. HELP!!! Did I fry my Pro2-A mb or just the bios?

[TGirl]

I can't believe I did this!!! I did the live bios on the msi pro2a to upgrade my bios and Windows2000 froze and now my computer is major screwed!! It will not boot to a floppy, I get loud continual beeps and the leds display red, green, red, red. The cpu and fan appear to run and there seems to be electricity flowing around. Could I just replace the bios or do you think I fried the whole thing? Nothing on the screen either, of course. I can't read the via chipset #'s as they are covered with a heatsink and sticker that says 100ata. Are these the 2 chips I need to give when I order a new bios?

Thanks to all in my time of need!!

TGirl

 

[kendogg]

Hey Tgirl I think there is something wrong on MSI's part.... because I am having the same EXACT problem as you are...... SAME LED READINGS and SAME LONG CONTINUAL BEEPS...... the thing is I never flashed or messed with the bios. I assembled this system yesterday but the weird thing was when I first booted up it was fine then I went on partitioning the hard drive and I tried installing windows 98 and Me both would not let me install. Then I come to work this morning power on the system and get the BS; Long continual beep and a screen that says:

Award BootBlock Bios v1.0
Copyright (C) 1998, Award Software, Inc.

BIOS ROM checksum error

Detecting floppy drive A media...
Drive A error. System Halt

Heres my thread

 

[tjdavis1138]

TGirl: Your cmos chip is fried. DO NOT USE THE LIVEBIOS!!! Anand should post on the front page or something that some people are having a problem with this.

I did the exact same thing to mine, your only options are to hot flash the chip on another motherboard or rma the motherboard. Another option which would cost you money is to go to www.badflash.com or www.midcocomputers.com and order a new bios chip.

I didn't feel bad about sending the board back , since MSI definately has some sort of problem with the LiveBios. I sent my board back and got a new one.

I'll be flashing from dos from now on.

 

[Emissary]

I got the same problem as well (continous beeping and the RGRR leds). It happened on my first boot of the mobo.

Is it confirmed that this is caused by a fried BOIS?

 

[tjdavis1138]

Someone, I believe it was Patrick who is PCResource said that continous beeps was the cmos test failing.

 

[Mustanggt]

?

 

[BuckMaster]

Question...I have the MSI Pro2A board running the BIOS that came shipped with it. I think its 1.8 and was thinking of D/L and flashing my BIOS to a newer version. I just noticed you and others are having problems with this board! Is it the bios version it self or only when using the Live Update?

 

[Kanly]

tjdavis,

Did MSI make you fill out a reseller ID form to to the rma?

That's what they want me to do, no idea why.

And yes, I stupidly used LiveBios.

 

[TGirl]

I really felt like an idiot but now I don't feel as bad since I'm not the only one! Thanks everyone! The reseller said he would switch out the mb but it is a 30 day turnaround! Do you guys think I should just pay up and get a new bios from badflash (love that name!) or wait out the 30 days? Should a new bios solve the problem or could it have gone further to do more damage elsewhere? Anyone replaced the bios and it worked ok, or more problems? Thanks so much everyone. My husband thinks I'm a real dumba** now.

TGirl

 

[TGirl]

I wanted to add another tidbit. To the guy who couldn't install an os, I know your problem is a little different, but my husband went and put in his hd and zip drive into my system and then I had errors out the wazoo. Windows kept recognizing the zip drive as a hard drive wanting to format it and install onto it. It took several days to figure this out. Once we noticed the "PARTITION" had 97mg on it, we snapped this was our zip. We were getting invalid media type errors. I've since learned zip drives are notorious for problems. Just thought I'd pass this on just in case.

 

[Jarhead]

Wow, MSI *really* screwed up!

I think the burden is now on MSI, and they should be actively getting the word out, but, alas, they are not.

 

[tjdavis1138]

I called up Allstarshop and told them I had a dead board that beeped continously , they replaced it no problem.

I didn't go through msi.

I used LiveBios to flash from 1.9 to 2.0, it worked fine. When I tried to flash to 2.1 it crashed with a verify error.

It could be V2.1, don't know. I heard from several people that flashed from 2.1 with floopy and was fine.

