PC will not boot up 2

[macten88]

I've got a Athlon 2400, new k7sem motherboard, 512M pc133, new 350 watt power supply, onboard video.

The pc would get to 'verify dmi pool data' and the screen would go blank and lock up.

I've got the motherboard, hardrive and power supply sitting on a table. There are no cards in the motherboard. I shorted the cmos jumper. Now it boots to a selection screen:

Normal boot
last known good
safe mode

I can use the arrow key to select safe mode or one of the others. But as soon as I hit 'enter', it locks up. I'm using just one Dimm module. I've tried the other one in Dimm1. I put the memory in my other desk top and it ran fine for 4 days.

When I go into pc health in the BIOS, all of the voltages are within spec and the cpu is running at 31*C. The power supply is new but is on the cheap side.

I used Ultra-x Quicktech Pro before I took everything out of the case. The old and new motherboards fail on the same two items:

fail to find SMBUS (system management bus)
Keyboard controler: BIOS buffer overun error

The version of Quicktech pro is a lot newer than the motherboard. Those error messages could be meaningless. Anyone have any ideas on what to do?

 

[garebo]

Are you sure of that?
The only setup i know has 3 pins and its right near the coin battery. Normal setup and normal booting is done with the jumper on pins 1 and 2. Jumper on pins 2 and 3 are only used for re-setting the bios.

I will go look at a manual for an ECS, i have a few.


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[garebo]

You may be right!
Ok, i have a K7SEM mobo and manual here in front of me.
The manual, page 4, shows JP1, that is the jumper set for the cmos. See on page 5, under JP1, it says clear CMOS jumper.
Now go to page 8.
It says to clear the cmos put jumper on pins 1 and 2 to clear the cmos and jumper on pins 2 and 3 are normal, the reverse of standard! First time i have ever seen that!!
You are right again on the second set! Wow!

JP3 enables you to prevent bios from being flashed.
So to flash, which is disable you put the jumper on pins 1 and 2. After you are done and all is well then you move the jumper over to pins 2 and 3 to protect the bios from being flashed.

I thought i knew all about ECS mobos!! Wrong again!

I apologize for doubting you!





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[garebo]

ok, i am over the shock, lol.
To flash your bios then you have to put the jumper on pins 1 and 2 on JP3 and put the jumper on pins 2 and 3 on JP1.

When you are done flashing, you have to put the jumper on JP1 back to pins 2 and 3.
I imagine you can leave JP3 alone to test and boot up. But if it doesnt boot up then maybe move the jumper to pins 2 and 3. But that second set of jumpers enables and disables bios flash protect. It shouldnt matter where the jumper is to boot the mobo, but you do have to have the jumper on pins 1 and 2 to disable and to flash, but i think you can leave them there to boot. Once you are happy with the system you can move the jumper over if you want to or leave it like it is, i imagine.

Darn, never seen this before. I have had this mobo sitting around a while, never checked it out. The reason for that is because i do charity work, put computers together and they go to schoolkids who dont have one at home. I get stuff donated to my charity and this is one of them. I got this about 2 months ago, its brand new too,lol. but i keep my charity stuff apart from my personal stuff for obvious reasons. People are good enuf to donate i dont use them for my personal use.
I am waiting to get some ram for this!


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[macten88]

Should I clear the CMOS before I flash or does it matter?

 

[garebo]

Sorry, but pretty sure i said that in all my remarks in the last 2 posts.

Best thing to do is set the JP1 jumpers to normal and try and boot. If that doesnt work then set the JP1 jumpers to re-set, take out the coin battery, remove ALL power to the mobo, even video and main power supply connector, and leave it that way for a few minutes. Then put all back the way it was and move the jumper back to normal and then boot up. All should be well. If its all well then you dont really have to flash the bios. At this point we dont know that you even need to flash the bios. Most people say that if you dont have to flash the bios, then dont do it, only if you have to. At this point we simply dont know. So re-set the bios and see if the mobo boots up. I bet it will.

But again, after reading the manual, dont forget that in addition to setting the jumper correctly at the JP1 setting, you also have to set JP3 to enable at the same time and leave it there for now.



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[macten88]

Well, I flashed the BIOS and it booted up and I played pinball for about 5 minutes and decided to shutdown and move the jumper to write-protect the BIOS. As soon as I hit shutdown, it locked up. Hopefully its just a setting I have to make in cmos or something my utilities can corect.

I had to flash because this is a newer cpu. Thanks for all the help. Hopefully I can handle the rest....

 

[garebo]

Great!! You got it working. Thats number one.
If you need help with the rest, come on back!

In bios, there is usually a setting for default settings, you could try that if you run into more trouble.
also, you can go to computer management\event viewer\system, look and see if there are any red marks there. If so give us the number(s) listed under event.


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[macten88]

Looks like I spoke to soon. I get the following errors and then it boots into windows and locks up:

Realtek RTL8139 (a/b/c) RTL8130 Boot Agent Press F10 to continue.

PXE-E61 Media test failure, check cable
PXE-M0F: Exiting PXE ROM

I put in a new hardrive but the error message is still there. I guess it didn't like the BIOS upgrade. But I know I flashed the right BIOS. Any ideas?

 

[garebo]

If you had it running for 5 min then its ok, we'll fix it.
First, just use manual plus what i mentioned above to re-set the bios. That should do it anyway.


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[macten88]

First I set the BIOS to fail-safe defaults. That didn't help. Then I went into setup and made the hardrive the first boot device and disabled onboard lan and usb. Rebooted and all of those above error messages went away.

The BIOS now recognizes the cpu as Athlon 1800+ so that's a good sign.

It boots right into windows just fine but locks up about 2 seconds after I get in. I wonder if I need to do an xp repair install?

 

[garebo]

Probably the best thing to do at this point. Leave it on fail-safe defaults and go.

At least its booting up now. I'm still amazed how they started doing J1 in reverse, weird.

Sorry again for doubting you but i have only done a few hundred re-sets, maybe a thousand, and never one in reverse, lol.
And funny part is i got the mobo and manual to back you up!

Let us know when you have win xp reinstalled. I wouldnt do a repair, if possible start from scratch.


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[macten88]

I installed a new hardrive and tried to install W98 and it locked up during file copy , just like before the BIOS upgrade.

This is not a BIOS problem. Its not a hardrive problem. It's not a heat problem. Cheap power supply but all voltages are well within 5% tolerance. Cables are all new. Memory was run in my machine for 3 days straight with no problems. There are no cards in any slots. Video is on board.

What's left? motherboard and cpu

One setting I wonder about in setup is:
cpu host/sdram/pci clock

I'm set at default. cpu is Athlon 2400. mem is pc133 I wonder if I should change it from default to 100/110/33 or 103/103/34 or 105/105/35 etc.

 

[macten88]

Shared memory is set at 8M. Is that enough for on-board video?

 

[garebo]

I dont think thats enuf for shared memory, but im not sure, check the manual as i do recall there is info on that in the manual.
You could try changing from default on the other.


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[macten88]

Well, I made a lot of changes in the BIOS and ran Spinrite6 level 4 on the hardrive and it looks like the problem is gone. I just used the pc for about an hour with no lock-ups. Spinrite didn't find any problems so I suspect it was one of the BIOS changes. I disabled a lot of stuff in the BIOS thinking that something was sharing resources with the on-board video.

I also changed the setting of:

cpu host/sdram/pci clock from default to 133/133/34Mhz

I also increased shared memory to 64M

So now I have to slowly enable things in order to figure out which one was the problem....

 

[garebo]

we'll be here.


Good advice + great people = tek-tips