Weird-A$$ Boot Failures with Duron 700/MSI K7T Pro2A

Napalm

Platinum Member
Oct 12, 1999
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My brother-in-law has just converted from a BM6/C550 to a Pro2A/D700 and we are having all sorts of issues related to changes in bios.

The first boot up went without a hitch, correct drivers were installed (used the Pro2A drivers from the install disk). On the next bootup we went to turn off the on-board sound in bios and when we rebooted the computer failed to boot (fans would spin, hardrives lit up, etc...) - it simly hung and the LED reported a "memory detection test" error. We kept trying to reboot and after a while we decided to clear the bios with the jumper. After this, the system would not only fail to boot, but absolutely nothing would spin or light up - dead!

We waited about 15 minutes and it then booted properly. The next thing we tried was to adjust the speed of the Duron. After changing multiplier in the bios we had the same issue - no boot, but lights/fans came on. Again, we cleared cmos only to find a completely dead system for about 15 minutes.

After restarting again, we thought that maybe there was a funny issue with the pencil lead on the Duron L1 pins so we tried a modest overclock through the front side bus. Same problem - computer would not boot, but it would light up and spin the fans. After about 5 minutes it did finally boot, and ran overclocked at 770MHz - no problems. We then tried 805MHz only to have it fail to boot. After not being able to revive it, we again clear cmos and killed everything for 15 minutes (i.e., fans, lights, etc.).



So here is the story, it seems that any change to bios results in a failure to boot on the next boot attempt. After about 5 minutes the system will boot correctly. Any change to the multiplier results in a failure to boot (same as any other bios change) except that it does not ever seem to correctly boot again. Clearing the cmos kills the entire system (i.e., its like there is no power to the sytem) for about 15 minutes. Following this, everything works like a dream. Sounds like there may be a couple of issue relating to the bios, heat, and improperly connected L1 pins...


What do you guys think???

Cheers,
Napalm

 

Subversal

Senior member
Aug 22, 2000
617
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Hmm... I have two K7T pro2-a's. The second system I used it on gave me almost the same problems you've stated (cept for the BIOS). When I first had everything installed and powered up it worked fine. After a while I decided to OC the Duron 700@800 (used the pencil trick with a No.2 pencil) on startup LED's showed 0100 (Memory problem) so I made sure my DIMM was in right (I might've bumped it, who knows) and powered up again same thing (used another DIMM... ditto problem). I got mightily pissed and left it alone for 5-6 hours until I got back home with the Loctite kit. Erased the pencil marks and applied the Loctite stuff to the l1 bridges. Left it alone for the night. Morning it worked like a champ. I think my pencil's graphite wasn't very conductive, the CPU checks fine but then proceeds to complete a task and fails with those faulty set L1 bridges. But the BIOS problem I have no clue on. Maybe upgrade the BIOS if you haven't already to 1.9. I don't think it is heat (BTW what HS/F are you using?), otherwise why would a BIOS change result in a failed POST?