 

[hclarkjr]

i had almost the same exact thing happen to me with live bios when i had the original K7T PRO. MSI to thier credit let me RMA the board to them and replaced the bios free of charge. turns out it was problem with live bios and WinME that caused my failure.

 

[Weyland]

So, in other words, LiveBIOS sucks and people should flash the BIOS from DOS?

Just asking because I just got my Pro2-a, and will no doubt need to upgrade my BIOS in the future.

 

[bluesky]

There are people using Live Bios with no problem.
I flashed the bios twice without problem, but it was fried at third time.
So, it's your call. You might have no problem with live bios, or fry at the first time.
It's not a big pain in neck to use diskette, is it?

 

[mastertech01]

I dont own your board folks but can you download the bios without the auto update utility? If so then you all could recover your bios from what Im reading here. I see Award bootblock bios..this bios reserves 4 blocks of bios space for allowing access to the floppy drive in cases of getting a bad flash to rescue your system.

Simply create a bootable floppy in win98, add the latest Award flash utility and the bios bin file... boot your system with floppy inserted and at the A prompt execute the flash utility and reflash your bios.. It works..

 

[PlunX]

I never used the Live BIOS feature and I'm glad. I'd say use the standard BIOS flash procedure to be on the safe side.

 

[TGirl]

I was going to try to do the bootblock flash but my system won't even recognize the floppy! I just ordered a new chip from badflash.com and it is only $23.00 and you give them the url to the bios and they flash it for you before sending it out. Pretty cool! Unicore wanted $69 plus all this info I couldn't get as I couldn't even boot. I just don't want to wait 30 days. No one ever answered, how do you know if you did further damage to the mb?

TGirl

 

[tjdavis1138]

You can't recover from this with a floppy as far as I know. They system never posts, never recoginizes floppy, nothing. When you reboot the screen stays black and it beeps. I tried the floppy thing, no go.

You can bet I'll flash from disk from now on.

TGirl: Everyone told me that the cmos was the only thing affected. Makes sense.

 

[kendogg]

where can I get the latest bios drivers so i can try flashing the bios? As I said before I am experiencing the same problem as tgirl. But there were times where I did get past the post!!

So what I am asking is for someone to post or send me the latest bios drivers so i can try flashing in dos. And I need a win98 BOOT disk... ( i cant find that anywhere on the net )

If you can be so kind and send it to my workEMAIL I would appreciate it.

 

[JHalpin]

Just wanted to log in as another livebios victim. Same symtoms, no display and constant beeping. I even saw that the flash was going bad with the verification error message (twice)but before I could get the floppy in the drive windows locked and rebooted on it's own.....

For whoever was asking there's a bootdisk available on the web at www.startdisk.com if you can get to the floppy prompt.

 

[bluesky]

KeNDoGG.
If you want bios for pro2a board, Go here
You can get a boot diskette, typing format a:/s on dos, or right click the A drive on explorer.

 

[TGirl]

I'm having mine flashed with v2.2 A guy who posted in either badflash.com or unicor.com had our same board so I e-mailed him and he told me exactly what to do. He told me to use 2.2. Anyone who needs a copy of the e-mail he sent me just e-mail me and I'll forward to you. I can also forward to you the mail w/ all the specs that I sent badflash.com if you'r not sure.

I assumed it was only my cmos/bios that was bad but this is my first time to build my own so I was just checking to be sure. Thanks all.

 

[TGirl]

I'm having mine flashed with v2.2 A guy who posted in either badflash.com or unicor.com had our same board so I e-mailed him and he told me exactly what to do. He told me to use 2.2. Anyone who needs a copy of the e-mail he sent me just e-mail me and I'll forward to you. I can also forward to you the mail w/ all the specs that I sent badflash.com if you'r not sure.

I assumed it was only my cmos/bios that was bad but this is my first time to build my own so I was just checking to be sure. Thanks all.

 

[Ribbit]

I had a similar problem, flashing lights, inability to boot from a floppy and the Bios ROM checksum error message when trying to boot from the floppy. I mannually cleared the cmos by using the jumper on the mb and everything was fine. You might give it a try.