Weird BIOS issue

[mendocinosummit]

A computer I built, about three weeks ago, for a friend has a Foxconn NF4 SLI socket 939 mobo. Suddenly, last weekend after the Windows logo came up the blue screen of death flashed with some words and the comp restarted. I tried everything in the book to fix it. Safe mode worked, repair of windows did not work, changing programs that started up in MSCONFIG did not work, fixboot did not work, so I just wiped the HD and installed a fresh copy of Windows XP SP2b.

After that the comp would then boot up nicely perfectly until I installed all the drivers and programs that he needed. I restarted and then this time the boot would make it to the desktop and sometimes not. A couple of times it actually finished the boot, but then it would restart after I started to do something; I started to think RAM or chipset.

I pulled one stick then the other, switched them around, nothing. Tried installing the newest drivers from Nvidia and nothing. Tried uninstalling the drivers and all the new programs, nothing. I was beggining to think a bad mobo?

I then talked to a friend for a while and told him of my predicament and we came up with one last option; reset CMOS and for some reason it actually worked. For reference, the BIOS were had not been touched since I built the computer.

I am pretty sure that he had no worms and even if he did they would have messed up CMOS beyond resetting. So, what else could it have been?

Thanks in advance

 

[mendocinosummit]

No ideas?

 

[pkme2]

Maybe what you did recently may have solved an underlining problem that you may have had previously, of which I can't say.

I have experienced a similar quirk recently on a client's rig and another techie solved it. He said it was a worm that got in and messed up everything. He did a complete wipe and reset eveything, reinstalled Windows and voila!, no problems.

You got gremlins, we got little menehunes. Maybe its a conspiracy?

Let's hope your problem doesn't come back.

 

[mendocinosummit]

The comp ran everyday for two weeks and then suddenly it started having problems.

Did he reflash the bios? I always thought that a worm, if it affected the bios, would prevent just resetting CMOS.