Computer hangs at the very beginning

[Dragon]

Hello all!

Recently I've upgraded my BIOS so it'd support 48-bit LBA. When flasher
did its job video completely blanked. After waiting for a while, I
resetted, but nothing changed. There was no video signal, and the whole
system seemed to stay idle.
So after a couple of resets and turn-off-turn-ons I cleared the CMOS
with the motherboard jumper and — it worked! I entered CMOS setup and
chose the "Load Optimized Defaults". After reset, computer refused to
work again! I turned it off and then back on, and finally it went on to
loading OS.
BIOS actually works nicely, some video glitches are unexpectedly gone
and new HDD seems to work fine. BUT. Sometimes the old bug returns.

I press the power button, computer hums, power LED lights and... nothing
happens. Keyboard's off, mouse's off and video's off. The HDD LED is
surprisingly on but it fades out a half-dozen seconds later. Power
button seems to do nothing, so I press reset and — voila! — it boots!
This glitch is especially frustrating when I try to resume from S3 — for
obvious reasons. 8=]

It happens not always, but I can't figure out a schedule. Needless to
say, I'm utterly confused.

Here's my hardware info:

Motherboard: DFI AK75-EC, PCB revision C.
BIOS: Award 6.00PG.
BIOS update: the one of 2002/06/12 (BAK75612.ZIP).

Thanks in advance,
Roman

 

[Jan Alter]

Hi,

A couple of thoughts:
When you cleared the CMOS had you completely disconnected the power by
disconnecting it from the outlet? All power should be off when removing the
jumper and replacing it.
Sometimes you actually can get a bad flash and the bios file may be
corrupted, and the file should be redownloaded and flashed again.
Additionally a new bios can have bugs. Is there any possiblility that the
bios before the one you used will also support 48 bit LBA?

 

[Dragon]

Hi,

When you cleared the CMOS had you completely disconnected the power by
disconnecting it from the outlet? All power should be off when removing the
jumper and replacing it.

Sure. I never dig in my motherboard without switching off power. 8=]

Sometimes you actually can get a bad flash and the bios file may be
corrupted, and the file should be redownloaded and flashed again.

Unlikely. Remember, it was a ZIP archive and I checked it for integrity.
I even opened the .BIN file itself — it looked like an LZH archive so I
checked it too.
And I FC-ed flash on a diskette with the one on hard drive — all
correct.

Additionally a new bios can have bugs. Is there any possiblility that the
bios before the one you used will also support 48 bit LBA?

Uh, that'd be a worst case. This BIOS is the first whose description
mentions large HDD's (and coincidentally the latest which I can apply to
my motherboard) so I'll have to stick with it.

 

[Jan Alter]

Hi,

When you cleared the CMOS had you completely disconnected the power by
disconnecting it from the outlet? All power should be off when removing the
jumper and replacing it.

Sure. I never dig in my motherboard without switching off power. 8=]

Sometimes you actually can get a bad flash and the bios file may be
corrupted, and the file should be redownloaded and flashed again.

Unlikely. Remember, it was a ZIP archive and I checked it for integrity.
I even opened the .BIN file itself - it looked like an LZH archive so I
checked it too.
And I FC-ed flash on a diskette with the one on hard drive - all
correct.

Additionally a new bios can have bugs. Is there any possiblility that the
bios before the one you used will also support 48 bit LBA?

Uh, that'd be a worst case. This BIOS is the first whose description
mentions large HDD's (and coincidentally the latest which I can apply to
my motherboard) so I'll have to stick with it.

The only thing I can figure is that there may be a new default parameter set
on the new bios that was set differently from the first one that is causing
your sometime non-starts. I know back seat driving isn't helpful here, but
maybe you just want to go through each bios page and note what its choices
are set.
A couple of years ago I installed a Gigabyte mb and whenever I went to
shut down it would immediately restart. When I finally posted to a Gigabyte
NG someone within an hour a suggested I go to the bios screen and turn off
the "wake on LAN-WOL parameter. I did, and viola the machine shut down. It
was a bug. The other thoughts are to get in touch with DFI. Hopefully
they're more responsive than some other mb manufacturers.

