My mobo is faulty, I think
Hi there
Actually the board must have been bad right from the start.
These symptoms I describe has been present more or less from the beginning, but not as annoying and blatant as they are now.
Main reason is that I have now upgraded to an A64 X2 Black Edition and some new Corsair Dominator PC-8500 memory and of course I was planning to do some serious OC, but no that was not to be. :sad2:
Basically I think the BIOS is bad, or something related to the BIOS.
Here comes my description of the error:
After I adjust the user define settings for overclocking I hit the F10, it then goes to the pop up where it asks if I want to save the new settings. At the "Y" I hit enter & it freezes.
I have to hit the reset button or kill power to get it to leave that screen and to boot.
When I boot into XP I use CPUZ or A64INFO to let me know my current CPU speed. It reads no change from stock speed.
If I go back in to the BIOS it reads whatever I had previously entered, not stock, but it still freezes when I try to leave.
It does reset the voltage levels for both the CPU & DDR. It doesn't reset the HTT number I manually added.
Please notice that the board has exhibited this behavior with at least three different BIOS revisions, including the latest revision 17.
Another thing is that I seem to have at least one corrupt saved profile in the BIOS. When I load one of the profiles a lot of wierd characters appear on screen, and all I can do is to reboot and then I am back to default settings again.
How do I get rid of those, they do not disappear when I flash the BIOS using Flashmenu?
If the board is really bad, what should I go for instead?
Any recommendations?
Actually the board must have been bad right from the start.
These symptoms I describe has been present more or less from the beginning, but not as annoying and blatant as they are now.
Main reason is that I have now upgraded to an A64 X2 Black Edition and some new Corsair Dominator PC-8500 memory and of course I was planning to do some serious OC, but no that was not to be. :sad2:
Basically I think the BIOS is bad, or something related to the BIOS.
Here comes my description of the error:
After I adjust the user define settings for overclocking I hit the F10, it then goes to the pop up where it asks if I want to save the new settings. At the "Y" I hit enter & it freezes.
I have to hit the reset button or kill power to get it to leave that screen and to boot.
When I boot into XP I use CPUZ or A64INFO to let me know my current CPU speed. It reads no change from stock speed.
If I go back in to the BIOS it reads whatever I had previously entered, not stock, but it still freezes when I try to leave.
It does reset the voltage levels for both the CPU & DDR. It doesn't reset the HTT number I manually added.
Please notice that the board has exhibited this behavior with at least three different BIOS revisions, including the latest revision 17.
Another thing is that I seem to have at least one corrupt saved profile in the BIOS. When I load one of the profiles a lot of wierd characters appear on screen, and all I can do is to reboot and then I am back to default settings again.
How do I get rid of those, they do not disappear when I flash the BIOS using Flashmenu?
If the board is really bad, what should I go for instead?
Any recommendations?
0
Comments
But first:
Have you discharged the BIOS by removing the CMOS battery for half an hour? I once had a board, Abit NF-7 that would require up to an overnight removal of the BIOS for it to function correctly. The BIOS eventually corrupted so bad that it was unusable.
Have you tried a BIOS update? If yes, try it again using the floppy disk drive flash method. Do not use the online BIOS flashing program. There are many tales of grief on the Internet from users attempting that method.
I have not contacted the reseller yet, want to get the whole picture first.
The BIOS has been updated three times I think, since I got the board.
All the times I have used flashmenu for windows if I am not mistaken.
I will try the floppy method and the battery removal, to see if that works.
Whenever I reset/update the BIOS it will let me make 1-3 changes/saves in the BIOS without issues.
But then it will not save/exit and exhibits the behaviour I have described.
If I reset the BIOS again, I can save a couple of times and then it all starts over.
I tried flashing using a floppy afterwards I could save the settings three times, and then it refused to save again.
I do not know whether the BIOS is corrupt from the the start or if it gets corrupt when I save my changes.
But that is not all that important.
BTW: I have had the battery out for a couple of hours, that allowed me one round of changes in the BIOS.
I have been in contact with Universal Abit NL.
(They have a department in the Netherlands)
A nice guy named Stefan will mail me a new BIOS chip and a new CMOS battery.
That is great service I think, I only hope that it will solve these problems I have experienced.
And no more flashing from windows, ever.
If it doesn't help I am afraid I will have to RMA the mobo.
That would be unfortunate since I am quite happy with the motherboard, apart from these issues.
I will mention though, that I have found at least one more with the exact same problem that means that I am not alone.
He has a completely different setup compared to mine.
Good service from Abit. Much better service than you might have received from other manufacturers.