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Weird bios problem

Posted: Mon Oct 21, 2002 6:19 am
by Miki
I have an MS6178 motherboard with an Award bios. It was working ok, but then it wouldn't boot even though the hdd was detected in the bios. Tried booting from a floppy and it would abort installation as it said "no fixed disks present." I thought the hdd must be had it so I put in an old one that works (I tested it on this computer). But still had the same problem. Then it started doing something really weird, at the POST when it detects the IDE drives, it starts calling the hdd weird names like "e e e e e e" and the cdrom "aaaaaaaaaaaa"(even in the bios). I swapped the cables with known working ones, swapped them from one IDE to another, tried them as master/slave etc all to no avail. So I flash the bios with an upgrade from Micro Star that was successful but the problem is still there. In the screen where it tries to bootup from the hdd it shows up on the primary master as ATAPI PIO 0 but has come up with ATA and other different names instead of the Quantum Pro it is. I have been racking my brains trying to figure this one out. Is it a bios problem or is the motherboard slowly dying? Any help would be very much appreciated.

Posted: Mon Oct 21, 2002 8:28 am
by ajzchips
Looks very much like the IDE cable needs to be replaced...

Posted: Mon Oct 21, 2002 10:47 am
by Miki
I have replaced the IDE cables and still no luck. After more research I found that the flash I downloaded from Micro Star was for the PnP, upgrading it from V1.8 to V2.0. Is this still the same as flashing the Award Modular Bios V6.00 PG? I did manage to find a .bin file from driverguide that says it is used to flash the Bios for the chipset I have, but I am unsure whether or not to proceed. It seems the more I read the more confused I seem to be getting. Many thanks for your help.

Posted: Mon Oct 21, 2002 1:21 pm
by ajzchips
Tried clearing CMOS?

Posted: Tue Oct 22, 2002 2:16 am
by Miki
Hi Aj

I cleared the CMOS and waited a couple of hours before putting the jumpers back, I got a CMOS checksum error that said "Defaults loaded Warning! CPU has changed Please enter CPU speed CMOS setup ....." I went to set it and it only goes up to x8 when before it was x9 in the original setting. I also noticed that it picks up the hdd properly when I cold boot, then prompts me to replace system disk. I get the weird names on warm boots and still doesn't boot.

Thanks for helping :)

Posted: Tue Oct 22, 2002 7:49 am
by Rainbow
Do you have HDD jumpers configured correctly?

Posted: Tue Oct 22, 2002 2:25 pm
by ajzchips
Rainbow has a point there. I completely missed that.
Booting 2 master HDDs on the same IDE cable can mess up the BIOS display, hang the system, etc.

Posted: Tue Oct 22, 2002 11:09 pm
by Miki
Hi Aj and Rainbow

The answer to your question is yes I did have the jumpers set ok and have been trying it with just the one hdd and the fdd. Never had any problems detecting or booting the fdd just everything on the IDE cables. I'm going to try the hdd from this computer to see if it makes a difference, will let you know what happens.

Thanks Guys/Guyesses? :lol:

PS. Is there any other information you need that might help you help me figure this out?

Posted: Wed Oct 23, 2002 6:07 am
by Miki
SUCCESS AT LAST!!! (fingers crossed) :D I put in another hdd and it was still having the same problem so I checked the bios again and wouldn't you know it, the parameters for the hdd were all screwy so I manually entered the parameters and wah laaaaaa it boots to the OS. As soon as it booted it starts finding all this hardware which needed the motherboard disk to install it all, from sound and vga to IDE etc (probably because I had just completed a Win98 clean install on the hdd). The hdd that was originally in here had XP installed over the original Win2000 OS which (I think) wiped out all the software installed from the motherboard disk. So thankyou, I'm hoping this exercise will help others out. Hats off to you Aj and Rainbow you certainly encouraged me not to give up.

PS. Is it OK for me to post suggestions on other boards in the forum now that I'm done? (Don't wanna get banned) This place has certainly put me well on my way to learning more about firmware.

Posted: Wed Oct 23, 2002 2:41 pm
by soupy
If you want to, write it up in this thread. I can always split it and make it a Sticky if its good.