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K7S5A won't boot!?

2

2336

Elite Member
Folks, I've had very good luck with the ECS K7S5A motherboard up until tonight. My current problem has got me stumped. When I hit the power switch everything seems to power up but I get no display. Fans are spinning, the power LED is lit but here's where it get's wierd. The activity LEDs on the CD-ROM and CD-RW are flashing like crazy, the HDD LED stays on but I get no beep codes at all. I've tried two different video cards with the same results. I'm using a known, good CPU (Duron 1.2Ghz). I even pulled all of the RAM out and same thing - lights flashing like crazy and NO BEEP CODES! It's pretty late and I'm beat so I'm sure it's something that's staring me in the face and I just don't see it. Any ideas folks? Any help would be greatly appreciated!

Rick
 
My K7S5A had a very stiff AGP slot when it was new. Have you really and truly REAMED the card in there so it's down into both rows of contacts? Tried resetting the CMOS?
 
Tom, I just pulled the video card back out and jammed it back in. Made sure that the AGP retention tab snapped into place. What's really weird is I'm getting no beep codes. Tried resetting the CMOS and no dice. Just tried a different stick of RAM and no difference.
 
Wow, someone who remembers my real name! :Q By the way, I'm typing this on one of my 5-pound clickety-clack IBM bludgeon/keyboard combo units I bought from you a while back 😀

How about this: try running the board with no video, no CPU, no memory, no anything. If it doesn't give beep codes in that situation, maybe try a known working CMOS battery from another board. If that doesn't work and you really feel brave/lucky, you could try a BIOS chip from a known-working K7S5A of the same revision... :Q
 
I just swapped one of my rigs to a new case and am getting the same trouble. K7S5A board w/ a duron processor.

It seems that powering it off and/or hitting the reset button several times gets mine booting, but this is not really a solution.
I have lockups when installing Windows XP when I do get it booted. Very frustrating because I know this is a solid board as I have built numerous systems for work using the board w/ no problems whatsoever. :/

Best of luck to us all I suppose.
 
Upplug Power Cord
Unplug ATX Power Supply to Motherboard plug
Move the red jumper by the CMOS battery from pins 2-3 to pins 1-2 and count to five.
Move jumper (JP4, BTW) back to its default position of 2-3 and plug the power cables back in.

This board is known for getting the CMOS settings corrupted, and when this happens it will not output video. If it isn't fried, then this should give you video and you will have to hit <DEL> at the appropriate time to get into Setup and redo everything to your needs.
 
If it is a corrupted BIOS, there's a recovery technique. I had to go hunt for the details, since I'd forgotten, but I found them here
With motherboards that use "Boot Block Bios" it is possible to recover a corrupted bios because the boot block section of the bios, which is responsible for booting the computer remains unmodified. When an AMI bios becomes corrupt the system will appear to start, but nothing will appear on the screen, the floppy drive light will come on and the system will access the floppy drive repeatedly. If your motherboard has an ISA slot and you have an old ISA video card lying around, put he ISA video card in your system and connect the monitor. The boot block section of the bios only supports ISA video cards, so if you don't have an ISA video card or your motherboard does not have ISA slots, you will have to restore your bios blind, with no monitor to show you what's going on.
AMI has integrated a recovery routine into the boot block of the bios, which in the event the bios becomes corrupt can be used to restore the bios to a working state. The routine is called when the system block of the bios is empty.

The restore routine will access the floppy drive looking for a bios file named AMIBOOT.ROM, this is why the floppy drive light comes on and the drive spins. If the file is found it is loaded into the system block of the bios to replace the missing information.

To restore your bios simply copy a working bios file to a floppy disk and rename it AMIBOOT.ROM, then insert it into the computer while the power is on. The disk does not need to be bootable or contain a flash utility. After about four minutes the system will beep four times. Remove the floppy disk from the drive and reboot the computer.

The bios should now be restored.
Click to expand...
HTH! 😀
 
Gang, you ain't gonna believe this crap. Got home tonight, yanked the MoBo. Tried booting it outside the case with just cpu, RAM and video card - booted just fine. So I figured, okay it's just shorted on the case somewhere. So I covered the back of the MoBo with heavy gauge shipping tape, put those little red insulating washers on the posts in the case and under the screws holding the motherboard in, and remounted it. Hit the power and everything's kosher! Shut down and re-install the PCI modem and USB card that I had in there last night, hit the power and nothing! What the @#%&! So I pulled the USB card and modem back out and it powers up fine. Ended up being the modem! Must be a really hosed up modem, especially since it's brand new. Replaced it with a 56K AMR modem and I'm loading the O/S as I type this. I appreciate very much everyone's input on this. It's folks like you guys that keep folks coming back here. Thanks again!🙂

Rick
 
Originally posted by: 2336
Gang, you ain't gonna believe this crap. Got home tonight, yanked the MoBo. Tried booting it outside the case with just cpu, RAM and video card - booted just fine. So I figured, okay it's just shorted on the case somewhere. So I covered the back of the MoBo with heavy gauge shipping tape, put those little red insulating washers on the posts in the case and under the screws holding the motherboard in, and remounted it. Hit the power and everything's kosher! Shut down and re-install the PCI modem and USB card that I had in there last night, hit the power and nothing! What the @#%&! So I pulled the USB card and modem back out and it powers up fine. Ended up being the modem! Must be a really hosed up modem, especially since it's brand new. Replaced it with a 56K AMR modem and I'm loading the O/S as I type this. I appreciate very much everyone's input on this. It's folks like you guys that keep folks coming back here. Thanks again!🙂 Rick
Click to expand...
Glad I could help.

 
Originally posted by: 2336
Gang, you ain't gonna believe this crap. Got home tonight, yanked the MoBo. Tried booting it outside the case with just cpu, RAM and video card - booted just fine. So I figured, okay it's just shorted on the case somewhere. So I covered the back of the MoBo with heavy gauge shipping tape, put those little red insulating washers on the posts in the case and under the screws holding the motherboard in, and remounted it. Hit the power and everything's kosher! Shut down and re-install the PCI modem and USB card that I had in there last night, hit the power and nothing! What the @#%&! So I pulled the USB card and modem back out and it powers up fine. Ended up being the modem! Must be a really hosed up modem, especially since it's brand new. Replaced it with a 56K AMR modem and I'm loading the O/S as I type this. I appreciate very much everyone's input on this. It's folks like you guys that keep folks coming back here. Thanks again!🙂 Rick
Click to expand...

It might not be that particular modem; the K7S5A has known issues with PCI modems, especially those based on certain chipsets (I think that hte motorola SM56 was a particular offender). I think I tried 3 before I gave up and bought an external serial modem (with the upside that I now have a slightly faster connection🙂 ) Its annoying, and i'm out a few dollars, but I guess its just one of those things, seeing as other PCI cards work fine, just modems. Two went back to the stores they came from, but one is now running fine in my mom's pc.
 
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