CMOS Boot errors don't make sense?

[Jess Fertudei]

I am still running that ECS K7S5A v3.1 with a Duron 1.3 and 2 128M SDRAM
sticks AT 100/100

The board has always run pretty fair w/ the exception of the time I tried to
run DDR which was a dismal failure (some of these boards are just like
that). The only recent changes were to round IDE cables in preparation for a
new drive that I still have in the box and that went well after struggling
to get one to seat correctly. That was a month ago, maybe (interupted and no
time to finish) and it has run fine since... till today:

I went to do a cold reboot from the XP partition to the 98 partition,
shutting it down completely first. When I powered back up it just sat there
flickering the CD drives back and forth and with the HD light on *almost*
steady. It sat there for a loooooong time and would not even give me the
first beep when it finds the video card before POSTing. It showed no POST or
CMOS screens and reported no Checksum or other errors... the monitor power
switch light even sat there just blinking as if receiving no signal. I tried
to start it over and over and over again and got nowhere. I tried turning
off the Power Supply and back on and nothing happened. I then unplugged and
replugged the power supply and it did boot... but it still sat there for
much longer than normal flickering back and forth between CD drives. I then
shut it down and tried to boot normally and it would not. Then did the PS
deal again and it did. Tried again and it didn't boot normally nor by
unplugging PS, then unplugged PS again and it did. AAAAAAaaaaaaaaaaargh!

I then tried doing the reboot from the *Restart* button in Windows XP and it
did boot, but it sat there flickering CD drives for a very exaggerated
amount of time again first. It would, however do a 'restart' even if slow. I
even booted back and forth between 98 and XP fine other than this lag
before starting POST. When I did a cold boot, though, it would not and then
after going again it even did a cold one again... at which point I'm just
going to leave it up without shutdown for now.


I'm suspecting the unplug may be a red herring???

Is my CMOS going tits up? Processor? IDE Controller? None of the above?

I considered resetting the CMOS, but just checked through it once first and
all seemed to be in order there (all drives present Auto 32Bit RAM timings
and such correct), so I didn't for fear of not pushing my luck by rebooting
too many more times until I have other directions to go here, too.

From the OS side, though I fail to see any relevancy, I got another one of
those 'lost communication' with printer errors the other day, that I
understand may be Windows buggering USB, a message that Paint Shop Pro did
something illegal when I closed it that I think was because I forgot I had
PSPHelp open. And I got a Driver IRQL Not Less or Equal message on an
earlier reboot that referred to nVidia Capture Card driver when I don't have
Capture and the subsequent blue screen and memory dump. But I don't think
these are related as they are all after the thing tries to boot which this
one never gets to the first beep when it struggles.



Any ideas on what's going on here? I'd hate to buy another board right now
as cash is tight, but I need my machine running well, too.

 

[Dave C.]

I am still running that ECS K7S5A v3.1 with a Duron 1.3 and 2 128M SDRAM
sticks AT 100/100

The board has always run pretty fair w/ the exception of the time I tried to
run DDR which was a dismal failure (some of these boards are just like
that). The only recent changes were to round IDE cables in preparation for a
new drive that I still have in the box and that went well after struggling
to get one to seat correctly. That was a month ago, maybe (interupted and no
time to finish) and it has run fine since... till today:

I went to do a cold reboot from the XP partition to the 98 partition,
shutting it down completely first. When I powered back up it just sat there
flickering the CD drives back and forth and with the HD light on *almost*
steady. It sat there for a loooooong time and would not even give me the
first beep when it finds the video card before POSTing. It showed no POST or
CMOS screens and reported no Checksum or other errors... the monitor power
switch light even sat there just blinking as if receiving no signal. I tried
to start it over and over and over again and got nowhere. I tried turning
off the Power Supply and back on and nothing happened. I then unplugged and
replugged the power supply and it did boot... but it still sat there for
much longer than normal flickering back and forth between CD drives. I then
shut it down and tried to boot normally and it would not. Then did the PS
deal again and it did. Tried again and it didn't boot normally nor by
unplugging PS, then unplugged PS again and it did. AAAAAAaaaaaaaaaaargh!

I then tried doing the reboot from the *Restart* button in Windows XP and it
did boot, but it sat there flickering CD drives for a very exaggerated
amount of time again first. It would, however do a 'restart' even if slow. I
even booted back and forth between 98 and XP fine other than this lag
before starting POST. When I did a cold boot, though, it would not and then
after going again it even did a cold one again... at which point I'm just
going to leave it up without shutdown for now.


I'm suspecting the unplug may be a red herring???

