Epox 4G4A+ just sucks or what?

[obeseotron]

I'm currently using my 2nd Epox 4G4A+, the first one died within 2 weeks. Everything was working just fine for a few months, and then I got an NTDLR missing message when I was rebooting. I pressed the restart button, assuming it was just a fluke, but then the BIOS started beeping loudly and requested a system disk saying that there were CMOS errors. I restarted, same result. I powered down and waited a few minutes, it started up, but under what looked like default settings. Unfortunately that means that it booted at default voltage (along the lines of 1.46v for Epox boards) but becasue the board was jumpered for 533FSB so i could have DDR333, it tried to boot at 2.4Ghz without the little voltage boost it needs (boots windows at 1.55v, stable at 1.6v - actual voltages, board is always about .4 or .5 below selected levels in BIOS). It crashed after posting, correctly this time. I powered down, rejumpered the board for 400FSB, but now I can't even get a response from the power button. I've tried all combinations of 400FSB, 533FSB, and DefaultFSB, and I've tried to reset the BIOS with the jumper. All of this does nothing. I had another board simply cease to work before, and now it looks like I have another. Any suggestions? I do have another 4G4A+ (the one that was broken) but the BIOS chip, which I suspect is the problem might still work. Any ideas on how to try the BIOS chip from the old board in the new one? Is there any chance of getting an RMA out of Epox?

Thanks

 

[Dug]

You could try without the jumper on at all. (Not jumpered for 533 or 400). I believe without the jumper it goes to autodetect. Then reset the bios (by jumper) and without the battery in. If this doesn't work, go back to the jumpered 400 setting and reset the bios again. For some reason some motherboards need a certain order of resetting themselves.

This is just a thought. try taking off your reset switch and placing it on the pwr on pins, and use the reset button to pwr on the machine. This just rules out the power button as a problem. (long shot, but it does happen)

 

[Chadder007]

How many sticks of RAM are you using with this system? Also are you using the onboard RAID? that is what gave me trouble upon booting up before. I went ahead and took it off raid and it worked fine afterwards. I was just using a single channel on it (not using as a raid).

 

[Dug]

Yes the ram can cause troubles. Try putting only one stick in slot 2.

I had a similar problem that you described and it ended up being the ram not being seated properly. Keep trying if it doesn't work at first, it took me 3 times before I had it in right.