BIOS splash screen freezes

[Kaido]

Just built my brother a new computer using a BIOSTAR NF325-A7, stock firmware. Worked great during testing, dropped it off to him, and now it freezes at the BIOS splash screen all the time. If he reboots it from there it will be up normally. It was doing it once or twice a day, now it does it every single time he boots up (within the past week). Hardware setup is simple, AGP video card, a single SATA hard drive, and one IDE DVD burner. I've never encountered a problem like this...is the best option simply to flash the bios to the newest version?

 

[letdown427]

Tried resetting/clearing the CMOS? There'll be jumper pins for it. Either look in the manual for where, or get some light in the case and look for them.

PC off. Just move jumper across, leave it for a bit, move it back. PC on.

HTH

I'd guess it's always worth being on latest BIOS revisions, except in extreme overclocking scenarios, or if one is specifically giving you problems.

EDIT:

Also, is it definately freezing? It's not just running a memtest in the background or something silly?

Just thought I'd mention it

 

[Kaido]

When he gets home from work I'll walk him through a few things, including seeing if it's just a memory test. Thanks for the input.

 

[Nocturnal]

My guess would have to be a bad stick of memory. Try running Memtest and or swap out the sticks. Also it may be overheating. Another thing you may want to try is removing the IDE devices and seeing if the system will get passed the BIOS screen.

 

[Seekermeister]

When my MB "freezes" at that point, it is because it is having a problem autodetecting hardware. You should be able to hit the Tab or Del to be able to see what is happening. Probably a bad connection somewhere, or something that simply isn't working at all.

 

[imported_Imp]

Only time my POS froze was when it couldn't detect the working SATA drive due to the POS broken onboard SATA controller. Also, BIOS wouldn't even start if I went too far with memory settings. Probably something is screwed or is loose from transport?