Did I Kill My BIOS Chip?
(See system 2 in signature, below.)
Situation: Computer will start to POST, but won't make it past first page. The CPU is indicated to be an AMD Athlon 1250. Much of the page is blank. The bottom indicates the correct BIOS version for the board. The line that should read "Press Delete to Enter Setup "reads Press Delete TOe".
Background: I used Abit's Flashmenu to update the BIOS. I've used it three times on my IC7 rig (system 1) with nothing but success. I closed all applications, but did not turn off background stuff, namely, Folding@Home. During the Flashmenu process, there was no indications of any errors. After flashing completed, I restarted the BIOS and made some changes, such as AGP aperture, set to start with AGP instead of PCI (video) - fairly usual settings. Upon F10-save the computer would not reboot, stalling on the screen I described in 'Situation', above.
Steps Taken so far: I shut off the computer several times, pressing the Insert key upon reboot attempts. This only manged to allow minor differences in "Press Delete to..." line. At the stall on the first POST page, I would press the Delete key; nothing would respond. After this, I used the CMOS jumper cap to reset the BIOS. Same results. Next, I removed the CMOS battery for about fifteen minutes. Same results. (I have no beep codes, as I do not have a case speaker; all fans and drives do spin up.)
Arrgggh! Does this mean I will have to order a replacement BIOS chip? Is there anything else I can try? I can't reflash with a floppy, as I can't enter the BIOS to select the floppy drive as boot device. I cannot access BIOS settings at all.
Please help. :banghead:
Leo
Situation: Computer will start to POST, but won't make it past first page. The CPU is indicated to be an AMD Athlon 1250. Much of the page is blank. The bottom indicates the correct BIOS version for the board. The line that should read "Press Delete to Enter Setup "reads Press Delete TOe".
Background: I used Abit's Flashmenu to update the BIOS. I've used it three times on my IC7 rig (system 1) with nothing but success. I closed all applications, but did not turn off background stuff, namely, Folding@Home. During the Flashmenu process, there was no indications of any errors. After flashing completed, I restarted the BIOS and made some changes, such as AGP aperture, set to start with AGP instead of PCI (video) - fairly usual settings. Upon F10-save the computer would not reboot, stalling on the screen I described in 'Situation', above.
Steps Taken so far: I shut off the computer several times, pressing the Insert key upon reboot attempts. This only manged to allow minor differences in "Press Delete to..." line. At the stall on the first POST page, I would press the Delete key; nothing would respond. After this, I used the CMOS jumper cap to reset the BIOS. Same results. Next, I removed the CMOS battery for about fifteen minutes. Same results. (I have no beep codes, as I do not have a case speaker; all fans and drives do spin up.)
Arrgggh! Does this mean I will have to order a replacement BIOS chip? Is there anything else I can try? I can't reflash with a floppy, as I can't enter the BIOS to select the floppy drive as boot device. I cannot access BIOS settings at all.
Please help. :banghead:
Leo
0
Comments
Link from the Abit site seems to recommend Excaliber pc for ordering bios chip's and i read in a thread that someone ordered one from them and finally got it to work. Link : http://www.excaliberpc.com/product_info.php?cPath=156_157&products_id=1818
BTW: Nice friggin systems
I'm letting it sit now for two hours with the battery pulled. We'll see if it resets.
Oh well, down time might be minimal even if the BIOS is completely borked. There are a couple online vendors that specialize in shipping replacement, coded or blank BIOS chips. (Wife is already angry that I'll probably have to spend more money. "Quit fiddling with the computer." I really don't blame her!
Are you kidding - hot swap? It's not that big of a deal really, I just live in a small town where being tech savvy is the ability to purchase a video card at the computer store! LOL No, to my knowledge, no one available around here with the NF7-S.
I've bought a few things from excaliberpc and they were good peeps to deal with; shipped fast and the package was well wrapped. I would recommend them to get your bios chip from. Once you do get it booted up with the new bios chip, hot swap the old one in and reflash it to the newest bios so that you will have a backup chip.
Problems like this make a bios savior look more and more appealing. I installed one in a friend's KK266-R board and I was impressed; flip 1 switch and the other bios chip is lined up ready to boot your machine up in case of a bad flash.
Patience. All I had to do was wait long enough with the CMOS battery removed - about two hours. Trying again, I finally got a complete first POST page with the now welcomed words, "Checksum Error". Good words, as it meant Delete would open the BIOS for me. It did. I set everything to Fail Safe Defaults and flashed (via floppy this time) back to the previous BIOS. I just didn't feel like chancing it with the same BIOS again.
Number 2 is working perfectly now. Ah, thank goodness; they've only been assembled for one week now!
All said and done, I suspect that the bad flash was caused because I didn't turn off Folding@Home when I had used FlashMenu. I've used FlashMenu on my Intel-Abit (system 1) several times with two instances of Folding in the background. Maybe I was just lucky?
Thanks for working with me, lads.
Just a side note: To anyone contemplating an upgrade, I would highly recommend either the NF2 or Intel Canterwood solutions. Both 1 and 2 have excellent power and run flawlessly smooth.
i wonder if the abit tool is to blame...
I'm more inclined to say that the tool itself worked, but that either the .bin file it downloaded was corrupted, or that Folding@home running in the background screwed things up.
I've flashed my Intel system four times with FlashMenu without one hitch.
With that said though, I believe I'll be making my future BIOS updates with the floppy in DOS mode.
Cheers!