Bios beep code error

[Ranulf]

Hi all,

Need help on a bios beep code. Its an old abit nf7-s board, award bios.

I'm getting a long beep, pause of 2-4s then same long beep. Nothing shows up on the monitor, board seems to be powered fine (network port lights up), all fans are spinning. I'm thinking a cpu or ram problem.

I did recently have a cpu detection error in the bios and it wouldnt save settings/time between boots. I put in a new cmos battery and reset the cpu setting to auto. It had set the fsb at 100mhz IIRC instead of 133. So it detected the chip correctly as a XP 2100+ but was running it at 1200mhz instead of 1700.

Any advice? Thanks.

 

[mlc]

most likely the power supply , assuming everything is seated/connectied properly.....

 

[Ranulf]

Yup, all seems seated correctly. I unhooked everything, reset the cmos jumper, then cleaned out the dust from the cpu and psu fans. It fired right backup but with a cpu error again. Its showing the cpu as 1300mhz and the error is "CPU is unworkable or has been changed. Please recheck - CPU soft menu"

The chip is a 2100+. Bios shows the operating speed as 2100+ but says the internal cpu freq. is 1300mhz (100x13.0).

External clock is 133mhz, multiplier is 13. AGP freq is 66mhz, cpu fsb/dram is default at "SPD". "Interface" is set to most stable cpu/fsb parameters.

Last time I just set the fsb/dram ratio to "auto" and it booted back up fine with the cpu running at 1700mhz (2100 rated speed).

Power supply numbers look stable on all rails.

 

[VirtualLarry]

So it's booting now, just running at the wrong speed? Did you try to manually set the correct FSB and multi in BIOS?

 

[mlc]

this is confusing.. are you saying you know longer get the 4 beeps since the cmos battery was changed? If that's the case they what's your problem?

As VirtualLarry states.. the default /auto bios settings will sometime down clock the chip, depending on the board and FSB rating of the processor, etc.. so you simply need to go into bios and reset those to the values recommended for that processor...

since your battery issue if fixed.. it should now save any settings you make, which wasn't the case previously

 

[Ranulf]

No, I changed the battery several days ago, changed the settings to get it to boot at rated speed and it worked. Then yesterday, the machine wouldn't boot, giving me one long beep, then pause, beep again. Resetting CMOS on the board let me boot it back up, and it gave me the same CPU error as before (when I thought it was just the battery) and underclocked it. I then set the fsb/dram ratio to auto and it booted fine again.

So, you're right it looks like a problem with the cpu/ram settings and I'll have to go in and manually set them. I'd forgotten that I had ddr400 in there and given the chip's clock, I need to underclock the ram to ddr266. According to BIOS and in windows, the ram is clocked at ddr266 speeds. I honestly can't remember what I had the settings at before or if I ever even used custom settings.

 

[mlc]

some of those older nforce boards also required that you manually set the voltage for the memory, as it sometimes defaulted to too low a setting.. so doublcheck the lable on your ram sticks and latency.. and makes sure you manually set them both..

 

[Ranulf]

Ok, thanks I'll try that.

 

[Ranulf]

Bah, not had much time to tweak settings but interestingly, after another cmos clear (beeping again on cold boot with spd ram settings), it booted up, gave no error but set the processor at 1300mhz (13x100mhz fsb) and bios detected the ram as ddr400.

Seems to boot fine now with custom cpu and ram timings. We'll see if it doesn't save settings or goes bonkers on another cold boot (or the ram gets cranky in windows).

Thanks all for the help.