Oops, cleared CMOS, now can't POST!

[SkyDiver]

Hi All,

I've got an Asus A7N8X Deluxe (Rev2) MB w/ an Antec NeoPower 480W PSU. I'm getting ready to build a Core2Duo system with SATA2 HDD's.

I know that I've got SATA on my current MB (but never used it), so I thought I would load up the new drive and see if I could ghost some data onto it.

I had to move a jumper to enable SATA. It turns out that at some point in the process, I moved the jumper that clears the CMOS instead of the SATA jumper.

Whenever I did this, I did not remove the CMOS battery. I hope I removed the power cord, but I'm not sure. Anyway, once I noticed that the CMOS jumper was in the clear position, I disconnected the power cord, removed the battery, put the jumper on the "clear" pins, then put it back in the normal position, put the battery back in, re-connected the power and fired it up.

It POSTed and I got into the BIOS. I changed the date and time, saved and exited. However, it did not POST on the re-boot. I cleared the CMOS again, did the procedure again and it still didn't save to CMOS.

I tried it all again and then it wouldn't even POST after clearing with the jumper.

At this point, I figured that I fried the CMOS battery since nothing was saving. I ran out and got another battery. Nothing. Now it won't POST at all.

So did I fry it? Any help would be VERY MUCH appreciated.

Thanks.

 

[cmdrdredd]

Remove the battery, ATX cables and any power connectors from the mobo, put the jumper on clear cmos. Leave it alone for an hour to let the caps drain out. Put it all back to nromal and see what happens.

 

[SkyDiver]

Thanks cmdrdredd. I'm pretty desperate at this point!

 

[loafbred]

Another thing to consider is that the A7N8X was notorious for failing to post at all after a failed attempt. In its heyday, there were a lot of people who installed two dimms of RAM with 2-2-2-5 latencies, with SPD set to "auto", it would corrupt the BIOS, and the BIOS would have to be removed and reflashed or simply replaced with a new one. It was often possible to use one dimm of higher latency RAM to get it running, and then put the lower latency RAM back in. I can't remember whether the problem was ever narrowed down to one cause, but it might be somehow related to yours failing to repost after a couple of failed resets of CMOS. A lot of people with that board had spare BIOS chips, so you might be able to get a freebie if you ask on the motherboard forum.

 

[Bozo Galora]

you didnt fry anything by clearing cmos
you have to reinput correct bios settings, like manually inputting multiplier and FSB
take out SATA drive and put enabling jumper back to off first

also what laofbred said - go to fry's and buy cheapest loose timing single stick of 256MB ram you can find to start things off, timings in bios to SPD (auto) (serial presence detect) which reads the config chip on ram module and sets timings

never change ram with PSU power plug in wall
Worst case - you can reflash bios with same or later bios version from floppy if you have it in boot order before HDD