If this is your first visit, be sure to check out the FAQ by clicking the link above. You may have to register before you can post: click the register link above to proceed. To start viewing messages, select the forum that you want to visit from the selection below. |
|
|
Thread Tools | Display Modes |
#1
|
|||
|
|||
P4P800 acting flakey bios checksum failure
Running a P4P800 with 2 channel DDR400 ram not over clocked with a 2.8C P4
and an ATI 9800 pro running win98SE and mandrake 9.0. It was running fine for the last couple of months, it's not my main machine, use it mostly for games and video editing so it's not used 24/7 like my other machine. Anyway the other night when I went to boot it up, it started to power up but I got no video signal. Turned the power off and back on and it booted up fine. I went upstairs to cook dinner, came back down and the video was in "power saving" mode but wouldn't wake up. Did a cold boot since the machine seemed locked and it gave me a "bios checksum failure" and it started looking for a bios file. I didn't have a bios file on a floppy to feed it, so shut it off and downloaded one on another machine. When I went to restart it, it booted back up like nothing was wrong. I thought maybe the bios was corupted so flashed it to the newest bios. Seemed to be OK after that. Well tonight I was playing a game and it jumped to the desktop and gave me some windows error message when I tried to restart the game (can't recall, not blue screen but some linked file missing?) Decided just to reboot and see what happens. I get the bios checksum failure again, try a cold boot and get the weird no video again. So give it about 20 seconds, power up and it boots up fine, except when windows tries to boot, explorer.exe won't start, get a "you need to reinstall windows" white box and the missing linked file error. So it looks like I'm getting data corruption as well. Checked the temps in the bios when I was poking around trying different power settings etc and they looked fine ~ 40deg C. I'm wondering if the board has flaked out since I keep getting these bios checksum failures etc. Anyone ever seen something like this? -- Stacey |
#2
|
|||
|
|||
On Wed, 03 Mar 2004 02:44:33 +0000, Stacey wrote:
Running a P4P800 with 2 channel DDR400 ram not over clocked with a 2.8C P4 and an ATI 9800 pro running win98SE and mandrake 9.0. It was running fine for the last couple of months, it's not my main machine, use it mostly for games and video editing so it's not used 24/7 like my other machine. Anyway the other night when I went to boot it up, it started to power up but I got no video signal. Turned the power off and back on and it booted up fine. At this point, I would suspect a failure of the power supply 5VSB circuit, or problem with the main AC to the system. What power supply's in it? I went upstairs to cook dinner, came back down and the video was in "power saving" mode but wouldn't wake up. Which power saving mode? Did the system, in the past, *always* wake up properly from that mode or has your use of the system been atypical enough that this might've been a common, unrelated problem that went unnoticed? Did a cold boot since the machine seemed locked and it gave me a "bios checksum failure" and it started looking for a bios file. I'm not familiar with that particular board but that sounds odd... what exactly do you mean by "started looking for a bios file"? Did it not allow entering the bios setup and (re)saving the settings? I didn't have a bios file on a floppy to feed it, so shut it off and downloaded one on another machine. Might've been just as well, with the stability questionable it might've crashed during the flash. When I went to restart it, it booted back up like nothing was wrong. A power off/on like last time or RESET instead? I thought maybe the bios was corupted so flashed it to the newest bios. Seemed to be OK after that. Well tonight I was playing a game and it jumped to the desktop and gave me some windows error message when I tried to restart the game (can't recall, not blue screen but some linked file missing?) .... might be significant or might not... games do crash and "sometimes" when a part of windows crashes it takes a reboot before that function works properly again. I suppose the main issue here is your level of confidence that the game and driver worked well enough together that the odds are high enough to assume that [whatever the problem is], it's causing this in additon to the other symptoms. Decided just to reboot and see what happens. I get the bios checksum failure again, try a cold boot and get the weird no video again. So give it about 20 seconds, power up and it boots up fine, except when windows tries to boot, explorer.exe won't start, get a "you need to reinstall windows" white box and the missing linked file error. So it looks like I'm getting data corruption as well. Not necessarily data corruption, could be hardware problem (not related to hard drive) but still, it's possible, might be necessary to reinstall OS/Apps/etc eventually, depending on exactly what's happening. You're getting errors in both Win98 & Mandrake? If so, do they seem related in any way? How about underclocking the system, will that reduce or eliminate any/all problems within the OS? Checked the temps in the bios when I was poking around trying different power settings etc and they looked fine ~ 40deg C. I'm wondering if the board has flaked out since I keep getting these bios checksum failures etc. Anyone ever seen something like this? I presume you've already done some troubleshooting but you don't mention what. The basics would include: Voltage reading of the system battery Power supply voltage readings with a meter, including the 5VSB level Verifying the cards (and BIOS EEPROM) are securely in the slots/sockets Cables well-seated and intact Fans - Did you check video card and power supply fans? Careful examination of Motherboard, Video card, power supply, for failed capacitors or other problem. Cursory examination of other cards. Unplug external devices- PS/2 or USB, see if that increases odds of correct POST or even eliminates the problem. The good ole "strip to down to nothing then test, add items back one at a time, test, test, test" method to see if anything stands out. |