 

[Dragon]

Hmm, funny things are happening...

There's an additional power switch at the back of motherboard — I turned
it off and then on. From that moment everything seems to work OK —
apparently there's something magical about this switch 8=].

I'm going so watch how it works anyway — doubt if it's the ultimate
solution.

 

[kony]

Dragon, power switch on back of board? I have Rev E of that board and
I'm having a problem. I first started with a driver problem of some
sort because I could only get safe mode. But now I get nothing. Nada.

Ok, though since the driver problem has nothing to do with
the system failing to start, it would be good to leave out
this unrelated information... unless the driver problem were
actually an instability, of some particular part that still
wasn't resolved after the driver change, in which case you
should remove the suspect part then try again to start the
system (substituting a replacement part if the one pulled
were vital to the system running at all like a video card).

I also have the SOYO version of that board ( their KT133A board) and get
the same problem. The video card is good, memory is good, power supply
brand new, all hard drives and cables are connected correctly and work.

Assuming "good" means that after the system did not work,
you had then pulled these parts and tested them in another
system (since rarely, even brand new parts can't be assumed
good until you actually observe them working properly), OR
the parts had been pulled from a working system just prior
to testing in the problem system, THEN it would seem you are
not necessarily experiencing any problem related to the type
of board, rather a more general failure to properly
initialize, then POST.

Most often such a problem is the power supply. "Brand new"
doesn't tell us much, it could be defective, incapable of
the high 5V current the system probably needs for those
older Athlon (?) processors, or something as simple as
having the power supply 110/220 mains voltage selection
switch set wrong (though in this latter case, you would
tend to get almost no response if any, or rather an
immediate audible failure and perhaps burnt smell from the
PSU).

I have it on the bench out of the case. A good PCI video card doesn't
help either.

Perhaps not, but since you have a good PCI video card I
would recommend that you leave it in the system instead of
using the other, and while AC power disconnected that you
clear CMOS (if you hadn't already after swapping in the
video card).

I'm going to swap CPUs (Athlon XP 1600+).

IF the current processor was the one working all along (we
don't know the history of the system) and you did not have
some overt failure of the CPU cooling subsystem like the
heatsink falling off while it was running, cracking of the
CPU core by reinstalling the heatsink, nor a heatsink fan
failure that left it overheating for a significant amount of
time (generally you can tell this by touch-rotating the fan
blades if you dont' see them spinning when a system power-on
attempt is tried, as seized fan bearings are the usual cause
of a fan failure), THEN it is unlikely that the CPU is the
problem, and by swapping in a different processor you could
be introducing another variable, the system might not ever
be able to run the other processor... so if the swap doesn't
help, be sure to swap back the original processor for
further testing.

Examine the motherboard for failed capacitors. Take voltage
readings of the PSU output with a multimeter, particularly
5VSB, 3.3V, 5V, and 12V rails. 5VSB reading should be taken
before and during system power-on attempt, while the rest
should be taken during power-on attempt and immediately
after that when it's not running.

When it's not running, what other signs of life are there?
LEDs, fans spinning, beeping or ???

Disconnect all non-essential parts, leaving only the PCI
video card, 1 memory module, CPU, heatsink/fan, then with AC
power still disconnected try clearing CMOS again, then try
to start the system... the goal being not to boot an OS,
just to get it to POST with video on-screen so no drives or
anything else (no keyboard, etc, yet either) connected at
the time.

I can't imaging
both Mobos are identically bad. I thought it had something to do with
S3 sleep but can't get into BIOS to disable it. Where is the switch
you're talking about? Any other ideas to get this thing back in action?

The system would have to be running first before it could go
into a sleep mode like S3, which it certainly can't be doing
after you have had the power disconnected. We can't be 100%
certain both boards aren't bad, nor any part you moved from
one board to the other isn't bad, but the power supply would
be my first suspect.

Also if you were trying these motherboards on (certain types
of) antistatic material such as a mat or the bag they came
in, try them not on these materials (on cardboard or wood,
etc, instead as some anti-static/ESD packaging or mats do
conduct enough to interfere with, prevent a board from
POSTing.