..Not dead yet, but...

MjrBedHed · Sat Mar 30, 2002 5:38 am

I've posted this out a few places because I'm really not sure what's up here. the PC continues to boot, But I cannot get at the BIOS SETUP options. Over the course of testing, I've had degrading results to teh point that I can no longer see anything on IDE2 and the Floppy is iffy...Thats the short story, here's the unabridged version:

"Really not sure what I did this time but I think I'm screwed...

In my latest round of updates to my *other* system (deinstalled Aureal sound card, deinstalled TNT2, installed onboard sound and Hercules GF2 MX) I seem to have buggered something. Now I can't get to my BIOS setup screens!

The board is a ABIT VT6X4 w/t a PIII 550 o/c'd to 736 (well it was oc'd anyway). Now when I boot and try to get to the BIOS setup, I get a blue band at the bottom of the screen and a cursor flashing in the top corner. Funny thing was, even like that, the system booted fine...for a while. Now, I can still boot to DOS or into WIN98 SAFE mode only.

Tried: Swapping back to my old TNT2 card...same S#1T
clearing CMOS, ditto
Flashed BIOS, ditto

Now it seems my system is degenerating... I can no longer see my CD or my second HDD, but I can still get to safe mode and boot off A: and C:"

a_user · Sat Mar 30, 2002 7:03 am

Have you tried standard PIII 550 clocking.... assuming you can change it and load the defaults.

MjrBedHed · Sat Mar 30, 2002 7:18 am

Well It actually reverted back once I reset the CMOS it now read 66*5.5, but I can't get into the BIOS setup to do squat at this point

Sat Mar 30, 2002 11:11 am

Remove/detach everything but the floppy, the video card (the older one), one stick of memory, the CPU and your keyboard and try again to get into setup.

It sounds as if something has given up, it may be the chipset or a stick of memory. What kind of memory are you using? AGP multiplier still at 1/2 or back to 2/3? I don't know how an AGP card will react to a 50MHz clock.

MjrBedHed · Sat Mar 30, 2002 6:25 pm

Will try...The AGP (I assume) is back to 1/1 because the FSB is showing as 66Mhz at boot up (although I didn't check in WINDOWS) and the PCI is 1/2. Most stuff has been disconnected but I'm still accessing the HDD and 2 sticks RAM @128MB each. The RAM is PC133 Infineon that has been running fine for close to a year or more at 2225 timings but more recently (couple of months ago), I tuned it back since I don't need killer performance out of this box.

Sat Mar 30, 2002 8:41 pm

Test the memory using GoldMemory http://www.goldmemory.cz

ernit · Wed Apr 03, 2002 5:03 pm

Sounds like the I/O SYS. is corrupt --flashing bios no good---do you have diskmanager for your harddrive wait for your re/

Wed Apr 03, 2002 7:47 pm

IO.SYS and all files on HDD have NOTHING to do with BIOS.

ernit · Wed Apr 03, 2002 8:59 pm

Rainbow wrote:IO.SYS and all files on HDD have NOTHING to do with BIOS.

Not trying to be smartass,but
but could you tell me what ---EBIOS----is and what it does,where it is on the computer.
will wait for you re/