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Posted: Tue Nov 25, 2003 11:04 pm
by Phil Harmonic
Hi, I hope you can help. A few weeks ago, I decided to move the innards of an old PC I have into a new case. PC Chips M537DMA MB, Western Digital WDC12500- 2.5Gb HD, Trio 64 mono; Diamond Monster 3D graphics, Matsushita DVD-ROM, Award BIOS 4.51PG ID string - 2A5LDH09c-00. When I switched the machine on, nothing happened. I was advised to remove the motherboard from the case. So, I assembled the MB on the bench beside the case. When I switched on - the machine POSTed several times and finally detecetd the drives and booted into Windows. This happened after a CMOS checksum error - loading defaults meassge wos displayed on the screen and I replied to continue. various things then were not working, but ENabling them in the BIOS sorted this. However, each time the machine is switched on, or restarted, it POSTs several times before detecting the drives and completing the load of the OS. I have even stripped down the board to just CPU, RAM and vid card and it still POSTs over and over. What can cause this behaviour in a BIOS? Does it suggest MB failure?

Posted: Tue Nov 25, 2003 11:12 pm
by Rainbow
Does it reboot during POST?
Or does it only check memory several times? (then set Quick Power On Self Test to Enabled)

Posted: Wed Nov 26, 2003 12:42 am
by Phil Harmonic
Rainbow,
The machine sounds a single short beep and displays the Award Modular BIOS message, followed by the Copyright message. It then counts the memory (once) and displays the Award Plug 'n' Play BIOS message, followed by another Copyright message. The screen then goes blank and a single short beep occurs again and the messages appear all over again. This cycle repeats a varying number of times, before the drive detection occurs and Windows loads.

Posted: Fri Nov 28, 2003 12:06 pm
by NickS
Can you get into the CMOS set-up ?
Is it set to "halt on any error" ?

Posted: Sat Nov 29, 2003 4:19 pm
by KachiWachi
Almost sounds like a bad memory stick...or one not seated properly/dirty contacts/etc...

Can you try other known good memory of the correct type?

Posted: Sun Nov 30, 2003 3:27 am
by Ritchie
Hi Phil

I thought I posted a response last night but cannot see it here so am unsure what happened to it.

Basically I was saying that I suspected that some component, probably the main board, had been damaged during the transfer, as this seems very unusual behavior. However, you could enter into the BIOS setup and restore defaults (customise later after you see whether this helps first, and also note down any pre-existing custom settings first that you might need) as the setup may have just become corrupted - I always find it adviseable to reload defaults are the they are lost.

Posted: Sun Nov 30, 2003 1:17 pm
by Rainbow
If a board does weird things, try flashing the latest BIOS. This might help sometimes.

Posted: Wed Dec 03, 2003 4:07 am
by Phil Harmonic
Thanks for all the advice and suggestions and basically, yes, I have tried them all apart from reflashing the BIOS. As one suggestion pointed out, I think I'm now at a point where everything has been eliminated apart from the mobo itself. Yes, I have to admit that I did give it a hard time getting it out of the old case, but as the system booted (eventually), I was not convinced that the problem was a Hardware one.
I'm now in the process of acquiring another mobo to try. I'll keep you posted. hah-hah. The pun wasn't intended.