BIOS boot problems

Point value changed by question poster.

should also add its just a totally blank screen but all the fans are spinning but no other activity untill the bios is reset

There are quite a few possibilities here, I'll list the ones I think are most probable. Good be a device causing the problem, strip out everything unnecessary to boot and test. If it a device necessary to boot (HD, Video) try swapping it with another part if you have it. It could be the BIOS chip itslef or the image on it. Re-flash the BIOS with the latest rev from the manufacturer. If that fails call the manf. and see if they can shed any light, it may just be a bad motherboard.

No matter where you bought it or if you built it yourself, someone still manufactured it. If this is an MSI board, call them. If you have done all that you may just have a bad board or BIOS chip. Hardware does fail... Hope it's under warranty.

these were of great help to me hope they do to you
www.badflash.com
www.wimsbios.com

I also suggest to check if the mother board is NOT shorted. I've had this kind of thing come up when the Screws holding in the motherboard were a bit loose and the board would shift and the Bios would go stupid. Be sure to put spacers in the screwholes if they're not there and check for other motherboard problems.
I once had a board which was home to a mouse I guess. There was a row of turds lined up they were black like a Zener diode. When it heated it would short it and it would go nuts. Finally noticed that there should not be any Zdiodes there looked closer and guess what.

Gary O

I've had similar problems with a number of Socket A motherboards.

The 'fix' has been to manually set the FSB and multiplier for the CPU.

If you have SDRAM, set the FSB to 100MHz and the multiplier to 13X.

If you have DDR RAM, set the FSB to200MHz and the multiplier to 6.5X.

Chas

I understand what you are saying about having to reset the CMOS to boot, and that the PC won't boot afterwords.

Have you tried manually setting the CPU speed?

This problem is VERY common on Socket A motherboards especially those that use SDRAM.

Many of the BIOS's set the Multiplier assuming the FSB is 200MHz. For whatever reason, Socket A CPUs do NOT like to be under-clocked!

Check out Paul's FAQs.
http://www.sudhian.com/faqs/

Even if your motherboard is not listed, boards with the same chip-set have similar problems.

Chas

I have read your question and the responses to your question. Since the date will not stay set and you have changed the battery with a known good battery(?) that is of the correct voltage(?), I would suspect the RTC is bad. You could also have a controller chip that is bad and causing the erratic symptoms that you describe. The K7T turbo2 is a Gigabyte motherboard and I have used this board often with system builds. I have seen that the FSB needs to be set to 100 MHz. for the initial boot and then set, through the BIOS, to use the chip's default settings. "Save and Exit" the BIOS and shut down the system. You can then set the switch to 133 MHz. and boot the system. I do not think this will resolve your issue, since it does not effect the date and time of the system settings, so I would more suspect the motherboard being bad. I occasionally get a bad board out of the box.

Hi there,

I think Scott is right here I'm afraid,

You have power but no POST with bare essentials (VGA and HDD only) that are known to work and a suspect mobo.

All I see you can do here is return it to the manufacturer/supplier which everis most relivent

Sorry

Jay

It looks plainly like a motherboard conflict. But there's a slight chance you modified something in your OS that conflicted with the settings in your BIOS. Did you try to reinstall your OS?

However if all doesn't work I guess you really should try contacting the mainboard manufacturer. Booting with the most basic mainboard, memory and hard disk, if it doesn't work, tells me it most likely is mainboard failure.

These sound like symptoms of a corrupted boot sector on the hard drive. I have known viruses to cause similar problems, much in the way that Disk manager works with older bios and large disks.

Run virus scan from a clean floppy boot disk, (emergency disk). Shut down PC immediately, reboot with clean floppy and run fdisk /mbr to clean up the boot sector. Shut down the machine immediately, do not reboot but turn it off. Restart system.

I believe your problem is memory related. I am tech and network person and always have those kinda problems.
I believe u have more than one memory stick in ur system and one definitely went bad or not compatible.
If u have only one memory stick,change it and u will see the positive result.
Mohammad

This question was closed by the author