Is my CMOS going tits up? Processor? IDE Controller? None of the above?

I considered resetting the CMOS, but just checked through it once first and
all seemed to be in order there (all drives present Auto 32Bit RAM timings
and such correct), so I didn't for fear of not pushing my luck by rebooting
too many more times until I have other directions to go here, too.

From the OS side, though I fail to see any relevancy, I got another one of
those 'lost communication' with printer errors the other day, that I
understand may be Windows buggering USB, a message that Paint Shop Pro did
something illegal when I closed it that I think was because I forgot I had
PSPHelp open. And I got a Driver IRQL Not Less or Equal message on an
earlier reboot that referred to nVidia Capture Card driver when I don't have
Capture and the subsequent blue screen and memory dump. But I don't think
these are related as they are all after the thing tries to boot which this
one never gets to the first beep when it struggles.



Any ideas on what's going on here? I'd hate to buy another board right now
as cash is tight, but I need my machine running well, too.

Classic symptoms of a failing power supply. -Dave

 

[JAD]

also... those round cables...if they are El-cheapos they are more
trouble than they are worth

 

[!Allen Lasting]

to see if it may be the power supply, try removing the 2nd ide cable from
the board and pull the molex connectors from the opticals. If you have a
slave drive pull the molex of f it, too, and pull the cable off it so
you're running with just the hard drive with the os on it. You could try
pulling one of the ram chips, too, and anything else that would lower the
power load, that you can think of.

If it boots fine, then you know it's the power supply. If it doesn't
you'll have to do a swap with a good one to find out for sure.

I had a PS problem like this once. The control voltage on Pin 8 on the 40
pin connector didn't come up fast enough for one board, but it did on
another. Switching the PS between the boxes fixed it.

Allen

 

[David Maynard]

I am still running that ECS K7S5A v3.1 with a Duron 1.3 and 2 128M SDRAM
sticks AT 100/100

The board has always run pretty fair w/ the exception of the time I tried to
run DDR which was a dismal failure (some of these boards are just like
that). The only recent changes were to round IDE cables in preparation for a
new drive that I still have in the box and that went well after struggling
to get one to seat correctly. That was a month ago, maybe (interupted and no
time to finish) and it has run fine since... till today:

I went to do a cold reboot from the XP partition to the 98 partition,
shutting it down completely first. When I powered back up it just sat there
flickering the CD drives back and forth and with the HD light on *almost*
steady. It sat there for a loooooong time and would not even give me the
first beep when it finds the video card before POSTing. It showed no POST or
CMOS screens and reported no Checksum or other errors... the monitor power
switch light even sat there just blinking as if receiving no signal. I tried
to start it over and over and over again and got nowhere. I tried turning
off the Power Supply and back on and nothing happened. I then unplugged and
replugged the power supply and it did boot... but it still sat there for
much longer than normal flickering back and forth between CD drives. I then
shut it down and tried to boot normally and it would not. Then did the PS
deal again and it did. Tried again and it didn't boot normally nor by
unplugging PS, then unplugged PS again and it did. AAAAAAaaaaaaaaaaargh!

I then tried doing the reboot from the *Restart* button in Windows XP and it
did boot, but it sat there flickering CD drives for a very exaggerated
amount of time again first. It would, however do a 'restart' even if slow. I
even booted back and forth between 98 and XP fine other than this lag
before starting POST. When I did a cold boot, though, it would not and then
after going again it even did a cold one again... at which point I'm just
going to leave it up without shutdown for now.


I'm suspecting the unplug may be a red herring???

Is my CMOS going tits up? Processor? IDE Controller? None of the above?

I considered resetting the CMOS, but just checked through it once first and
all seemed to be in order there (all drives present Auto 32Bit RAM timings
and such correct), so I didn't for fear of not pushing my luck by rebooting
too many more times until I have other directions to go here, too.

From the OS side, though I fail to see any relevancy, I got another one of
those 'lost communication' with printer errors the other day, that I
understand may be Windows buggering USB, a message that Paint Shop Pro did
something illegal when I closed it that I think was because I forgot I had
PSPHelp open. And I got a Driver IRQL Not Less or Equal message on an
earlier reboot that referred to nVidia Capture Card driver when I don't have
Capture and the subsequent blue screen and memory dump. But I don't think
these are related as they are all after the thing tries to boot which this
one never gets to the first beep when it struggles.



Any ideas on what's going on here? I'd hate to buy another board right now
as cash is tight, but I need my machine running well, too.

That sure sounds like the classic power supply going bad problem, although
it *could* be anther device, such as a CD Drive, with an intermittent short
overloading the PSU.