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
|
|||
|
|||
Asus P4C800-E POST Failure Weirdness
Paul & Other Asus Gurus,
I have a system built around a P4C800-E motherboard. It is not overclocked and has been reliable for a number of years. Recently it developed a video noise problem which appear to be the video card which I replaced with an EVGA 512MB 8X AGP unit. during the video card replacement I noticed some bad caps on the motherboard so replaced all of the main electrolytics with Nichicon HZ series replacements. On re-powering the system I noticed an intermittent burning smell emminating from the power supply, an Antec True Power 430. I opened the supply but didn't see anything obviously burnt. I did see some more bad caps in the output section of the supply but since the PC was working I put it all back together and began researching a new power supply. 4-5 weeks elapsed before receiving the new supply. During this time the system continued to work flawlessly. The chosen replacement supply is a Seasonic by Corsair TX-650 V2. Immediately upon installing this supply I began to experience all kinds of weird POST failures. However, before blaming the power supply I actually put an oscilloscope on it to look at the ramp up of voltages and the PWR_OK signal. All of this checked out to the ATX specification and the in-circuit voltages were almost perfect when measured with a good digital meter. The initial symptoms were black screen, no beeps. The same may happen on a subsequent power up or eventually it will POST but give a bogus "Overclocking Failed!" message. From this point either restoring BIOS defaults or just entering and exiting the setup without changing anything will result in booting to Windows. Once it gets to Windows it is rock-solid reliable until the next cold boot (usually the next day). Another interesting thing is that once everything is "warmed up" it will POST and boot properly until it is allowed to cool off usually overnight. As far as component temperatures go the CPU and GPU are both at about 50C. Hard drives are about 27-29C. This is with the tower case sitting non-optimally horizontal on my desk. This system has 2-1GB sticks of Corsair ValuSelect RAM (Upgrade 2008) and 2-512MB sticks of Crucial/Micron RAM (Original 2004). Thinking that this might somehow be memory related I began swapping memory sticks around. Things got really strange with ONLY the Micron RAM installed, first both sticks and then each individually. The main error now was "BIOS flash checksum bad" and prompts to insert a diskette or CD with the BIOS code on it! NOTE: This is not the same error as "BIOS Checksum Bad" which usually applies to the setup data being corrupted. Installing the corsair RAM first one stick and then 2 allowed proper POSTing and booting. Thinking that this Crucial RAM was somehow bad I got an RMA and sent it back to Crucial. BTW, once POSTed this system ran MemTest86 overnight with no failures with BOTH memory sets in it. The joy didn't last long! The next day I was back to intermittent POST issues. However, it seemed that it didn't take as much "warm up" time as before for the system would boot normally. Using SpeedFan or CPUZ I noticed that the CPU core voltage was all of the way at the bottom at 1.56 volts. I read a post that suggested it be raised a little so I bumped it up to 1.66 volts. At first this seemed to have a beneficial effect at least getting through the POST more often. However now there are some new symptoms. Now if the board makes it through the POST it may fail to identify one or BOTH hard drives and prompt for bootable media. At this point the reset switch will cause a re-POST but the drives may or may not be picked up on the re-POST. Turning the power supply completely off (rear panel switch) thereby removing standby power for 30 seconds or so will likely allow both drives to be picked up on the next POST. So do any of you have any more thoughts on how to proceed to troubleshoot and fix this? Clearly all of the hardware including the new power supply can't ALL be bad. Troubleshooting to this point appears to point to a memory sensitivity but I don't see the connection with the new power supply. I have seen a few web reports of similar symptoms with this same MB but no conclusive cause and/or fix. If I had to guess it would appear that the BIOS is too agressive at setting memory perhaps before even configuring it to the setup data. When this issue first appeared I tried turning off "Performance Mode" in the BIOS. As I recall the system then POSTed but Win 2K threw an "IRQ not less than or equal" Stop error on 2 consecutive boots so I turned it back off. Apparently this was some sort of memory driver error that Windows couldn't handle. Your thoughts? Thanks, Steve |
#2
|
|||
|
|||
Asus P4C800-E POST Failure Weirdness
