BIOS Updates forum

Hi all,

I will try to list what I have done and what the problem is below. Please feel free to ask for more info and I will try to give it. Thanks in advance for any help.

My pc has been running for 6 months fine with no hardware/software changes. I shut it down one night and it looked like a normal XP PRO shut down. The next morning it would not post. No video or beeps. Only the MB light, video card light and fans come on. I tried the following hardware changes.
1. removed ram one stick at a time.
2. moved ram around in the slots.
3. tried new video card.
4. tried new cpu.
5. tried new power supple.
6. tried new case.
7. tried no case.
8. tried removing all hardware.
9. tried new mother board.
10. tried local repair shop.

None of this came up with a fix. I was miss lead by the repair shop into returning my cpu and mother board to the manufactures. The new items fixed nothing.

What I found out by a lot of hard work and luck is below.

If I unplug the power and clear the cmos(MB is a asus p4s800d) the pc will come up to a screen telling me

cmos battery low (I replaced it allready)
cmos date/time not set
overclocking failed! please enter setup to re-configure your sytem. (I have no overclocking)

press f1 to run setup
press f2 to load default values and continue.

pressing f1 get you into the bios setup but when you are done setting the clock/date and default setting and save/exit the system hangs at a black screen again.

pressing f2 brings the pc up just fine. No problems at all. My pc world is all there and works great. My virus sofrware (PC-cillin interney security 2005) finds no viruses.

When I shut down the pc all looks ok for a xp pro shut down.
Try to start the pc again and you are back to no post, no beeps, no video. Just the lights and fans. Unplug it(for a little while), clear the cmos, That option f2 and it comes up fine.

To me it looks like at shut down time a virus is messing up the bios for the next start up. Can someone please tell me what I can do to fix this. Once again thank you in advance!

Anyone out there have any ideas? Any viruses that messed the start up deck? Any and all thoughts are welcome.

Can you try a different PSU? Check if you have any swollen capacitors on the mobo...

This problem happens with any combo of known good hardware listed in the changes in the first post. My current setup is
New P4 3.4E cpu (have tried 3 diffent cpus)
New ASUS p4s800d MB (have tried three different MBs)
New Thermtake 420w power supply (have tried 3 different ones)

All the part look great. And run great after you reset the CMOS before each start up. It will run all day long with no problems. If you do not reset the CMOS before start up it will not post. That is why I say it is a virus on the hard drive that is deleting/changing the start up deck in the CMOS at shut down.

This had happened to me once, and solved it by using different RAM... Strange but true...

I have 4 strips of 512 DDR400 in now. I will try all of the combs starting with just 1 strip and let you know what I find. Thanks!

OK. I tried all combos of RAM. No change. Still no post without an unplug and CMOS clearing. HELP !!!!!

My personal next step would be trying another BIOS chip... if yours isn't soldered onto the board, that is.

This is the third mother board I have tried and the problem travels with the hard drive. Does anyone know of a way to clean/fix/delete a virus that messes up the CMOS information? Thanks again.

ironman01 wrote:the problem travels with the hard drive

Well, i guess the logical next step would be to try another hd (after clearing cmos - making sure the virus isn't also there).
You did check the cmos battery.
And you are sure that the current bios is the 1 for your motherboard (since you swapped mobo's already this should be ok), because i had a similar problem after flashing a bios with a slightly mismatched bios - f2 allows you to boot but you can't change any bios settings - it always results in the comp hanging.

If you really think it is a virus you can always try another scanner - just to be sure (AVG from www.grisoft.com for instance) or a clean install after booting from cd (if that works of course).

Good luck

There is a good little utility called KillDisk that overwrites ALL data on a drive and is free (boots to DOS from a floppy) I use it to restore drives that get stuck on the wrong size but it should clear a virus as well. Find it at LSoft Techologies site...Active@KillDisk or google for it... Don't forget the cables..Dodgy IDE cables can cause weird problems..

I had the same problem exactly down to a T. Did everything you did and also go a new hardrive and SATA cable. Install new OS into a new BIOS chip from similar board. Everything was going well. After hours of setup and virus scan from Trend Micro, I was confident and started to reconnect my other drives. I scanned for virus again and the scan stopped prematurely. The computer froze. I reboot and again no post, no picture, nothing. Then I ripped everything apart and still no post with only 1 ram, a floppy and Cdrom. After wks of trouble shooting, this can only be some kind of a virus. The problem is I have Norton Antivirus running all the time. It did not catch this virus. I know that BIos virus is something rare and CIH/Chernobyl is the prominent one out there. That was yrs ago and I read that any antivirus program since 1999 should be able to detect this virii. If that is the case, could I be the unlucky few who is infected with a new variant?