again for the suggestions. If and when I get my first board back up and running I'll post again. Eggman

Shouldn't be....rig ran perfectly for 3 weeks oc'd with this RAM. I had run memtest on both sticks back then. Thing was purring. First time I fiddled with the CAS latency in the BIOS (went from 3-2) the whole thing went poof. Got the 4 LEDs...'puter hasn't booted to anything usable since. Now I'm stuck with that LED sequence.

Just to clarify, I've never powered up with either the CMOS jumper entirely off or with it in the 'clear' position. I've done the clear CMOS procedure countless times and it still won't boot. Booting with J8 off yields the same result. Furthermore, I'm working off of two (2) freshly flashed 11/24 BIOS chips from Tmod so I don't know that sending them out to Angry at this point will do the trick. Moreover, I'm not having the exact same problems as Sharp with powering the off. My rig will stay juiced but with the LED sequence I've mentioned. I'm off the 4 LEDs of death sequence. I guess specifically, does anyone know what the sequence means? 1-2 light 3 on by itself 4 on by itself Repeat Eventually hang at 2 and 4. Keep the suggestions coming. I really appreciate it. Thanks everyone! Eggman

Thanks for the suggestions you two. No dice though. Tried booting w/o J8 and CMOS jumper on pins 1-2. Still get the same LED sequence 1-2 light for a second, 3 by itself, 4 by itself, repeat. Any other ideas anyone? I'm one step closer to gnashing my teeth which is a precursor to pulling my hair out.

Here's an update. It would appear I've moved from one type of LED limbo to another. I sent my chip out to Tmod and he flashed my original and gave me a backup (thanks again Tmod!! super fast turnaround!!!). They were both flashed I'm guessing with the 11/24 N24LDB24.BIN (that's what the antistat bag said). I popped in my original and it got past the hanging 4 LEDs. I could tell I got some sort of video signal unlike before. However the machine failed to progress far enough in the boot to allow me to get into the BIOS. The LEDs assumed this sequence: 1+2 lit simultaneously followed shortly by 3 lit by itself followed shortly by 4 lit by itself Repeat sequence. After going through that sequence a fair number of times, LEDs 2 and 4 would stay lit. I was trying to make sense of all this with the instruction manual and some forum searching but I'm perplexed with it hanging on "Initializing DRAM frequency." I've tried booting with 1 stick of ram in slot 1, then slot 2. Then I repeated using a different stick of RAM with no luck. I've cleared the CMOS more times than I care to recount. I've tried holding Del and separately Ins while booting. Any tips?? Thanks again. I'd really love to get this board up and running again. Eggman

I got squat. Clearing CMOS properly this time overnight did not do the trick. It is an hors d'oeuvre platter at this point. After reading more and more of the forums, it seems like this is a pretty common experience....BIOS hosing. I'm as committed as ever to my LPNF2B and to DFI but given the infrequency about which you hear corrupted BIOSes in general, is there a higher than average occurrence of it with these boards? If so, is there anything that can be done other than having a BIOS Savior or an extra flashed chip around for when this occurs? Any pattern to when these corruptions occur? Mine came after a simple change to one parameter...Ballistix RAM CAS timing (2.5 to 2). It's a little discouraging that it'll be down for a couple of weeks while the chip gets sent out, flashed, and sent back. I guess I"m learning more about my machine than I anticipated. I'm in it for the haul.

First off, thanks Dexter and DFIdiot for the suggestion. I just got home and tried it out and no dice. No POST...4 LEDs the whole time everything else is spinning. I thought I had followed Angry's Clear CMOS Sticky to the letter but I wanted to clarify one thing about the process before I try again. In #3 of the steps it says, "clear cmos jumper for minimum of 30-60 seconds." Does "clear" mean pull the jumper cap off of entirely, or does clear mean move the cap over to pins 2-3 from pins 1-2. If it means move them to pins 2-3 then I think I wasted a day yesterday with the cap off and the battery out. Sorry to ask for the noob clarification. Another symptom I thought I'd throw out there. Before, when the system was working, I'd power on and get a brief "No Signal" from my Hitachi flat panel. That'd go away and we'd start into the splash screen, etc. Now, when I power on, I don't get that "No Signal" on the monitor. After reading some more about the 4 LEDs of death, I'm starting to suspect I've hosed the BIOS and will need to reflash which will precipitate some more hand holding. I appreciate everyone's patience and suggestions for this first-timer. Thanks!

Boy researches rig Boy lurks in DFI Forums Boy builds rig in anonymity Boy OC's Boy gets in over head Rig craps out Boy registers in Forums to ask for counsel Hey everyone! I love the Forums over here. It's part of what convinced me to go DFI in the first place. Love the enthusiasm and support. Here's my problem: I was noobishly OC'ing my Lanparty NFII Ultra B with an XP-M 2500+ over the last few weeks, and having a fine time I might add, when I decided I was up to messing with the RAM timings. I had been slowly walking up the OC and was running super stable at 2255 MHz (10.5X214 @ 1.625V 38 C or so under load, Prime95 10 hr 26min long w/no errors) and 2X512 Ballistix PC3200 on Auto voltage and Turbo settings in BIOS (2.5-2-2-8 I believe). I fiddled with the CAS setting manually, changing it from 2.5 to 2 because I had read at anandtech.com that the Ballistix could run OC'd at really tight timings. I saved and exited and my Lanparty B wouldn't POST. At the time it failed to POST, it had run stably at 10.5X218 @1.625V in Prime95 for 2 1/2 hours. After it wouldn't POST, I ran through the J8 jumper scenario to no avail. Then I tried the full power down, clear the CMOS jumper, and pop the battery out for 9 hours while I was at work. No good. When I power on, it hangs at 4 LEDs lit...always. Fans, gfx card, HDDs all fire up...just the 4 LEDs. I popped out the RAM sticks (which had been in slots 1 and 3 and tried to run a single in slot 2). 4 LEDs again. I've removed some ancillary components like the Audigy sound card and a Vantec PCI card fan. When I was OC'ing I would constantly monitor Hardware Doctor to check voltages and they seemed within specs...usually deviating 3-5%. It will only power down if I turn off the switch in back. I've read Angry's Stickys and some other threads before coming to you all. I think I read somewhere here that hanging on 4 LEDs could mean that I hosed my BIOS and that DFI would flash it for me. Like I said, I'm a noob and I wouldn't really be comfortable with a BIOS saviour (don't know what it is) or hotflashing at this point. Nevertheless, I miss me little toy and any help/advice you all might have would be very much appreciated. I was walking it up to Toaster Town ever so gradually. The other thing I can't figure out is how changing the CAS from the 2.5 Turbo setting to 2 threw me into a flat spin. Oh yeah, this was also gonna be my gaming rig so it goes without saying that I'm eager to resolve this problem. Also, sorry I don't know my BIOS version. I purchased this off of Newegg about 8 weeks ago (1/05). I think Angry might have said that the 6/19/04 BIOS would be best for the XP-M??? How do I find out my BIOS version? I suppose that's another question for another time. I'd be happy to see the BIOS again at this point. Any suggestions/additional questions?? Thanks so much in advance for any help!! Eggman