Motherboard: BIOS ROM CHECKSUM ERROR.

Hot-swapping and Boot-Block flash & Boot block flash and floppy support
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perdew112
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Hello:

I am having a serious problem with a KT 600A, Rev: 1.0 motherboard.
The problem started during the testing of a Beta version of Vista OS.
When I shutdown or rebooted the system, it went into a frozen state and would do nothing. After pressing the Reset button it still refused to reboot, justed set there and displayed the following error: “BIOS ROM CHECKSUM ERROR.’

There seems to be no way to correct this brand new motherboard that have operated no more than maybe a week, at best.
There should be some type of a solution to get this motherboard back to working as a new one, of which it is.
Do you have a solution for this critically, needed product?
You help and advice is sorely needed in this complicated matter.

Thanks in advance for your time and consideration.

Regards,
perdew112
FalconFour
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For a simple problem like this, maybe I can offer my help. You haven't said you've tried actually using the bootblock recovery method, so I'm assuming you haven't. You need a floppy drive. You know, back in the old days, that wouldn't be a prerequisite... that would be a given. ;)

Once you've dug through your archives of throwaway trash and found a genuine, bona fide, non-USB, honest to god floppy drive, plug that sucker in and now you're up to your next task: finding a disk to put in that dusty relic. For reliability's sake, you should probably cart the same floppy drive between "doctor" and "patient" PCs, as I've found that drives don't really like reading each others' work sometimes. So be prepared to crack open your good PC as well.

Now, if it's an AMI BIOS, which I doubt it is (since you have stuff on your screen and nobody's used an ISA video card since 1990), you have the easy street... just download your board's BIOS from your manufacturer's website, and slap it on that floppy disc, then rename it to AMIBOOT.ROM.

No AMI? Got Award? Well, it's a little harder, but then again, it's what I wish I had right now in my situation (so I could actually boot a disk and have it force flash my chip and unbrick MY board). You have to make an automated startup disc that automatically runs the flash procedure. You make a boot disk using WinXP's "format" tool or whatever your preferred method is, then delete ALL the files except IO.SYS, COMMAND.COM, and MSDOS.SYS (all the other files are superfluous). Then copy your BIOS and flash tool to the disc. Name the BIOS image something useful like "BIOS.ROM". Then create a New->Text Document. Enter in it the commands you need to automatically flash your BIOS without asking for confirmation or saving the old one. In one example I read, the command may be as simple as (Flashtool's EXE name) (BIOS ROM name) /py - for example, "FLASH763 BIOSFILE.BIN /py". Save that file, then rename it to AUTOEXEC.BAT (ditching the .TXT extension for .BAT). It should change icons - if not, you need to turn off that god forsaken "Hide extensions for known file types" option. Google it if needed. Then shove that floppy in your drive and listen for beautiful happy sounding beeps. Or something on your screen.

Or maybe you just have bad RAM.

Hope this helps! Have a look here for details :)

edit: In the future, know this lesson: don't blame your computer. Blame VISTA. Vista is evil. I had to replace someone's motherboard because Vista fried it somehow... =(
scie5
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Hi there i have much the same problem, however not exactly the same, may be you will be able to shead some light on my isue.
I also tried to install vista it is not the first time i have installed it but my ghost image was corupted and forced me to reformat the os parti, so i tried vista.
When my pc is cold it will boot to post no problem but the outcome after that is never the same, I can access the bios and change settings for a min or 2 but then it will freeze, sometimes it will give me the message bios checksum error (defaults loaded) other times it will bring me to a screen saying bios checksum error then look to boot either my cd rom drive then my floppy, after I saw this one I went right away on my laptop and got the latest bios update and flash util for my asus P5n32-e board, stuck it on a cd rom & it worked ok, well it said it did, the dos application loaded everything automatically, I wonder though even though it said it was a success, was it, because the problem remains & i do not have any floppy discs or the means to write to one even if i had.
Any help you can give me would be most helpfull as i don’t want to spend any more time on this incase i have to replace my mainboard, the bloody thing is only 4 months old, i will tell you also what i am running incase it will help,
Mainboard as above, Q 6200 quad core, a pair of ozc 2 by 2gb gold edit, Philips dvdrw ,nvidia 7600 gt pci-e and a 580 watt hiper psu

This is an update i have a very handy tool on my mother board when you hold down alt + f2 at start up you can update the bios that way it also tells you what ver bios you have at the moment and it does say the latest ver is there, but that to me does not mean much even though the correct number is there it still might not have worked, would i be correct or not, please any help would be greatfull thanks in advance.
scie5
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right guys i bit the bullet & cont testing, it would apear what ever happened, heppened to my pair of OCZ pc2 6400 dual ch gold editions, i poped the lid of my daughters pc and robed one of her pny 512 ddr2 dims then reset the bios and off it went no hangs or nothing, i think it is even running a little more stable with the pny dim, when i first got my OCZs they were faulty now this, i thought they were about the best, i have lost all faith now.
I no this does not belong here but have any of you any ideas on what the best ram would be, i am a system builder but i learned most of what i no by listening to other people and what there expe was.
thanks guys and i hope this little artical can help someone correct an isue in the future.
edwin
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Location: Netherlands
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perdew112 wrote:Hello:

I am having a serious problem with a KT 600A, Rev: 1.0 motherboard.
The problem started during the testing of a Beta version of Vista OS.
When I shutdown or rebooted the system, it went into a frozen state and would do nothing. After pressing the Reset button it still refused to reboot, justed set there and displayed the following error: “BIOS ROM CHECKSUM ERROR.’

There seems to be no way to correct this brand new motherboard that have operated no more than maybe a week, at best.
There should be some type of a solution to get this motherboard back to working as a new one, of which it is.
Do you have a solution for this critically, needed product?
You help and advice is sorely needed in this complicated matter.

Thanks in advance for your time and consideration.

Regards,
perdew112
Check for bad capacitors, this one is known to have that issue.

http://www.badcaps.net
edwin/evasive

Do not assume anything

System error, strike any user to continue...
scie5
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Thats a very good idea thank u, I will have a look today, i will let you know of the outcome.
Thanks again. :D
scie5
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Joined: Sun Jul 13, 2008 4:11 pm

right then here is the story so far, i have striped my pc & took out the board i checked all of the caps over and over again, they all seemed fine so i checked out that link you posted very informative thanks for that.
It seems alot of people on there were having much the same problem as myself and some were having an isue with there psus so i checked it out and when i delved into my psu a little sure enough there was a leaking cap, its a little blue one at the very bottom i dont know what kind or if there is more yet i will have to disasemble a little bit more.
strange though it worked ok with the smaler pny dims, its true though that they only work on on the second set of ports. so what ever that cap is for it must be linked to the main rail of the psu linked to the mem controlers or somthing, the smaler single channel ram works because it does not need the power of the double channel, Oh & by the way i have had a chance to test the ocz ram and it is working fine, thank god i checked couse i was going to bin it.
i will delve deaper into my psu and replace the cap and any more that need replacing, i will let you no what heppens next.
thanks again for all your help you have realy made my day.
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