On 6/28/2011 5:12 PM, Steve Sr. wrote:
Paul& Other Asus Gurus, I have a system built around a P4C800-E motherboard. It is not overclocked and has been reliable for a number of years. Recently it developed a video noise problem which appear to be the video card which I replaced with an EVGA 512MB 8X AGP unit. during the video card replacement I noticed some bad caps on the motherboard so replaced all of the main electrolytics with Nichicon HZ series replacements. On re-powering the system I noticed an intermittent burning smell emminating from the power supply, an Antec True Power 430. I opened the supply but didn't see anything obviously burnt. I did see some more bad caps in the output section of the supply but since the PC was working I put it all back together and began researching a new power supply. 4-5 weeks elapsed before receiving the new supply. During this time the system continued to work flawlessly. The chosen replacement supply is a Seasonic by Corsair TX-650 V2. Immediately upon installing this supply I began to experience all kinds of weird POST failures. However, before blaming the power supply I actually put an oscilloscope on it to look at the ramp up of voltages and the PWR_OK signal. All of this checked out to the ATX specification and the in-circuit voltages were almost perfect when measured with a good digital meter. The initial symptoms were black screen, no beeps. The same may happen on a subsequent power up or eventually it will POST but give a bogus "Overclocking Failed!" message. From this point either restoring BIOS defaults or just entering and exiting the setup without changing anything will result in booting to Windows. Once it gets to Windows it is rock-solid reliable until the next cold boot (usually the next day). Another interesting thing is that once everything is "warmed up" it will POST and boot properly until it is allowed to cool off usually overnight. As far as component temperatures go the CPU and GPU are both at about 50C. Hard drives are about 27-29C. This is with the tower case sitting non-optimally horizontal on my desk. This system has 2-1GB sticks of Corsair ValuSelect RAM (Upgrade 2008) and 2-512MB sticks of Crucial/Micron RAM (Original 2004). Thinking that this might somehow be memory related I began swapping memory sticks around. Things got really strange with ONLY the Micron RAM installed, first both sticks and then each individually. The main error now was "BIOS flash checksum bad" and prompts to insert a diskette or CD with the BIOS code on it! NOTE: This is not the same error as "BIOS Checksum Bad" which usually applies to the setup data being corrupted. Installing the corsair RAM first one stick and then 2 allowed proper POSTing and booting. Thinking that this Crucial RAM was somehow bad I got an RMA and sent it back to Crucial. BTW, once POSTed this system ran MemTest86 overnight with no failures with BOTH memory sets in it. The joy didn't last long! The next day I was back to intermittent POST issues. However, it seemed that it didn't take as much "warm up" time as before for the system would boot normally. Using SpeedFan or CPUZ I noticed that the CPU core voltage was all of the way at the bottom at 1.56 volts. I read a post that suggested it be raised a little so I bumped it up to 1.66 volts. At first this seemed to have a beneficial effect at least getting through the POST more often. However now there are some new symptoms. Now if the board makes it through the POST it may fail to identify one or BOTH hard drives and prompt for bootable media. At this point the reset switch will cause a re-POST but the drives may or may not be picked up on the re-POST. Turning the power supply completely off (rear panel switch) thereby removing standby power for 30 seconds or so will likely allow both drives to be picked up on the next POST. So do any of you have any more thoughts on how to proceed to troubleshoot and fix this? Clearly all of the hardware including the new power supply can't ALL be bad. Troubleshooting to this point appears to point to a memory sensitivity but I don't see the connection with the new power supply. I have seen a few web reports of similar symptoms with this same MB but no conclusive cause and/or fix. If I had to guess it would appear that the BIOS is too agressive at setting memory perhaps before even configuring it to the setup data. When this issue first appeared I tried turning off "Performance Mode" in the BIOS. As I recall the system then POSTed but Win 2K threw an "IRQ not less than or equal" Stop error on 2 consecutive boots so I turned it back off. Apparently this was some sort of memory driver error that Windows couldn't handle. Your thoughts? Thanks, Steve Did I read somewhere that you had changed the CMOS battery? If not, this might be the culprit. The P4C800-E is a little dated and the original CMOS battery, if not recently replaced, is suspect. GR |
