possibly the bios is fried?

shokpin

OSNN Junior Addict
Joined
19 Apr 2004
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ok long story

brother's having trouble with his computer, heres the story
he comes in a few days ago says his computer wont start
i go look at it, and it freezes during the memory check every time
he tells me it does this every morning because the computer is too cold
lol, i say thats wrong, it cant be too cold, especially in doors and such
so i decide maybe the bios settings got screwed up at some point
i flash them

comes back to factory defaults, same thing, freezes durning mem check
i say i'll look at it later and get back to my homework
he comes in an hour later saying that it works fine now, and it just needed to warm up, and that he was right
i say whatever and let him continue, now i doubt he went into the bios and reset them back to his specific configs, something i suppose i shoulda done, but didnt
so it works fine for a few days
and he comes in to my room last night saying its not working anymore
i go take a look at it, the bios dont even start, no vid card check, nothing
he then tells me that there was an error the last time he booted and he doesnt remember what it said, just something about the bios and an error...so he tried pressing F1 to continue, and when that didnt work he pressed DEL to enter the bios then exited without saving
now everything boots up, the hard drive spins, the cd-roms boot, the network card and such all light up
but theres no video signal and no beeps from the mobo
just a dead system

took a look around last night and the best thing i could come up with is that his BIOS/CMOS chip whatever it is could be scrambled/fried/dead, maybe repairable, maybe need a replacement....i have no idea how to go about doing such things so i was hoping from some help from you guys

or if you have any other ideas please let me know

now i have the same mobo as him, so not a problem if things like battery, ram, vid card, etc need to be swapped
 
would not advise swapping batteries... :) you'll face the risk of losing your settings... not a biggie but no point to it..

what you might want to do is clear his CMOS and then try booting up again... refer to mobo specs to clear CMOS... it is possible that you might have fried/damaged something onboard the mobo...

see if you can clear your cmos and then try booting up and see the messages for yourself...

for all you know your brother may have been trying to oc his board or something and just exceeded the limits at which point the mobo locked down...

if something is fried... it should not cost too much to replace if it is a chip here or there... but if integrated components on the mobo are fried that can't be removed/switched out... thats another issue..

try clearing cmos and posting any error messages... if not post on anyways... so others can help...
 
its an ABIT KT7A-Raid
and yeah, i know he wasnt overclocking it
and after the flash the speed was set at 800mhz, his chip is a 1.2 athlon
i'll try the clearing of the cmos, any place you know of that has instructions? i'll check the manual and website and stuff first though
nothings integrated, and yeah, it looks like its like $10 to have the old cmos restored from ppl, or under $20 for a new chip
 
well here it is...

there should be a battery that is visible near your hard drive connectors on your mother board...

NEAR that battery should be a little jumper... should be 3 or 4 pins... sticking upright with a little jumper clip closing off 2 of them... thats how it is on my board... should be similar on yours....

there is also text on the board that should say CMOS BAT... the best way to check your board's jumpers is to go to the official website and check out the schematics of the board... thats what I do with my MSi board...

once you locate the jumper... the computer has to be OFF

move the jumper across one spot... leave for a coupla mins... move back to original spot and turn on machine... should get message asking for bios inputs since all data was cleared... just enter in the information and you are good to go... you should probably check your own bios and jot down the settings before you get started... :)

g.luck... and please CHECK your board settings before you get started... I am speaking from experience with my mobo... this is what I have to do on my board... if you don't check your own boards schematics and mess around with the wrong jumper you may cause damage to yuor board...

g.luck once again.. :)
 
lol oh i thought you meant something more intense than that
yeah when i refered to flashing the bios
thats the process you're refering too
i did that
and it may be what the culprit is, that somehow the CMOS got screwed up when i flashed em
but what discourages me from it is the fact that the computer ran fine for a few days after getting flashed...
 
I dunno if we are talking about the same thing... when you flash the bios it is basically when you are upgrading the version of the bios...

when you clear the CMOS BAT basically you are removing all your bios settings... your bios version does not change mate... just the settings are cleared so you can enter new info...

but since you have played around with the things and nothing appears to work... you might have fried something..

however... if you flashed your bios... and the problems have occured AFTER that... you should just flashing again and installing the original bios version... if you saved it like you are supposed to that is :)

that might solve your probs... or not... :) else there is always the chop shop to sort out problems...
 
lol ok maybe one of us is using the wrong terms here, but yeah, there was no upgrading of the bios taking place

just resetting to factory defaults, which i had hoped would take care of the freeze during mem check...

i never went back and changed his settings back to what they should be, but i dont see how factory defaults would cause anything to burn out, or even for them to suddenly go bad a few days later

lets say perhaps that the battery is dead...would the problems he has no be relevant? is the computer still able to boot with a dead battery?
 
A dead battery should not keep the system from booting up, at the worst it will make you reset the BIOS settings every time you turn your computer on.
 
Originally posted by rettahc
A dead battery should not keep the system from booting up, at the worst it will make you reset the BIOS settings every time you turn your computer on.

it does with some computers... you'd be surprised :/
 

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