Problem booting GA-7N400

[Syke]

Hi,
yesterday I assembled my newly bought GA-7N400 mobo, along with a Athlon XP 2500+ (Barton) CPU, and 2 x TwinMOS 512MB DDR2700 DIMMS. Everything went fine, I installed windows, installed new nForce and GeForce drivers. Today I formatted a new partition and copied some files over to the newly formatted partition. After the copying, the computer hanged.

When I rebooted the thing wouldn't start. Just a loud beep, and a text saying "Unknown flash memory" and that it's trying to read the bios-image from harddrive or diskette.

I've tried to remove the powercord and bios battery for a while (since there's no clr cmos jumper on the mobo), and I've tried to put a formatted, bootable floppy containing a bios-image in the diskette drive, but it won't even access the diskdrive.

Anyone have any idea of what has happened? It worked perfectly yesterday, and this morning.

Any help greatly appreciated!

 

[mechBgon]

What brand/model of power supply are you running it on? Is your ATX12V auxiliary power cable hooked up (4 pins, 2 x 2 square)? Kinda strange that the DualBIOS didn't save you here Looking through the manual, I see it's got a dipswitch by the northbridge called "CLK_SW" that controls the FSB range selection... try setting that to the 100MHz position, unplug the system & remove the CMOS battery again to reset the CMOS, then see if you're any better off. Good luck!

 

[Syke]

PSU: Chieftec, Model: HPC-340-201

I've hooked up the 12V connector. Unfortunately, I think this is the sneak-version of the 7N400, as it doesn't have DualBIOS. Also, it doesn't seem to output anything to the monitor any more. I've tried different gfx-cards, and still no picture. No luck on setting the dip to 100mhz and unplugging, still the same problem. With the change that there's no beep, and no picture. :/

The CPU-fan spins up, and the RAM-LED is lit (the one next to DIMM-slot 4).

 

[mechBgon]

Darn It sounds like the BIOS chip is corrupted and gonna have to be reflashed or replaced. There's an outfit called BadFlash.com that can send you a BIOS chip flashed with whatever BIOS you want, if you don't want to wait for a traditional RMA process to Gigabyte or your vendor.

One thing that does seem increasingly common these days is for the memory modules to need a little more voltage than the "official" 2.5 volts. I see quite a few peoples' crashing and instability being cured by a bump to 2.6 or 2.7 volts, and I wouldn't run less than 2.6V on PC2700 based on those observations. I don't know if that could've been a contributing factor in your case, but for the future...

 

[Syke]

One thing though, if the BIOS is fried, should it still have output that "Unknown Flash Memory" thingie? ..

I sincerely hope that there's no need for RMA... Any more ideas?

 

[Gravity]

gigabyte boards have a backup bios. Try to enter the bios utility (see your manual) and restore the bios from the onboard backup.

 

[mechBgon]

If you have another power supply that's suitable for the system, that would be worth a try. I don't know if the Chieftec units are cheap + good, or just cheap, but if you want to try a different one, Enermax, Antec and Sparkle Power are some good brands to try. And you might as well go for a 350W one at the least, the way computers are going.

As for the BIOS question... well, it's chicken & egg. If the board is hungry for a valid BIOS image, obviously it needs one and has some way of getting it even if the BIOS is toast, 'cause that message has to be coming from somewhere. If you haven't tried this already, leave the floppy with the BIOS file in the drive for about 15 minutes to see if the system is just slow on the uptake. I've heard that the old K7S5A could take up to 10 minutes to recover itself, is why I suggest the wait-&-see approach. Good luck!

 

[Syke]

Gravity: I think I have some sneak-version, since there's at least only one bios-chip on the mobo.

mechbgon: Thanks for the tip, I'll try the wait and see approach. I dunno if the PSU is the issue, since it worked for a day and a half, and has worked for quite a while with my old AMD system. I'll keep my fingers crossed!

 

[Syke]

Good news! I did some more testing, pulled out each RAM-stick! I'll try some more and see if the stick is broken, or if it's something else. Is it possible that there's not enough current to power two sticks?

Thanks for all the help from everyone!

 

[mechBgon]

That's good news! Is it working with either stick as long as there is only one installed, or does one work while the other one doesn't?

 

[Syke]

As I went to bed I haven't had the chance to test. But at least it works with one stick. I'll try some more today!

 

[Syke]

I've run memtest86, and come to the conclusion that one of the RAM-sticks is faulty. So I'll change it. Thanks for all the help everyone!