checksum error - windows won't load

[incognito247]

I recently upgraded my MB and cpu and when it starts up i get a cmos checksum error press f1 to continue del to etc.... when i go into the bios to change the time or press f1 to continue, it brings me to start in safe mode, start windows normally, etc... after that, the screen goes blank and keeps restarting. I tried swapping the battery, clear the cmos, and none of it works. i thought it was a bad mb but when i put in a different hd, it loads fine on an old hd with win98 on it. i put the other hd in another comp and it loads fine. So its definitely not the mb, cpu, memory or hd's. I'm lost. new mb is an ecs 848p-a with a p4 3.0g E cpu. Also, for some reason i'm not able to see any of the cd-drives. If anyone could help me, I would greatly appreciate it.

 

[mechBgon]

Usually people reinstall Windows when they replace their motherboard. I suspect you were hoping to just change the hardware and keep your existing Windows installation, which has been known to work but often doesn't.

Check the jumper settings on your drives. Whether it's an optical drive or a hard drive, you don't want two drives jumpered for Master on one IDE cable, or two Slave either. One Master, the other Slave, on each cable. If you still can't see the CD drives, try just one of them at a time. You'll need to overcome that to reinstall Windows.

I hope your power supply is a pretty high-quality one in the 350W range, and your system has an auxiliary rear exhaust fan. The 3.0E can take a lot of power and put out a lot of heat under load (peak heat output = 125W).

 

[incognito247]

might have to try reinstalling windows. I noticed a quick blue screen right before it constantly restarts. And the jumpers on all the drives are good. i've got an 500w ps so that should be plenty. Although the checksum error is gone, it still keeps rebooting. wierd because the hd was on a p4 1.6 before with the same ram and i was hoping i could just swap the mb and cpu and run the same hd with the os/files still on it. I also tried to compare the bios settings from the win98 hd that booted up, but that didn't work either. Thanks for your help. hopefully the reinstall of windows will do it.

 

[mechBgon]

Just so you know, PSU wattage is kind of like gasoline... having enough of it is a good thing, but if you want to use it in a Dodge Viper, it needs to be high-octane If the quality of the power supply is poor, then it can result in an unstable system no matter how much poor-quality wattage it claims to have. Good luck on your troubleshooting, and if you want an opinion on your PSU, tell us what brand/model it is... hopefully something decent like Antec, Fortron, Enermax, PC Power & Cooling, Sparkle...?

 

[dclive]

Originally posted by: incognito247
might have to try reinstalling windows. I noticed a quick blue screen right before it constantly restarts. And the jumpers on all the drives are good. i've got an 500w ps so that should be plenty. Although the checksum error is gone, it still keeps rebooting. wierd because the hd was on a p4 1.6 before with the same ram and i was hoping i could just swap the mb and cpu and run the same hd with the os/files still on it. I also tried to compare the bios settings from the win98 hd that booted up, but that didn't work either. Thanks for your help. hopefully the reinstall of windows will do it.

You say you saw a quick blue screen, so it's possible you're getting inaccessible boot device errors. Take the hard drive, put it back in the old machine, change the IDE driver to "Standard IDE" driver, and put it back in the new machine and try again.

 

[goobee]

With all the different chipsets out there now (eg: Intel, Via, SIS, nvidia, etc.) it's best to reload Windows from scratch. Many errors are caused because of chipset drivers not playing well with each other.

 

[dclive]

Originally posted by: goobee
With all the different chipsets out there now (eg: Intel, Via, SIS, nvidia, etc.) it's best to reload Windows from scratch. Many errors are caused because of chipset drivers not playing well with each other.

Windows will pick the correct driver to use based on PnP IDs. While it's not a *recommended* practice to move installations between machines, particularly in a domain environment with SIDs and the like, it certainly can be done, and for home users with one-off instances, it makes things much easier than reinstalling, even if just doing a repair install.

Windows can typically easily be moved from machine to machine - two things must be true though:

1. The HALs must be compatible. With modern machines this isn't much of an issue anymore.
2. The disk drive driver (IDE or SCSI) the new machine requires must be present and loaded at boot.

#2 is the holdup in most of the cases at AnandTech. So, switch to the standard IDE controller (assuming IDE in both new and old MBs) and you should be good to go at that point. Otherwise, you can do the IDE card trick (install IDE card in old MB, so the Windows registry knows about it, then use that PCI IDE card to boot the box on the new MB, and then install the new MB's IDE drivers, and you're all set.)