BIOS crashes

[obeseotron]

Recently I've been having a lot of issues with my PC. Recently, despite no new parts it began to hang in the BIOS. It displays the top two lines about the version of the BIOS and doesn't even get to the RAM counter. This PC has been as stable and consistent as any I've built (which is quite a few) for 18 months and without warning I can't even get it to boot. Reseating everything and resetting the CMOS got it to run again, but a week later the same thing started to happen, and reseating/resetting CMOS isn't cutting it this time. This has gotta be the motherboard or RAM right?

PC is A64 3500+, MSI Neo2 nForce3, 1GB Adata DDR500, Geforce 6800GT AGP.

I had a summer rebuilt targetted at an A64 X2 on AM2, 2GB DDR2, latest nVidia chipset (nVidia is a must because of my RAID array), and a DX10 graphics card.

You can understand why I'm very hesitant to invest in an AGP motherboard or DD1 RAM at this point.

 

[Lord Evermore]

Unless you have two sticks of memory so you can test it with only one at a time, there's pretty much no way you're going to track down whether that's the problem (although you could test a single stick in one slot at a time).

I assume that letting it sit for a while also doesn't help, so it's unlikely to be a heat issue.

It could also be the power supply. Or the video card.

 

[Nocturnal]

Have you tried running memtest to see if your ram is good? If you've tried that then I'm going to have to go out on a limb and say either CPU or power supply.

 

[obeseotron]

I do have a pair of identical 512MB sticks, using one or the other doesn't seem to make a whole lot of difference. They passed memtest up to DDR540, and were set to DDR490 when the problems started, and now are only running at DDR400. PSU is an OCZ 520W PSU that is about a year old, so I'd really like to discount that considering the system was fine for so long and the system isn't showing the randomness of psu related instability. Doesn't seem like its the CPU either, it converted a couple DVDs to Xvid yesterday just fine, when it was booted up, even while overclocked. Graphics card is displaying the output of the BIOS crashing just fine, it's not like I'm getting no video, games worked fine yesterday. My gut is really motherboard, but I really, really do not want to buy an nForce3 motherboard at this point.

 

[Lord Evermore]

The motherboard is no more likely to have suddenly failed than the power supply or video card.

The same tests that apply to everything apply here: pull out expansion cards, disconnect cables and power to other devices and see whether plugging in one particular thing causes the problem. You might also need a different video card to test; just grab a cheap card at a local computer shop or even CompUSA isn't bad for the low-end.

 

[JimPhelpsMI]

Hi, Strip it down to MB, Mem, Processor, PSU and Video. If it runs add stuff back one at the time. You will soon have a clue as to who's causing it. Luck, Jim

 

[obeseotron]

I've done as much stripping down as possible, rebuilt outside the case, etc. and I just haven't been able to make it work. I have decided to push my planned upgrade up by 6 months and just do it now because I do not have an extra PC that I can use for work and school in the meantime. Ordered a DFI nF4 Ultra, x1900xt and 2GB of RAM. For now MSI and Adata have joined Abit and Creative on my "never again" list.