#3
|
|||
|
|||
Asus P4C800-E POST Failure Weirdness
On Tue, 28 Jun 2011 21:12:12 -0700, Ghostrider " 00 wrote:
On 6/28/2011 5:12 PM, Steve Sr. wrote: Paul& Other Asus Gurus, I have a system built around a P4C800-E motherboard. It is not overclocked and has been reliable for a number of years. Recently it developed a video noise problem which appear to be the video card which I replaced with an EVGA 512MB 8X AGP unit. during the video card replacement I noticed some bad caps on the motherboard so replaced all of the main electrolytics with Nichicon HZ series replacements. On re-powering the system I noticed an intermittent burning smell emminating from the power supply, an Antec True Power 430. I opened the supply but didn't see anything obviously burnt. I did see some more bad caps in the output section of the supply but since the PC was working I put it all back together and began researching a new power supply. 4-5 weeks elapsed before receiving the new supply. During this time the system continued to work flawlessly. The chosen replacement supply is a Seasonic by Corsair TX-650 V2. Immediately upon installing this supply I began to experience all kinds of weird POST failures. However, before blaming the power supply I actually put an oscilloscope on it to look at the ramp up of voltages and the PWR_OK signal. All of this checked out to the ATX specification and the in-circuit voltages were almost perfect when measured with a good digital meter. The initial symptoms were black screen, no beeps. The same may happen on a subsequent power up or eventually it will POST but give a bogus "Overclocking Failed!" message. From this point either restoring BIOS defaults or just entering and exiting the setup without changing anything will result in booting to Windows. Once it gets to Windows it is rock-solid reliable until the next cold boot (usually the next day). Another interesting thing is that once everything is "warmed up" it will POST and boot properly until it is allowed to cool off usually overnight. As far as component temperatures go the CPU and GPU are both at about 50C. Hard drives are about 27-29C. This is with the tower case sitting non-optimally horizontal on my desk. This system has 2-1GB sticks of Corsair ValuSelect RAM (Upgrade 2008) and 2-512MB sticks of Crucial/Micron RAM (Original 2004). Thinking that this might somehow be memory related I began swapping memory sticks around. Things got really strange with ONLY the Micron RAM installed, first both sticks and then each individually. The main error now was "BIOS flash checksum bad" and prompts to insert a diskette or CD with the BIOS code on it! NOTE: This is not the same error as "BIOS Checksum Bad" which usually applies to the setup data being corrupted. Installing the corsair RAM first one stick and then 2 allowed proper POSTing and booting. Thinking that this Crucial RAM was somehow bad I got an RMA and sent it back to Crucial. BTW, once POSTed this system ran MemTest86 overnight with no failures with BOTH memory sets in it. The joy didn't last long! The next day I was back to intermittent POST issues. However, it seemed that it didn't take as much "warm up" time as before for the system would boot normally. Using SpeedFan or CPUZ I noticed that the CPU core voltage was all of the way at the bottom at 1.56 volts. I read a post that suggested it be raised a little so I bumped it up to 1.66 volts. At first this seemed to have a beneficial effect at least getting through the POST more often. However now there are some new symptoms. Now if the board makes it through the POST it may fail to identify one or BOTH hard drives and prompt for bootable media. At this point the reset switch will cause a re-POST but the drives may or may not be picked up on the re-POST. Turning the power supply completely off (rear panel switch) thereby removing standby power for 30 seconds or so will likely allow both drives to be picked up on the next POST. So do any of you have any more thoughts on how to proceed to troubleshoot and fix this? Clearly all of the hardware including the new power supply can't ALL be bad. Troubleshooting to this point appears to point to a memory sensitivity but I don't see the connection with the new power supply. I have seen a few web reports of similar symptoms with this same MB but no conclusive cause and/or fix. If I had to guess it would appear that the BIOS is too agressive at setting memory perhaps before even configuring it to the setup data. When this issue first appeared I tried turning off "Performance Mode" in the BIOS. As I recall the system then POSTed but Win 2K threw an "IRQ not less than or equal" Stop error on 2 consecutive boots so I turned it back off. Apparently this was some sort of memory