Hello,

My brother-in-law seems to have trashed the Bios settings on his A7A266 rev
1.03 board... He's asked me to try and fix it for him.. Is there a way to
perform a "hard" reset of the bios??? This revision of the board, 1.03,
doesn't have the jumpers under the battery for performing a hard reset...

Any ideas for me??

I was told that he had it overclocked.... But the system was flaky, so he
reset it back to the standard settings... Now it won't boot... And
sometimes I see the POST, other times I don't.. I get a single beep when
powered on..

THANKS!
Troy

In article <BoSdndqupbtUe-(E-Mail Removed)>, "Shagster" <(E-Mail Removed)> wrote:

> Hello,
>
> My brother-in-law seems to have trashed the Bios settings on his A7A266 rev
> 1.03 board... He's asked me to try and fix it for him.. Is there a way to
> perform a "hard" reset of the bios??? This revision of the board, 1.03,
> doesn't have the jumpers under the battery for performing a hard reset...
>
> Any ideas for me??
>
> I was told that he had it overclocked.... But the system was flaky, so he
> reset it back to the standard settings... Now it won't boot... And
> sometimes I see the POST, other times I don't.. I get a single beep when
> powered on..
>
> THANKS!
> Troy

From page 59 of the downloadable manual:

"...erasing the CMOS Real Time Clock (RTC) RAM. The RAM data
containing the password information is powered by the onboard
button cell battery. To erase the RTC RAM:

(1) Unplug your computer
(2) Short the solder points
(between battery tab and the floppy connector)
(3) Turn ON your computer
(4) Hold down <Delete> during bootup and enter BIOS setup to
re-enter user preferences."

The solder points are labelled CLRTC, and on many other motherboards
there would be a jumper and pins. In this case, you use a
screwdriver tip to short the two solder points together.
(Most users find this to be a PITA, and some resort to also
removing the battery, if the BIOS symptoms don't improve.)

Performing this procedure should result in the BIOS being
able to POST. You might want to do "Load Setup Defaults"
in the BIOS, so everything is initialized properly, redo
your other settings, then save and exit.

Also, you might want to check here, and see if the BIOS
version being used, and the processor being used, match
the conditions in the table for the A7A266. The BIOS
version listed in each case, is the minimum version needed
to work with the processor.

http://www.asus.com/support/cpusupport/cpusupport.aspx

I'm not a great fan of the ALI chipsets, as I own a board with
the same generation of chipset (the TUA266), and the AGP slot
sucks on that board (unstable - tried different drivers etc).
It is the only really bad Asus board I've ever owned. I hope your
brother-in-law has had better luck with his ALI chipset than
I've had.

Paul

Thank you VERY much!

I looked for those solder points last night, and didn't see them... I read
that too from the Rev 1.04 board, but couldn't find a user manual for his
1.03 board.. I'll check again when I get home.

Troy


"Paul" <(E-Mail Removed)> wrote in message
news:nospam-0305050006060001@192.168.1.178...
> In article <BoSdndqupbtUe-(E-Mail Removed)>, "Shagster" <(E-Mail Removed)>
> wrote:
>
>> Hello,
>>
>> My brother-in-law seems to have trashed the Bios settings on his A7A266
>> rev
>> 1.03 board... He's asked me to try and fix it for him.. Is there a way
>> to
>> perform a "hard" reset of the bios??? This revision of the board, 1.03,
>> doesn't have the jumpers under the battery for performing a hard reset...
>>
>> Any ideas for me??
>>
>> I was told that he had it overclocked.... But the system was flaky, so
>> he
>> reset it back to the standard settings... Now it won't boot... And
>> sometimes I see the POST, other times I don't.. I get a single beep when
>> powered on..
>>
>> THANKS!
>> Troy
>
> From page 59 of the downloadable manual:
>
> "...erasing the CMOS Real Time Clock (RTC) RAM. The RAM data
> containing the password information is powered by the onboard
> button cell battery. To erase the RTC RAM:
>
> (1) Unplug your computer
> (2) Short the solder points
> (between battery tab and the floppy connector)
> (3) Turn ON your computer
> (4) Hold down <Delete> during bootup and enter BIOS setup to
> re-enter user preferences."
>
> The solder points are labelled CLRTC, and on many other motherboards
> there would be a jumper and pins. In this case, you use a
> screwdriver tip to short the two solder points together.
> (Most users find this to be a PITA, and some resort to also
> removing the battery, if the BIOS symptoms don't improve.)
>
> Performing this procedure should result in the BIOS being
> able to POST. You might want to do "Load Setup Defaults"
> in the BIOS, so everything is initialized properly, redo
> your other settings, then save and exit.
>
> Also, you might want to check here, and see if the BIOS
> version being used, and the processor being used, match
> the conditions in the table for the A7A266. The BIOS
> version listed in each case, is the minimum version needed
> to work with the processor.
>
> http://www.asus.com/support/cpusupport/cpusupport.aspx
>
> I'm not a great fan of the ALI chipsets, as I own a board with
> the same generation of chipset (the TUA266), and the AGP slot
> sucks on that board (unstable - tried different drivers etc).
> It is the only really bad Asus board I've ever owned. I hope your
> brother-in-law has had better luck with his ALI chipset than
> I've had.
>
> Paul