Problem booting up (MSI KT4 Ultra FISR

[Mysterio]

Hello,
Just yesterday I had this really weird problem with my system. It just refused to go past the POST screen. Whenever the system boots, it just shut off after the usual screen shows (where everything in your system, like CPU, RAM, IRQ, etc info post).

At first, I thought it was a virus or something because earlier in the day, my Norton NAV detected a virus from a malicious website trying to download itself to my hard disk. After that it rebooted a few times flawlessly. Then, last night, the problem started occuring. I tried to reflash my BIOS, but the system can't even stay on. Also tried, clearing the CMOS, no use. Any ideas to remedy this problem?

My rigs as follow:
Athlon XP 2500+ Barton
MSI KT4 Ultra FISR
512MB RAM
30GB Maxtor HDD
180GB WD SE HDD
Asylum FX5200 128MB

Any help is greatly appreciated. No flaming Please!

 

[amdskip]

Are there any beep codes coming from your system through the system speaker? Don't mess with flashing the bios, thats the least of your worries. I would unhook anything that is not necessary to boot. Take out sound, modem, etc. Reseat the memory and the video card. What brand of memory are you using? What power supply are you using?

 

[fslove]

Best way to handle this is to take all the cards except the video card out and disconnect all the drives and boot up to see if it runs past the POST screen. If it does start adding items one at a time and restarting and go until you encounter a problem when adding a particular item and that should be the cause (either by itself or conflicting with something else). If booting with just the video card works try the Master HD next and see if it boots up. Then you can proceed adding each item until you encounter a problem. Sometimes just switching cards around to diffrent slots can alleviate this problem as well.

Keep up updated.

 

[Mysterio]

Hello,
I've tried the usual "take out all cards and try installing one by one". It's no use. I've used this system for almost 1 yr now. Just yesterday, it was acting up. I suspect there's something wrong with the mobo. My roommate system died too 2 days ago. His mobo has some weird stuff building up on the capacitors (I'm not really sure what they r called) around the CPU, something like rust. Anyway, my mobo is clean, no rust only lots of dust.

The weird thing is that when I get into BIOS setting, it'll stay on for hours and hours (I tried this in the afternoon). But when it goes past the POST screen, it just turn off by itself. Really weird.

 

[Mysterio]

Yah forgot to add in. It boot up just fine, no unusual beep or whatsoever. It just automatically turns off when it goes past the POST screen. Any help is greatly greatly appreciated.

 

[Boonesmi]

is there a bios setting that shuts down if cpu fan isnt detected? sometimes what your describing happens if you have a hsf that is powered by the 4pin molex from the powersupply and not the motherboard header... or if its plugged into the wrong motherboard header

what happens is it doesnt detect the rpm and shuts down (but it can be disabled in bios)

also have you tried clearing the CMOS?

 

[Mysterio]

Hi,
Thanks for all the inputs so far.
I've tried clearing CMOS and the HSF is spinning perfectly fine (it's plugged to the mobo header, using HSF that comes with retail AMD CPU). I tried downclocking the RAM and CPU to 133MHz (266MHz DDR), it then could boot into Windows for like 15 secs and it turned off by itself again. Really weird problem...Never got this problem before. Anymore input? I'll go and borrow my friend's mobo later and see if that helps. If it does, it means that I've to RMA my mobo. Meanwhile, more input is greatly appreciated.

 

[amdskip]

You could have a bad stick of memory. Do you have a setting in the bios like Boonesmi said? When you reset the bios, it will make it so that if it doesn't detect a fan spinning on the heatsink (has to have rpm monitoring), it will kick the system off. It's called FOC (fan on control iirc).

 

[pooterjnkie]

I don't have any suggestions to add but I can relate to your mobo headaches. I just had a nightmare with my MSI KT4 ultra board. I was running an xp1800 with 512 meg of ddr 2100 memory, etc. about a week ago it started to act a "little funky" To be more specific, the computer was giving me errors on burning cd's at first and I would occasionally find that my computer was some how rebooted. As the days wore on, I found that rebooting was becoming a fave past time for this system

Not only was it having a blast rebooting, when I finally got it to calm down, I was having trouble with programs trying to load and tons of stop errors, etc. After attempting to re-install the operating system on a clean slate twice, I realized that it was the motherboard. This board was an RMA for a slightly earlier model. I had to send them the earlier board because the on board audio first went bad (we had a sound card to bypass), then other things started to act up and started to cause my programs to not load properly, etc. My earlier system (K6) was also an MSI board.........the most unstable system I ever had the misery of owning. I was constantly redoing my hard drive until I finally tossed that system out the door. I'm not sure if anyone here has had such "luck" with MSI boards, but so far, all three systems with their boards were horrible. ..........never again. I am now building a barton xp 2600 with the Abit KD7A board and using my existing ram and hard drives. So far, it seems very stable and happy.

 

[Mysterio]

Yey!!
I finally realized what is wrong with the whole thing. I re-applied some thermal paste to the heat sink yesterday. Apparently, some small area of the CPU core did not get the thermal paste. I guess the automatic shutdown is a way of the mobo preserving the CPU. Thanks very much for those who have helped. Wohoooo