driver error that Windows couldn't handle. Your thoughts? Thanks, Steve Did I read somewhere that you had changed the CMOS battery? If not, this might be the culprit. The P4C800-E is a little dated and the original CMOS battery, if not recently replaced, is suspect. GR GR, Thanks for the suggestion. I did think of this after reading other posts. I measured the battery voltage after the system had been unplugged for approximately 16 hours. It read 3.07 volts under the load of the motherboard which I would call good. Tonight at first it wouldn't POST. Hitting the reset switch allowed it to POST but It didn't detect the boot drive. Out of desperation I reset the CMOS data with the jumper according to the procedure in the manual. It POSTed the first time after this and properly detected both hard drives and booted properly after I configured the BIOS settings. We'll see if this holds but I am not confident. I don't know how this would be any different from "loading BIOS defaults" which I did several times in response to the original "Overclocking Failed!" messages. Steve |
#4
|
|||
|
|||
Asus P4C800-E POST Failure Weirdness
On 6/29/2011 5:16 PM, Steve Sr. wrote:
On Tue, 28 Jun 2011 21:12:12 -0700, Ghostrider"00 wrote: On 6/28/2011 5:12 PM, Steve Sr. wrote: Paul& Other Asus Gurus, I have a system built around a P4C800-E motherboard. It is not overclocked and has been reliable for a number of years. Recently it developed a video noise problem which appear to be the video card which I replaced with an EVGA 512MB 8X AGP unit. during the video card replacement I noticed some bad caps on the motherboard so replaced all of the main electrolytics with Nichicon HZ series replacements. On re-powering the system I noticed an intermittent burning smell emminating from the power supply, an Antec True Power 430. I opened the supply but didn't see anything obviously burnt. I did see some more bad caps in the output section of the supply but since the PC was working I put it all back together and began researching a new power supply. 4-5 weeks elapsed before receiving the new supply. During this time the system continued to work flawlessly. The chosen replacement supply is a Seasonic by Corsair TX-650 V2. Immediately upon installing this supply I began to experience all kinds of weird POST failures. However, before blaming the power supply I actually put an oscilloscope on it to look at the ramp up of voltages and the PWR_OK signal. All of this checked out to the ATX specification and the in-circuit voltages were almost perfect when measured with a good digital meter. The initial symptoms were black screen, no beeps. The same may happen on a subsequent power up or eventually it will POST but give a bogus "Overclocking Failed!" message. From this point either restoring BIOS defaults or just entering and exiting the setup without changing anything will result in booting to Windows. Once it gets to Windows it is rock-solid reliable until the next cold boot (usually the next day). Another interesting thing is that once everything is "warmed up" it will POST and boot properly until it is allowed to cool off usually overnight. As far as component temperatures go the CPU and GPU are both at about 50C. Hard drives are about 27-29C. This is with the tower case sitting non-optimally horizontal on my desk. This system has 2-1GB sticks of Corsair ValuSelect RAM (Upgrade 2008) and 2-512MB sticks of Crucial/Micron RAM (Original 2004). Thinking that this might somehow be memory related I began swapping memory sticks around. Things got really strange with ONLY the Micron RAM installed, first both sticks and then each individually. The main error now was "BIOS flash checksum bad" and prompts to insert a diskette or CD with the BIOS code on it! NOTE: This is not the same error as "BIOS Checksum Bad" which usually applies to the setup data being corrupted. Installing the corsair RAM first one stick and then 2 allowed proper POSTing and booting. Thinking that this Crucial RAM was somehow bad I got an RMA and sent it back to Crucial. BTW, once POSTed this system ran MemTest86 overnight with no failures with BOTH memory sets in it. The joy didn't last long! The next day I was back to intermittent POST issues. However, it seemed that it didn't take as much "warm up" time as before for the system would boot normally. Using SpeedFan or CPUZ I noticed that the CPU core voltage was all of the way at the bottom at 1.56 volts. I read a post that suggested it be raised a little so I bumped it up to 1.66 volts. At first this seemed to have a beneficial effect at least getting through the POST more often. However now there are some new symptoms. Now if the board makes it through the POST it may fail to identify one or BOTH hard drives and prompt for bootable media. At this point the reset switch will cause a