Bios Problems...possible fried mobo/cpu?

[Hempy]

Hey there folks I need some help here. I've done something terrible to my system and pretty boneheaded too I'm sure. I have an Asus A7V mobo with a Tbird 1000 cpu on board. That's the KT133 chipset not 133A. I have been using Win2k Pro. I've been having some pretty major problems with it since I got it way back in December but like a stubborn fool I've toiled away trying to dial it in instead of just exchanging it for one that wasn't so buggy. I've been running the A7V1007.awd bios and recently went to 1008. After running into the bug that makes that thing lock up at certain temps I flashed back to 1007. This thing has always run hot(50-60C with the side off and a big fan right on it).

After getting everything seemingly running smoothly again without the lockups, the machine started bogging down at the simplest tasks like opening a window to "my computer". It would just stall on me and hang there not even letting me effectively shut things down in my task manager. It would require a reboot and some things like complex games would cause problems eventually, and require either a full reboot or a program restart. So once again I took a look at my Bios, and decided maybe my cpu frequency settings were off, but being a little worried about nuking something I read the manual and it very clearly says that if those settings are entered incorrectly the system will hang and to power off and reboot. It will then supposedly restart in default settings of 100/100 for cpu and dram frequency. So I changed the settings to 133/133 and the second I hit save and exit it went blackscreen and died on me...thing has power, but no beeps on restart and it doesnt post at all. Anyone got any thought's on what collossal clusterF*%# I've pulled here? Does it sound like just a Bios chip fried or do you guys think I fried the whole thing Mobo Cpu and all? Oh btw reboot discs aint an option...the floopy drive isnt being accessed at all.

Thanks for any and all help to a self proclaimed doofus.

 

[MTDEW]

Did you try resetting the cmos jumper yet?

 

[Hempy]

nope..🙂 gonna do that🙂

 

[smp]

Resetting the CMOS should do the trick. I have almost the exact same rig as you, same mobo, only i have a 900@1060 on it and it runs really hot too. 57 under load with four case fans and a coolermaster 6h11 (supposed to be good up to 1.2 for athlon b and 1.4 for athlon c) I don't worry about my temps though because my machine is stable. I have also had it since december. One thing I noticed with win2k is that sometimes sh!t can interfere at startup. If you have lots of stuff in the startup then on windows boot it can cause your system to hang. For me, AVG (anti virus) and either SETI or Genome@home in the startup at the same time would cause this to happen. I dont' think your problem sounds like this though. There is a nice little utility that you can use to test your memory, because that might be the culprit too, it's called memtest, do a search for google on it and read the FAQ before using it. Good luck.
My OC'd temps are no different than my stock temps, default voltage. I thnk our board just reads too high (or maybe more accurately than other boards).

 

[mikeyd]

One of my computers if very similar to yours. I have the A7V with a 1.4GHz T-Bird. I use a cooler master heat sink/fan and have had no probs. at all. I am using bios ver.1008 without any issues. I was using ver.1003 before and a couple of times after trying to tweak the bios a little, I got a checksum error in the bios and it wouldn't boot - couldn't even get into the bios. I reset the system several times and once even had to clear the cmos. Ever since 1008, I have had no issue at all - rock solid at 100/133. See if you can swap out your ram, sometimes a bad ram chip can cause havoc with a system. Also, what components do you have installed in your system? ie. agp,pci cards??

 

[Hempy]

Well thanks for the CMOS tip guys, that got me back up and rollin. It's not RAM, Ive gotten new RAM and switched out to see if that worked but no dice there. The 1008 bug only seems to be an issue with the hotter AMD chips. Ive talked to several A7v owners that have the same problem unless they run 1007 or earlier, but then there can be other issues too so it's a double edged sword. I have a Hercules Game Theater Pro, Geforce2 MX, Netgear 10/100, 2 Maxtor 45GB ata 100 7200 rpm HDD's, 512 mb Micron pc 133 RAM, Intellimouse Optical, Altec Lansing 5.1 Surround sound, NEC Multisync XE17 and an external roomfan pointed in the side with the panel removed. The thing does fine with games like Q2 or Q3 but put in some other more system intensive games or load it up and it goes haywire. It's also totally inconsistent too, sometimes it will run fora long time fine, others it will just stall...not lock up completely but stall, get busy- whatever, at something as simple as exploring my Computer...I should just ditch this darn piece of junk and upgrade the mobo to a KT133a chipset or maybe all the way to 266. It's about the time to upgrade anyway it's been almost a year lol. It's just frustrating as hell but I don't wanna give up...ya know?