Update: A7V333 stopped booting (now stopped shutdown)

[Parnelli]

Help!

System:
A7V333
XP 1800+ at stock speed
512M DDR 2100
Antec true power 430W
JP1 and JP2 removed
Bios version 1007

Ran fine for one week.

Last night, mouse and keyboard freeze with nothing more than IE running. Even CRTL-ALT-DEL does nothing. Turn off, reboot and the voice system says 'system test cpu failure', or something to those words.

Turn the system off, pull the power cable and wait 30 minutes. Boots up and runs fine for 20 minutes. Asus pc probe reports MB temp as 70-71 degrees. Occasionally hits 73. Mouse and keyboard freeze again.

Next morning, one browser window open, freezes again. No idea of temps. Immediate reboot and get the 'cpu test failure' voice message again. Unplugged computer and went to work.

That night, started at 633pm, froze with one browser window open at 634. Makes me think it might not be heat related.

Removed HSF assembly, cleaned off everything, reapplied grease and reattached. Removed/ reinserted AGP card. Removed modem, no other PCI cards installed. Removed CDR. So the system is now video card, HD and floppy. Restarted and made it into setup. Went into 'Hardware monitor section'. System froze nearly immediately. Here's what the bios was reporting at the time. MB temp=78, CPU temp 107, Vcore=1.77volt, other voltages were 3.31,4.97, 12.23.

Immediate reboot, system froze at 'detecting secondary slave' section of boot process.

Immediate reboot and makes it into setup. Back to the hardware monitoring section, and it freezes again. Temps bios reports this time are 82 and 122. Voltages are 1.79,3.29,4.99,12.23.

Other than the temps seeming much too high....and why if they are? I cant figure out what is going on.

Any suggestions?

TIA

 

[mechBgon]

I have a suggestion to look at. There is an overvoltage jumper near the top of the motherboard, or there may be a pair... I could tell you better if I had mine here. If it's set to the overvoltage position, the actual CPU voltage will be 0.3V above what the BIOS reports. See if you can spot these and determine whether they're in the over-voltage position, because excess voltage would explain your high termperatures despite non-overclocking and good thermal contact.

Edit: also, looking for more info on your system, I searched for your posts and found you posted a Hot Deal for refurb A7V333's. If yours is a refurb, it could be because the over-voltage jumpers fooled the previous owner into thinking it was a bad board... or it could be a legitimately bad board with faulty voltage regulation, period. Here's hoping it's the former.

 

[Parnelli]

mechBgon,

Thanks for your help--I've done much searching on temps, and they don't seem too far off normal. I messed up and didn't mark them as fareinheit. They translate to about 50c, which I found several reports of people having. PLEASE let me know if I'm off base here.

Good catch about the post regarding refurb boards, but I was actually looking for prices of the board, since I had a friend that was willing to sell me his (was a gift) and I was looking for reasonable prices to pay him.

That said, the board does nothing today. No bios setup, nothing. Power on, and get 'system failed cpu test' almost immediately.

Tomorrow I'm going to try the cpu in a different board, but even if it doesn't work, I'm still going to be worried about what happened. eg- did the cpu just die of it's own free will, or is the board messed up and killed the cpu? Or.....?

Thanks again for the help.

P

 

[mechBgon]

Yeah, that's always a worry when one item quits... did the other item kill it off? Will it kill again? :Q

I would start by trying the CPU out like you say, and RMA'ing the board directly to ASUS by phone if the CPU checks out ok (unless you suspect the RAM). I had a bad BIOS update take my nephew's supervisor's A7V333-R out, and that's what we did. It likewise kept saying "System CPU fail! System CPU fail!" or else nothing at all.

 

[Parnelli]

Well,

Here's the parts list surrounding me.

3 keyboards
3 mice
1 A7V333 raid board
1 A7V33 board
2 XP 1800's
4 floppy drives

Why- because everything was haywire yesterday, first no keyboard, then no mouse, then no floppy, no boot, and finally repeat all again.

Combinations of the above hardware would work once, maybe twice, but never more than that.

I finally get the keyboard AND the floppy to work at the same time and figure it wouldn't hurt to upgrade the bios from 1007 to 1008. I perform the ever popular 'indian bios update dance' (kind of like the rain dance, but much more important) around the board a couple times and pray to the great bios gods above. It takes the update sucessfully, and more important, it seems to have solved almost all the issues. The system has now rebooted a couple dozen times in a row successfully. WHEW!

So now the only issue seems to be a lack of the standard ATX shutdown. The system acts like it's an AT and shows the 'safe to shutdown screen'.

I've checked windows (98se) and the bios numerous times, but havent' found anything that helps.

A million thanks,
parnelli

 

[mechBgon]

Sweet!!! Glad to hear it's working better, if not perfectly...

I think you enable Operating System Supports ACPI in the BIOS, if it's not enabled already, to get Win98 to take responsibility for shutting off the system. When you do this, it may go and detect a bunch of devices on bootup. Anyway, glad to hear the new BIOS helped... maybe I'll try it on mine at work