re-POST but the drives may or may not be picked up on the re-POST. Turning the power supply completely off (rear panel switch) thereby removing standby power for 30 seconds or so will likely allow both drives to be picked up on the next POST. So do any of you have any more thoughts on how to proceed to troubleshoot and fix this? Clearly all of the hardware including the new power supply can't ALL be bad. Troubleshooting to this point appears to point to a memory sensitivity but I don't see the connection with the new power supply. I have seen a few web reports of similar symptoms with this same MB but no conclusive cause and/or fix. If I had to guess it would appear that the BIOS is too agressive at setting memory perhaps before even configuring it to the setup data. When this issue first appeared I tried turning off "Performance Mode" in the BIOS. As I recall the system then POSTed but Win 2K threw an "IRQ not less than or equal" Stop error on 2 consecutive boots so I turned it back off. Apparently this was some sort of memory driver error that Windows couldn't handle. Your thoughts? Thanks, Steve Did I read somewhere that you had changed the CMOS battery? If not, this might be the culprit. The P4C800-E is a little dated and the original CMOS battery, if not recently replaced, is suspect. GR GR, Thanks for the suggestion. I did think of this after reading other posts. I measured the battery voltage after the system had been unplugged for approximately 16 hours. It read 3.07 volts under the load of the motherboard which I would call good. Tonight at first it wouldn't POST. Hitting the reset switch allowed it to POST but It didn't detect the boot drive. Out of desperation I reset the CMOS data with the jumper according to the procedure in the manual. It POSTed the first time after this and properly detected both hard drives and booted properly after I configured the BIOS settings. We'll see if this holds but I am not confident. I don't know how this would be any different from "loading BIOS defaults" which I did several times in response to the original "Overclocking Failed!" messages. Steve I know it doesn't make sense since you said the CMOS batt was at 3.07v, but try replacing it anyway if the problem returns. It's not common (IIRC, I've seen about 4 cases like this in the last 10 years), but I've had "good reading" CMOS batts screw up like this. At worst case, you are only out the cost ($5) of a new batt. FYI (for evereyone): The big chain auto parts places are now stocking CR2032s (and others). Since they are also used in many car fobs, it makes sense. The local O'Reilly's has 2 - 2032s for $4.98. It's nice to know when you need one (as in visiting someone and getting stuck with the "can you fix my pooter" gig). -- "**** this is it, all the pieces do fit. We're like that crazy old man jumping out of the alleyway with a baseball bat, saying, "Remember me mother****er?" Jim “Dandy” Mangrum |
#5
|
|||
|
|||
Asus P4C800-E POST Failure Weirdness
|
#6
|
|||
|
|||
Asus P4C800-E POST Failure Weirdness
On 6/29/2011 8:51 PM, GMAN wrote:
I know it doesn't make sense since you said the CMOS batt was at 3.07v, but try replacing it anyway if the problem returns. It's not common (IIRC, I've seen about 4 cases like this in the last 10 years), but I've had "good reading" CMOS batts screw up like this. At worst case, you are only out the cost ($5) of a new batt. FYI (for evereyone): The big chain auto parts places are now stocking CR2032s (and others). Since they are also used in many car fobs, it makes sense. The local O'Reilly's has 2 - 2032s for $4.98. It's nice to know when you need one (as in visiting someone and getting stuck with the "can you fix my pooter" gig). Walmart usually has them for $2.99 I know. The local mom 'n pop pooter stores often have them for a buck each here, out of bulk trays. That's my usual source. If you need one and the autoparts place is 1 mile away and WallyWorld is 14 (like here), and it's 9PM and you don't have a spare on hand... which would you choose? -- "**** this is it, all the pieces do fit. We're like that crazy old man jumping out of the alleyway with a baseball bat, saying, "Remember me mother****er?" Jim “Dandy” Mangrum |
Thread Tools | |
Display Modes | |
|
|
Similar Threads | ||||
Thread | Thread Starter | Forum | Replies | Last Post |
Asus motherboard freezing on POST and HDD failure ? | Synapse Syndrome | Asus Motherboards | 2 | March 3rd 07 07:05 AM |
Asus motherboard freezing on POST and HDD failure ? | Synapse Syndrome | General | 2 | March 3rd 07 07:05 AM |
Ram + Post weirdness. | Machine Messiah | General | 2 | October 17th 06 02:38 AM |
POST failure on ASUS P4S8X-X | Conrad W. Paul | General | 2 | February 20th 05 06:08 PM |
Power supply failure on Asus P4C800-E Deluxe | ME | Asus Motherboards | 11 | May 15th 04 04:03 AM |