Serious Asus P4P800 problem... stops at "Checking NVRAM"

[Flakk]

I have had my P4P800 for almost a month now and it has been working great. But now when I boot up, it says "Checking NVRAM..." and just sits there. I can't even press DEL to get into Bios.

This occurred after I tried installing a Sound Blaster Audigy 2 (which has worked fine in 2 other computers). With the card in, it made my computer act very odd. For example at POST it would say "PCI IRQ Routing Table Error [02:15:02]".. So I took the card out and moved it to another slot. Then right after POST, it would scroll up a lot devices over and over, repetitively. This looked real bad so I took out the card and now the computer just sits at the POST screen:

Press DEL to run Setup
Press <F8> for BBS POPUP
DDR Frequency 333 Mhz, Dual-Channel, Linear Mode
Checking NVRAM..

And here is where it sits, going nowhere. Pressing DEL, F8, or even CTRL-ALT-DEL will not make it respond. I have tried everything I can think of, but this early in the boot process there is not much I can do.

What should I do?? :S

... and what is NVRAM?

Please help..

 

[cownipples]

Put the sound card in a different pci slot and try again, maybe it was an irq conflict, I had that happen before!

 

[Flakk]

the card is out now and it still happens.. something got fried or changed when i put it in

 

[Budman]

here's a few things to try, go in your bios.

go to power and enable acpi 2.0 to yes
acpi apic enabled
bios --> aml acpi enabled

now go tp pci pnp and try plug & play os to no.

 

[Flakk]

as i said, i can't even get into bios.

i'm currently looking for my receipt and getting ready to RMA it :\ if anyone has any ideas ill give them a try b4 i disassemble the computer in a few days D:

 

[Budman]

Originally posted by: Flakk
as i said, i can't even get into bios.

i'm currently looking for my receipt and getting ready to RMA it :\ if anyone has any ideas ill give them a try b4 i disassemble the computer in a few days D:

Simple, take the card out,go in your bios & use the settings I recomended.

After you save & exit you try putting the Audigy back & see what happens.

 

[Flakk]

I feel as if my words are going unheard.

I'll try again...

The SB card is already out. There are no PCI cards in the system.

 

[Budman]

Originally posted by: Flakk
I feel as if my words are going unheard.

I'll try again...

The SB card is already out. There are no PCI cards in the system.

sorry man didnt read you took it out entirely, have you tried reseting the Cmos? and unplugging any USB devices to get it to boot again?

 

[Flakk]

yeah, i just tried that. I reset the CMOS manually (took out battery, switched the jumpers like the manual said).

i just took out all the USB devices like u said. It is actually doing something a little different now

It says "Checking NVRAM.. Update OK!"

thats the first I've seen it say that Update OK thing

keyboard works now oddly. I can ctrl-alt-del.

still doesnt get past that screen. It just sits there.

 

[Flakk]

holy crap it just got farther and booted to bios.. every time it is doing something a little different... hopefully it continue to work

i'm enabling those settings u said now.

i'll keep u posted

 

[Budman]

cool, those settings should help too.

Try setting the PNP bios to Yes actually, setting it to NO maybe freeze the mobo while initializing,setting it to yes will let the OS setup the stuff so the bios should not freeze at NVRAM....

try one or the other.

ACPI2.0 and APIC are 2 good ones to have enabled.

 

[Flakk]

2 of those settings were enabled already, but the ACPI 2.0 wasnt. So I enabled it.

Here's what just happened: For my last 2 resets.. it was saying "new cpu, press f1 to setup or f2 to use defaults"

so i went in, set the bios up how i wanted, then saved. Now it loads to Windows and everything looks fine. It's like it slowly fixed itself.. very very weird.
im scared it will spontaneously decide to not work again. But at least it's working now.

Thanks for your help Budman.. i'll keep testing the system and see how it goes here... Now to slowly add hardware back..... :Q

 

[Budman]

Originally posted by: Flakk
2 of those settings were enabled already, but the ACPI 2.0 wasnt. So I enabled it.

Here's what just happened: For my last 2 resets.. it was saying "new cpu, press f1 to setup or f2 to use defaults"

so i went in, set the bios up how i wanted, then saved. Now it loads to Windows and everything looks fine. It's like it slowly fixed itself.. very very weird.
im scared it will spontaneously decide to not work again. But at least it's working now.

Thanks for your help Budman.. i'll keep testing the system and see how it goes here... Now to slowly add hardware back..... :Q

No prob.

You should be fine now,I got no ideal why ACPI 2.0 is disabled by default because more IRQ's are always better.