I think I ruined my motherboard

[elzmaddy]

Greetings all,

This is an older system used for backing up files to. It is an Abit WB6 that sports a Celeron 300A and 128MB PC100. Now at one point I started the system up a few times without RAM installed. By the time I noticed the obvious, I had installed a new video card. Could this have damaged it in some way by powering on with no memory several times?

The problem is that no matter what I specify in the CPU Soft Menu, the CPU speed will either be 366MHz or 550MHz. The error message is "CPU is unworkable." I can continue by pressing F1, but since these are overclocked speeds, Windows will not start (NTLDR missing error). Also, the IDE hard disk info dissapears erratically and even when I go through redetection, sometimes it will start up and say I have no hard disks. I replaced the CMOS battery but that didn't help. I unplugged the system and let it discharge as soemtimes that helps, but the results were the same.

So is it safe to say the motherboard is messed up? I don't have a problem with replacing them since these are old parts but I'd like to hear some opinions. Thanks!

 

[TheCorm]

It doesn't make much sense to me that starting up without memory could do something like this...

Although taking the battery out and also discharging the PC should do this anyway, have you tried changing the CMOS jumper to "Clear CMOS" and powering up, power down, switch back to normal and powering up again?

Why won't windows start if you try and run overclocked to 366mhz again? I am not that familair with the 300A, can it not handle 366mhz?

Jamie

 

[xizor]

can't say i'm familiar with the motherboard, but is it possible you are accidentally overclocking your chip?

A 300A is running at 4.5 multiplier x 66mhz FSB/RAM. 366 would be 5.5 x 66, and 550 is 5.5 x 100.

I don't know how you would have unlocked the multiplier, I'm pretty sure they were locked on P2/Celerons, but it might be something to look into. The 300A is a great overclocked and should hit 4.5 x 100mhz = 450mhz easily, so who knows.

 

[elzmaddy]

I discharged the CMOS with the jumper. I tried failsafe defaults. I tried 4.5 x 66Mhz (297MHz) on "User Define" settings as well as 3.0 x 100MHz. I still get 366MHz. I have never had any luck with running this system overclocked. Most likely, something went bad hardware-wise. I remember when I was trying to remove the battery with a tweezer, I accidentally scraped the tweezer on the board... It's possible that could have damaged it, but it sounds unlikely.

 

[IamElectro]

have you tried flashing the bios?

 

[elzmaddy]

Good thinking. I just tried that. But it didn't help -- I still get weird speeds no matter what I enter. So the board and/or CPU is bad.