NO POST after flash update

Hot-swapping and Boot-Block flash & Boot block flash and floppy support
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fachri
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Posts: 3
Joined: Tue Mar 25, 2008 5:06 am

Hi, I am new here.
I am having problem with my MSI K8T Neo. NO POST.

Originally my system was:
Mobo MSI K8T Neo with AThlon64 3000+
2X 512 MB DDR 400
ATI 9600 AGP 8X 128 MB
ASUS DVD R/W 16X
200 GB SATA drive
Windows XP Home

It's been running fine for more than 2 years until the SATA drive failed and I have an 80 GB IDE drive that I think I could use.

So I removed the SATA and install the IDE drive. The drive was recognized in BIOS. So Istarted XP Home install on the drive (yes I did press F6 to install VIA SATA/IDE driver from floppy). The installation failed, XP keeps restarting at the first reboot.

I thought my IDE drive could be faulty, I tried to install XP on that drive in different PC and installation went smoothly.

Thinking it's BIOS issue I get a new BIOS A6702VMS.710 dated March 2006 which is newer than my original A6702VMS dated April 2005.
After flashing it I got the message flash was successfull. I then restart my computer and it would not boot, single short beep and this message:
....
Press Shift F10 to configure.......

Message disappears after few seconds and only black screen on monitor.

This is what I have tried so far:
(With power OFF, power unplug)
-Remove battery for 1 hour, retry, still fail.
-Position JBAT1 to 2-3 for few minutes, put back JBAT1 to 1-2, retry, still fail.
-Rename the file on floppy from A6702VMS.710 to AMIBOOT.ROM then power on the computer followed by pressing CTRL+HOME keys, same thing only message "Press Shift F10 to configure.." then black. There is no sign of floppy drive being accessed at all. The keyboard NUMLOCK is ON, which makes me think that the POST has been performed.

I really do not know what else to check/try, any advise would be highly appreciated.

Thank you for your attention and time to read this post.

Best regards
Fachri
Denniss
BIOS Guru
Posts: 3153
Joined: Thu Mar 21, 2002 8:16 pm
Location: Near Hannover (CEBIT) Germany
Contact:

There seem to be several revision of this board, I have a K8T Neo Rev 2.x and it uses 5.x Bios. Rev 1.x is to use 1.x and later 2.x Bios and MSI lists this 7.1 Bios.

Please get the latest 2.x Bios for your board. Get a new floppy with a fresh and full format without copying system files onto it. Unpack the 2.x Bios and copy it to floppy and rename it to Amiboot.rom. For the recovery Flash procedure you may need a PS/2 keyboard as an USB one may not be initialized properly. Try to press CTRL+Home prior to pressing the power button.

The Shift-F10 message is from the Realtek LAN chip/Bios.
fachri
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Posts: 3
Joined: Tue Mar 25, 2008 5:06 am

Hi Denniss, thank you for your reply.

The last couple of days I've been struggling with this board to wake it up. Yes I have PS2 keyboard and mouse, no USB device attached. But still I could not make it to POST or access the floppy drive for the AMIBOOT.ROM.
This is what has happened since my last post:
-Upon power on or reset, single beep, black screen and the Shift F10 msg. I don't have the D-Bracket to show the board status but I could figure it out by measuring the voltage at the JLED connector and it was indicating RED on 1, 2 and 4, and GREEN on 3. From the D-Bracket description it means "Initializing Keyboard Controller".
Now this looks strange to me, if it has reached this far (step 5) I would believe the previous 4 steps were successfull including step 4 which is "Decompressing BIOS image to RAM for fast booting".
With the system still ON I unplug the Mouse and press the reset button, same thing, no POST, no boot. I then unplug the Keyboard, press the reset button. Voila!, it boots from floppy (Win 98SE) but NO POST and I could not press any key (keyboard unplug).
Now while I have the system up the first thing I wanted to do is to reflash the BIOS, so I decided to plug the keyboard (it works!) and flash the BIOS back to V1.9 (I believe I read many article in this forum regarding V1.9 as the most stable).
V1.9 is successfully installed, now I can see POST and I tried to install XP-Home again, and I am back to square 1 again. XP keeps restarting after first boot with graphic screen.
This time I took the drive into another PC and installed XP Home there successfully. Confirmed that my drive is OK, I re-installed the drive back to the K8T Neo, boot from XP Home CD, Install, no-repair, install on the same partition, leave current partition as is. And yes, the installation went smoothly until the very end.
I then installed the Ethernet driver and I could go on line. But this XP HOME is only with SP1, the moment I got it connected to Microsoft I was advised to install SP2. Why not I thought. I downloaded SP2, installed it, and at first boot I got the same problem again, it keeps rebooting at first restart. Back to square 1 again. I ask my myself is it SP2 that's causing this problem on IDE drive? The original system was running XP-Home SP2 on SATA drive. To clarify this thought I repeat the same procedure of installing XP on this IDE drive in another PC but this time I used XP-Pro CD that includes SP2. Successful install on the other PC, put it back to the K8T, repeat the previous (successful) procedure: boot from XP-Pro CD with SP2 included, Install, no-repair, install on the same partition, leave current partition as is. This time it failed, same situation, keeps rebooting after first restart. Safe Mode same thing.

From F8 selection I select "prevent restart sfter system failure" brings me to this error:
STOP: 0X0000007E (0XC0000005, 0XF87FB750, 0XF8AB6430, 0XF8AB612C)

which does not explain any thing to me.

Finally, is it true that this board would not boot XP (with SP2) from IDE drive? Or I miss something on the way.

I would certainly be thankful if somebody could shed a light on this issue.

Thanks again for all your supports, suggestions and information. I highly appreciate them.

Best regards
Fachri
edwin
The Hardware Archivist
Posts: 6286
Joined: Wed Mar 20, 2002 7:11 pm
Location: Netherlands
Contact:

http://support.microsoft.com/?kbid=330182

You need to give the message in all caps as well and if it points to a .sys file state that one too. It sounds like some piece of hardware inside your machine is not happy with the generic driver in windows XP SP2. Ah yes, list the complete hardware list of what's inside there.
edwin/evasive

Do not assume anything

System error, strike any user to continue...
fachri
New visitors - please read the rules.
Posts: 3
Joined: Tue Mar 25, 2008 5:06 am

Hi;

Thanks for everyone that has provided suggestions, and sorry for this long update.
I finally got it working yesterday, and this is what I have done:

- Reformat drive and re-install XP-HOME-SP1 on Intel base machine, update with SP2 successfull.

- Add this line to Windows Registry:

[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Services\intelppm]
"Start"=dword:00000004

- Shutdown.

- Move the drive to the K8T machine, boot from CD XP-HOME-SP1
- Press F6 to install the VIA PATA/SATA driver from floppy
- Install > Repair current partition, success.
- Install/Update to SP2, SUCCESS !!!

Reboot, Voila, system up and running.

Thanks again for you who have given some suggestions to me.

Best regards

Fachri
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