#3
|
|||
|
|||
On Wed, 03 Mar 2004 09:12:17 GMT, kony wrote:
snip Unplug external devices- PS/2 or USB, see if that increases odds of correct POST or even eliminates the problem. LOL, at the very least your game won't have a chance to crash without any way to run it ;-) |
#4
|
|||
|
|||
"kony" wrote in message news On Wed, 03 Mar 2004 02:44:33 +0000, Stacey wrote: Running a P4P800 with 2 channel DDR400 ram not over clocked with a 2.8C P4 and an ATI 9800 pro running win98SE and mandrake 9.0. It was running fine for the last couple of months, it's not my main machine, use it mostly for games and video editing so it's not used 24/7 like my other machine. Anyway the other night when I went to boot it up, it started to power up but I got no video signal. Turned the power off and back on and it booted up fine. At this point, I would suspect a failure of the power supply 5VSB circuit, or problem with the main AC to the system. What power supply's in it? I went upstairs to cook dinner, came back down and the video was in "power saving" mode but wouldn't wake up. Which power saving mode? Did the system, in the past, *always* wake up properly from that mode or has your use of the system been atypical enough that this might've been a common, unrelated problem that went unnoticed? Did a cold boot since the machine seemed locked and it gave me a "bios checksum failure" and it started looking for a bios file. I'm not familiar with that particular board but that sounds odd... what exactly do you mean by "started looking for a bios file"? Did it not allow entering the bios setup and (re)saving the settings? I didn't have a bios file on a floppy to feed it, so shut it off and downloaded one on another machine. Might've been just as well, with the stability questionable it might've crashed during the flash. When I went to restart it, it booted back up like nothing was wrong. A power off/on like last time or RESET instead? I thought maybe the bios was corupted so flashed it to the newest bios. Seemed to be OK after that. Well tonight I was playing a game and it jumped to the desktop and gave me some windows error message when I tried to restart the game (can't recall, not blue screen but some linked file missing?) ... might be significant or might not... games do crash and "sometimes" when a part of windows crashes it takes a reboot before that function works properly again. I suppose the main issue here is your level of confidence that the game and driver worked well enough together that the odds are high enough to assume that [whatever the problem is], it's causing this in additon to the other symptoms. Decided just to reboot and see what happens. I get the bios checksum failure again, try a cold boot and get the weird no video again. So give it about 20 seconds, power up and it boots up fine, except when windows tries to boot, explorer.exe won't start, get a "you need to reinstall windows" white box and the missing linked file error. So it looks like I'm getting data corruption as well. Not necessarily data corruption, could be hardware problem (not related to hard drive) but still, it's possible, might be necessary to reinstall OS/Apps/etc eventually, depending on exactly what's happening. You're getting errors in both Win98 & Mandrake? If so, do they seem related in any way? How about underclocking the system, will that reduce or eliminate any/all problems within the OS? Checked the temps in the bios when I was poking around trying different power settings etc and they looked fine ~ 40deg C. I'm wondering if the board has flaked out since I keep getting these bios checksum failures etc. Anyone ever seen something like this? I presume you've already done some troubleshooting but you don't mention what. The basics would include: Voltage reading of the system battery Power supply voltage readings with a meter, including the 5VSB level Verifying the cards (and BIOS EEPROM) are securely in the slots/sockets Cables well-seated and intact Fans - Did you check video card and power supply fans? Careful examination of Motherboard, Video card, power supply, for failed capacitors or other problem. Cursory examination of other cards. Unplug external devices- PS/2 or USB, see if that increases odds of correct POST or even eliminates the problem. The good ole "strip to down to nothing then test, add items back one at a time, test, test, test" method to see if anything stands out. And also check for boot virus ! |
#5
|
|||
|
|||
kony wrote:
