Asus A7N8X D Rev 2 POST problems.

[imported_ExcaliburBane]

I'm having something of a weird problem with my current system. Last week, I hadn't rebooted for quite awhile and I was doing a driver reinstall, so I had to reboot. Suddenly it won't POST, period. Lights are on, fans are spinning but nothing. No beeps, nothing from that useless POST reporter either. So, I figured something got knocked out of place or some such thing. I pulled it all apart, cleared a bit of dust out, put it back together, made sure everything was tight and secure. Again, no POST at all.

This continued on for a good two days or so, I got it to POST a few times but it always POSTed with the wrong clockspeed (1.1 Ghz vs 2.2 Ghz) and so I'd have to reboot and then it wouldn't POST again. I tried clearing the CMOs, pulled out the battery, switched the jumper and what not but nothing was working. I pulled out the memory, tried out both sticks of memory and tried each individually, pulled out everything but the basics needed to POST and nothing.

Suddenly, it started working. It boots into Windows fine, like nothing is wrong. I can't reboot the system though without powering it off and then back again. Reset doesn't work at all. I have no idea why it suddenly started working again. I changed nothing from before. I just tried powering it on again and it started working after that.

This morning, the same thing happened. It took me two hours to get the damn thing to boot again. I just had to keep trying and it seems I get lucky. The odd thing about it, is the fact that once it boots up, it's rock solid. No crashes, no problems at all. No heat issues, no overclocking on any components. Memory checked out with memtest. I hadn't made any changes to the BIOS. The only thing I can think of is that the BIOS chip could be screwed up or something with the PSU? I got an Enermax 480W on it. It's couple years old but it seems to work alright. It's pretty weird.

Anyway, here are my system specs:
ASUS A7N8X Deluxe - Revision 2.0
AMD Athlon XP 3200+
1 GB of Twin-X Corsair DDR 3200
200 & 80 GB Maxtor DiamondMaxPlus
XFX Geforce 6800 GT
Sound Blaster Audigy Platinum

I could use a bit of help or direction. Unfortunately, my current state of finances wouldn't allow me to replace anything if there is something in fact broken. The only thing I can do now, is try now to power it down. I don't know of anything else to help with damage control, especially when I don't know what the problem is.

Oh, and I read the thing about the Corsair memory not working without manual timings set on this motherboard, but that's not the case here or it would have started acting up when I built it three years ago, not just out of the blue

 

[Harvey]

What BIOS rev are you using? I've had a couple of friends who had problems with rev 1007 for this board.

Before you do anything else, rry clearing your CMOS and resetting your preferences when you reboot.

Good luck.

 

[imported_ExcaliburBane]

Actually, during the first problem, I did try flashing the BIOS up to 1008. I got all kinds of BSODS in windows, explorer.exe constantly crashing. I ended up reverting back to 1003. If it ain't broken, don't fix it

 

[mechBgon]

1) set the memory voltage to 2.7 volts manually

2) if you have any low-RPM fans plugged into the motherboard's 3-pin fan headers, including a sensor from a PSU fan for example, then try powering them from the power supply directly, rather than from the motherboard's headers. Low-RPM fans can boggle A7N8X Deluxes, and guess how I know that :evil:

3) it's possible that your power supply is getting flaky, too. If possible, try another high-quality power supply with ample wattage and around 180W+ on its 3.3V+5V combined rating.

 

[imported_ExcaliburBane]

Thanks I will try those. Not much I can do about the PSU at the moment though. The only fan header plugged into the MB is the CPU heatsink. It seems to be working fine, I checked in the BIOS. It's never given me any trouble. I did notice the thermals from the CPU being a bit erratic at times when I was checking to see if it was overheating. Sometimes it would jump 3-5 degrees and then go back to it's previous temperature.

I don't know much about voltages and what not but when I looked at the voltage listings in the BIOS, all of the voltages were a bit higher then the ones beside them, like 3.3 was 3.4 something, etc. Is this a good thing or a bad thing?

After the last problem yesterday, I did up the CPU, AGP and DDR voltage a notch to see if that stabilized it. Of course, I haven't actually rebooted yet. I don't fancy spending another 2-3 hours turning it on and off again until I get lucky and it decides to boot. I'll eventually have to reboot, but I'm sure my luck will run out and I'll have to reboot for something