Bios rom check sum error???????

[geek1543]

Thats what is coming up at bootup it only sees the floppy drive. Looking for system disk. Ok what is it bad memory or mobo died?????? no beeps! 😱

 

[minendo]

Try clearing the CMOS by using the jumper.

 

[geek1543]

Tried that nothing Thanks

 

[WebDude]

Is this what you see?

"Bios checksum error
detecting floppy drive media disk A
please insert system disk and press enter"?

WebDude

 

[geek1543]

YES That's what I see

 

[WebDude]

It looks like the System Block of your bios chip has been corrupted or damaged. Usually this happens when a flash goes bad (fails), but I guess there can be other causes too.

(from PROCEDURE FOR RECOVERING A CORRUPT BIOS CHIP)

"Most BIOS code used today is called ?BOOT BLOCK? BIOS. A BOOT BLOCK type BIOS is
different from previous BIOS types in that it is divided into two distinct sections. The first section
of the BIOS is the BOOT BLOCK (hence the name). The BOOT BLOCK uses the first 24k of the
ROM and contains information necessary to initialize only critical system devices such as the
processor, memory and some ISA video cards as well as the floppy drive. The BIOS BOOT
BLOCK is a write protected area and cannot be over written by a BIOS flash utility without using a
special command line switch.

The second section is the SYSTEM BLOCK. The SYSTEM BLOCK is 232k in size and contains
the information necessary to initialize all other system devices such as the video system, input
devices, storage devices, COM ports and peripherals and performs the Power On Self Test. The
SYSTEM BLOCK constitutes the bulk of the ROM.

If an error occurs within the first five steps of the flash process then an error message will be
displayed and the flash process will be aborted. Unfortunately if an error occurs after the flash
utility has erased the SYSTEM BLOCK then the computer will be disabled. The system power
will come on, but the system will not startup as it normally does and you may or may not see
anything on the screen. If your system has an AWARD BIOS you may see an error message on
the screen that says:

AWARD BootBlock BIOS v1.0

CMOS Checksum Error

At this point the system will attempt to boot from a floppy disk. You will be able to boot from a
bootable floppy, but without the BIOS SYSTEM BLOCK you can?t do much else."

This happened to me when I flashed my bios chip with what turned out to be a defective floppy. The only way I could recover from it was to get a new bios chip from the motherboard mfg (Epox). You can try flashing your bios chip from a bootable floppy, to restore the System Block. It should work, although it wouldn't in my case, and I still don't know why. Good luck.

WebDude

 

[Sharam]

The only thing that document don't mention is the fact that you have to press Ctrl while the floppy drive is being accessed to recover the image file!

I don't recall if we had to hold the Ctrl key or depress it a couple times, it was some time ago but we found the info on one of the mobo sites.

Sorry if the information is not complete, just wanted to point out that we also gave up using the recovery method described in the pdf file but then we found the info about the Ctrl key and everything went on smooth afterwards!

I tried locating the post but found out it was removed from the site I used to frequent a while back.

Good luck and you might want to try Unicore Software, Inc. or BadFlash.Com

 

[alm99]

Get a new BIOS chip or RMA the mb. The BIOS chip is toast. Had this happen to me when i bought a new mb.