Jonshandbrake...Bios checksum error.

dragonV8dragonV8 not here much New
edited August 2004 in Hardware
Got back home today. Tried starting Sally's puter. Screen shows nothing, green active light just flashes.

Tried resetting the bios and removed the battery for 1 minute. Still no luck.

PM'd Thrax as he was online. His suggestions were followed to no avail. Checked cabling, replaced video card which we checked in another puter. Double checked sata cables, all good.

Sally got me to replace the sata cable to C: and this activated the screen. :rolleyes:

Managed to get a start of sorts. Now it states: "Bios Rom Checksum Error". :eek2:

A phone call to get someone over and a preliminary explanation to him, gave the guy cause to think the battery may be flat as we removed it a few times trying to reset the bios in conjunction with moving the jumper over 1 pin.

At this stage i'll go and get one and see if that does make a difference.

Also, cannot get any drives to work. Only A: works with specific disks when booting up.

If anyone can think of anything that may be worth a try, please let us know.

Jon

Minor update.....New battery made no difference. :rolleyes:

Major update.....Running out of time.....Have taken it to the puter shop around the corner. :)

Comments

  • TexTex Dallas/Ft. Worth
    edited August 2004
    And your sure when you were messing with it you didn't move the jumper to clear the cmos and not move it back? Many MB's will continue to boot and clear the cmos every time they boot which gives that symptom
  • edcentricedcentric near Milwaukee, Wisconsin Icrontian
    edited August 2004
    Are you sure that your new battery is good? Get out the volt meter. And while you have it out check your psu outputs.
    The only times that I have had this error I either forgot to move the jumper back or had a bad battery.
  • muddocktormuddocktor
    edited August 2004
    That sounds like the bios got corrupted somehow to me. Since it will still read the A drive, have you tried flashing the bios again? Make a flashing boot disk with the program I'm attaching here, then put awdflash and your bios you want to flash to the mobo on the floppy and flash the bios again since it sounds like it's corrupted somehow.
  • Straight_ManStraight_Man Geeky, in my own way Naples, FL Icrontian
    edited August 2004
    Actually, every time you get that, you get to enter the BIOS, restore defaults, then set what you want for sure, then save the CMOS table. EVERY time you do a CMOS Cell clear, with most BIOSs and CMOSs. Then the BIOS stores a new checksum as it clears. IF BIOS is using old checksum, and CMOS is wiped, you get a checksum error simply becasue CMOS got wiped. Checksum is usually checksum of BIOS values.

    Since you have a SATA boot drive, it's probable that the BIOS, when it defaulted, did not default SATA drive as boot drive. I walk around that issue, my boot drive is always IDE. BIOSs know to look for IDE, SATA can use a secondary BIOS and that can be defaulted OFF. In fact, on my IC7-Max3, until I got version 15 of the BIOS, it defaulted the secondary SATA BIOS OFF. With 15, it is defaulted ON..... Since I do not now use SATA, this actually makes boot take longer, but box works. For those that use SATA boot drives, this last default change was a bug killer. For me, it makes booting longer-- and Widnows loads RAID drivers whihc are never actually used for a device.

    Simple statement of point:

    You or the tech probably need to tell the BIOS to use SATA. Preferably the same way it did. If you did not write down the options settings you tell BIOS to set in order to use SATA to get boot, you will get to play every time you clear BIOS. It boots only from floppy because it is not trying to boot from a SATA drive, and probably the default settings KEEP it from looking for a SATA boot drive. I use SATA for DATA, IDE for BOOT drive for OS, simply because it is easier to recover from (fubarred CMOS settings caused) CMOS recoveries.

    Normally this checksum is not BIOS code checksum, it is BIOS seeing a change in BIOS table that BIOS does not EXPECT. It is a simple way to check for CMOS\BIOS viruses. AND, if you are programmign a virus and have CMOS\BIOS virus protection on, the changes might not get written right. Turn off CMOS virus protection, if it defaulted on.

    Simple overall thematic\scenario point: Every choice in BIOS can have good and bad sides, depending on how exactly you want to use the computer. I simply integrate around the most common problems, use IDE for boot and IDE or SATA for working\production data because most BIOSs will default to use IDE, and many will default to sometimes not even SEE or look for SATA by default. Some are starting to use SATA by default, though.

    Sorry, I just saw this thread....
  • dragonV8dragonV8 not here much New
    edited August 2004
    Thanks for the replies guys. I guess as Sally had been without her "Baby" for a week, she was keen to get access back into it. We tried several things, like download awdflash.exe and putting it on a floppy with other boot configurations on it.

    When awdflash brought up a screen we had never seen before, we were at a loss. Like type in the name of a program........What program! :(

    The fact not many people were online and her need to get into C: made us take the option of going to the local puter shop. Dave has done a lot for us in the past and though i have NO DOUBT you guys would have been able to help us out, neither of us have had much sleep in the last 24 hrs. Sally in pain, me coming off night-shift.

    Not knowing much about what we were doing and the fact of being very tired, the option of taking it to the shop was an easy way out.

    Since taking it to Dave, we have read more on the problem (never say die, lol) and Sally firmly believes, with her limited knowledge and your input, she would have got it going again once she had some rest.

    This week i had planned to pull her puter to bits to finish off things in the planning stages. Got a sleeving kit for her PSU, with coloured molex connectors to make it look "Nicer".
    2 more H/D's and a self-contained little water cooling kit to fit. This is going to be our learning curve into water-cooling.

    History tells me to start early on ANY project as i normally fly back on monday mornings, 6:00am. Many a time have i been here working on computer related things, like modifying the farm, and was still going at it just hours prior to flying back to work.

    So therein lies the problem............So little time, So much to do, lol.

    Thanks again

    Jon
  • dragonV8dragonV8 not here much New
    edited August 2004
    You would NOT believe it.

    Graphics card?........No
    Bios problem?..........No

    1 out of 4 sticks of 512mb Kingmax DDR-500 turned out to be faulty. What the....??

    Dave, the puter man asked me to come over. Oh, oh. Showed me the problem by booting up with 3 of Sally's sticks and one of his Antec heatsink covered ones. Booted OK. Removed his stick, replaced it with Sally's 4th and what do you know.......Nothing, Zilch.

    Asked him to change the faulty stick to a different slot. With our 4, no go. With his no probs. He thought initially it to be the mobo, so he removed it out of the case. Now it will take awhile for him to put it back together.

    All going well, it should be covered by warranty as they are not very old sticks. Checked the numbers on the ram and all 4 have the same numbers so i wont have to send 2 back.

    Sally will have to get by with 2x512mb. Should be heaps for what she does. Just want it back running so she can get on with her stuff and get it back folding.

    Got a HD question, but i'll post it in the correct area, as it is a seperate item and not an emergency.

    Thought i'd best update this thread as it may help someone else with a problem not unlike ours and to let the curious ones among you know what is happening.

    Jon A.
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