Time for a new title AGAIN - reinstall Windows?

[Felecha]

Now there's something shaky about the CMOS. The first time I started after pulling the board to fix the top EMI spring, I got a warning - CMOS checksum error. I looked in Setup and the time was reset to Aug 26, 2005. I set it and restarted but now 10 minutes later I was in Setup again and the hour was 6, not 2 (Eastern Standard here).

???

 

[mechBgon]

Sounds like you have a short-circuit condition somewhere, possibly complicated by mis-identified pins. ASRock is an arm of Asus, and they silk-screen stuff really strangely sometimes, like it's Backwards Day at the factory or something, so do this:

1) put the mobo back on cardboard

2) get out the manual, look for the page that shows the front-panel pinout (power, reset, etc), and do a reality check on where you're plugging stuff in, versus where they say it belongs in the manual.

3) also, so you're using just a 20-pin main power plug on a 24-pin board, am I understanding that correctly?

 

[Felecha]

There's a 20pin and a 4 pin, both are connected correctly.

I pulled and reseated things, and have restarted many times and cannot reproduce either the CMOS error or the flickering. I finally went ahead with the Windows reinstall, thinking the worst I could do would be to mess it up and have to do it with a full clean install after all. Wonderfully, the Reinstall option has worked! I am coming to you from the new rig (I had my laptop for the support channel while it was in pieces, thank goodness for that)

Had some adventures, like the first time I finished something and had to restart, it wouldn't. The Start Button \ Turn Off Computer \ Restart just sat there. Then doing Turn Off did nothing. I finally hit the Reset button and after that it has worked.

And the ReActivation went through without a peep.

So right now I'm back in business and it's running slick. So far, mechBgon, I have seen the temp of the CPU no higher than 93 degrees F. I believe that's pretty OK?

BTW, I did a google on you and in addition to the links Google asked "Did you mean Michigan?"

And I see from your profile that you're in Washington. Where? My family has lots of roots around Tacoma, I spent most of my childhood summers there. If I did not live in New Hampshire on purpose, I would love to be there.

 

[mechBgon]

sweet Glad to hear you prevailed in the end.

Yes, Google is firmly convinced I ought to be "Michigan" ...and it thinks you ought to be "Felicia" The nickname is a take-off on Ortho's WeedBGon, where the "mech" is this kind of 'mech. Can you tell I've played way too much of the Mechwarrior-series games...

I'm in Spokane, where the cost of living is pretty reasonable and the climate is rather dry

 

[Felecha]

I play no games at all, so I would have missed that.

Felecha is the way a dear friend of mine from India pronounced my real name Fletcher, and it reminds me of him.

Spokane - I've been there, too, many years ago. I remember being delighted to go through the town of George, Washington on the way.

Hey, thanks for the help. It's not a stretch to say I couldn't have made it without you guys. And now look - I'm a Golden Member now!

 

[Felecha]

Too good to be true. now it's the video card.

Turned it off this morning early and turned it back on before I left for work - hummmppphhh! It came up with my custom color scheme reverted to XP standard colors. So I went off to work and when I got home and woke it out of standby I found colors even odder than before, pink highlights behind the Outlook Express items.

So I rebooted and the splash screen colors looked primitive and up comes the screen apologizing for the inconvenience and do I want Safe Mode, etc. And it's back to that gibberish text I saw when I have questions about which way to plug in the Panel Header connectors.

Then the screen went blank a LONG time and finally a BSOD saying that ati2dvag got into an infinite loop and had to dump.

So I did go into Safe Mode and uninstall the video drivers (curious - there are TWO devices listed in Device Manager - Radeon X300 and Radeon X300 Secondary)

But after several attempts hoping it would either boot and find its correct drivers and straighten itself out or maybe boot up to a basic VGA driver, I can't get it to work.

Any ideas?

 

[Felecha]

Is there any way to clean out the drivers? My understanding of this stuff is that to uninstall a device is just to disconnect it from its drivers. The drivers remain in Windows, ready to reinstall when New Hardware Found comes up.

When I first fired up the new rig, I got a sort of generic VGA driver before I loaded the MSI drivers from their CD. It worked OK, just not a great resolution. I then did the real drivers and ran fine for 2 days.

I was hoping to go back to the generic so I can boot all the way to the desktop and maybe get the latest drivers off the site

 

[Felecha]

I thought I would try booting from a floppy (not sure what I intended to do, but . . .

Couldn't get anywhere, the same gibberish text there

And now I'm stuck in a new hole. I get the gibberish message that I KNOW is Invalid system disk. But nothing is in any of the drives!

So I thought - well lets try booting from the Windows CD. I watched that load up in the same gibberish all the way to the blue Windows Setup screen.

So I wonder - is something screwed at the BIOS level, if the text is a mess, who's talking at this point except the BIOS?

Is there some way to reset BIOS?

 

[mechBgon]

If there is gibberish when the system's not actually in Windows, then it can't be a driver problem, correct.

1) I wonder if it would've been better to get a 24-pin power supply. Guess what the extra four pins provide power for? You got it, the PCI-Express video card. Granted, your PCIe card is a featherweight in terms of power draw...

2) the motherboard or the video card could actually be faulty, too.

 

[Felecha]

I dont get that. The plugs on the board are 20 and 4 and an inch apart.

 

[Felecha]

I remember that when I first plugged in the Power SW to the header, I got the gibberish. I reversed the connector and it straightened out. Is it BIOS that is generating it? I've never done such a thing before (first board, too) but should I try upgrading the BIOS? I've heard of it, don't know how

 

[Felecha]

And one more thing I would like to know how to do. When I first booted up with the new rig, it came up with some kind of generic driver so the monitor resolution was minimal. But it WORKED. I then got out the MSI driver CD and did that.

How can I get back to that state?

 

[Felecha]

Well, back to wondering again - I've been out of town a while but back and have to deal with this again.

Would a reinstall of Windows one more time maybe do some good? Not a complete, just a simple reinstall of the files

 

[Felecha]

Well, this is interesting - I got out the XP Pro CD and decided to at least see if a reinstall would help. The initial boot prompt "Prass any kay" came up in the same gibberish. Where DOES that text come from?

 

[Felecha]

Oh dear, does no one know?

Is there a chance that the reinstall would straighten things out?