Turned the power off and back on and it booted up fine. At this point, I would suspect a failure of the power supply 5VSB circuit, or problem with the main AC to the system. What power supply's in it? I'm starting to suspect that as well. The only thing that has me confused is the bios checksum failure. I went upstairs to cook dinner, came back down and the video was in "power saving" mode but wouldn't wake up. Which power saving mode? Not suspend but just turning off the monitor. Did the system, in the past, *always* wake up properly from that mode or has your use of the system been atypical enough that this might've been a common, unrelated problem that went unnoticed? It has acted flakey a couple of times turning the monitor back on before. Did a cold boot since the machine seemed locked and it gave me a "bios checksum failure" and it started looking for a bios file. I'm not familiar with that particular board but that sounds odd... what exactly do you mean by "started looking for a bios file"? The machine didn't even try to post, the screen said "bios checksum failure" and started looking on the floppy and the CD for a bios "p4p800.rom" file to repair the bios. I've never seen this before either. Did it not allow entering the bios setup and (re)saving the settings? Nope, it was like the bios was corrupted. Then after a shutdown/restart it acted like nothing was wrong. When I went to restart it, it booted back up like nothing was wrong. A power off/on like last time or RESET instead? power off. I thought maybe the bios was corupted so flashed it to the newest bios. Seemed to be OK after that. Well tonight I was playing a game and it jumped to the desktop and gave me some windows error message when I tried to restart the game (can't recall, not blue screen but some linked file missing?) ... might be significant or might not... games do crash and "sometimes" when a part of windows crashes it takes a reboot before that function works properly again. I suppose the main issue here is your level of confidence that the game and driver worked well enough together that the odds are high enough to assume that [whatever the problem is], it's causing this in additon to the other symptoms. I think it is hardware, it was acting real flakey. I played this game about 2 hours a week ago with no problems. This time is was very unstable playing the same levels over again. Decided just to reboot and see what happens. I get the bios checksum failure again, try a cold boot and get the weird no video again. So give it about 20 seconds, power up and it boots up fine, except when windows tries to boot, explorer.exe won't start, get a "you need to reinstall windows" white box and the missing linked file error. So it looks like I'm getting data corruption as well. Not necessarily data corruption, could be hardware problem (not related to hard drive) but still, it's possible, might be necessary to reinstall OS/Apps/etc eventually. This install of windows has only been used for probably 30 hours at most. It's not really acting like a bad windows install, especially the no video and bios problems. Thanx for the advice. -- Stacey |
#6
|
|||
|
|||
Stacey wrote:
Running a P4P800 with 2 channel DDR400 ram not over clocked with a 2.8C P4 and an ATI 9800 pro running win98SE and mandrake 9.0. It was running fine for the last couple of months, it's not my main machine, use it mostly for games and video editing so it's not used 24/7 like my other machine. Anyway the other night when I went to boot it up, it started to power up but I got no video signal. Turned the power off and back on and it booted up fine. I went upstairs to cook dinner, came back down and the video was in "power saving" mode but wouldn't wake up. Did a cold boot since the machine seemed locked and it gave me a "bios checksum failure" and it started looking for a bios file. Looks like it was the PSU. Replaced the generic 300W with a sparkle 400W and it's been running fine. This PSU ran this system fine with a Ti4200 and a 2.4Ghz B chip, I guess the ATI 9800 proand 2.8C pushed it past it's limits? -- Stacey |
#7
|
|||
|
|||
On Sun, 07 Mar 2004 00:13:26 +0000, Stacey wrote:
Stacey wrote: Running a P4P800 with 2 channel DDR400 ram not over clocked with a 2.8C P4 and an ATI 9800 pro running win98SE and mandrake 9.0. It was running fine for the last couple of months, it's not my main machine, use it mostly for games and video editing so it's not used 24/7 like my other machine. Anyway the other night when I went to boot it up, it started to power up but I got no video signal. Turned the power off and back on and it booted up fine. I went upstairs to cook dinner, came back down and the video was in "power saving" mode but wouldn't wake up. Did a cold boot since the machine seemed locked and it gave me a "bios checksum failure" and it started looking for a bios file. Looks like it was the PSU. Replaced the generic 300W with a sparkle 400W and it's been running fine. This PSU ran this system fine with a Ti4200 and a 2.4Ghz B chip, I guess the ATI 9800 proand 2.8C pushed it past it's limits? Oh, a generic... yep, I didn't realize that. The generic might've failed anyway, might not have much to do with the further upgrades of the system. It's good to hear it's working again. |
Thread Tools | |
Display Modes | |
|
|
Similar Threads | ||||
Thread | Thread Starter | Forum | Replies | Last Post |
Downgrading the BIOS of my p4p800-vm...possible? | KILOWATT | General | 3 | January 2nd 04 08:37 PM |
Soltek SL-75FRN2-L BIOS flashing problem | Ante Lazarusic | General | 4 | October 23rd 03 02:22 PM |
BIOS | Gricalus | General | 3 | July 13th 03 12:07 PM |
bios hung while flashing | mdp | General | 1 | June 23rd 03 11:18 AM |