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MSI-6330 Boot Failure

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Thwei

Member
Joined
Sep 24, 2003
Location
New York
Anyone have any solutions for the boot failure on these boards? I've read a few different things, including bad volt regulator, and another idea about ATI vcard conflicts. Does anyone have the same board and possibly a solution to fix this problem?
 
The machine boots fine cold, and will run stable. The only problem is on reboot it halts.

LED diagnostic lights display 0100 which in the manual depicts reading memory ... however the RAM is good, and works just fine.

Trying to power off and back on at this time will only bring you back to the same state, 0100 and halt.

To get the system to boot again, you must unplug the power cord and wait a few minutes, then plug it back in.

To me this doesn't sound much like an ATI/VIA conflict, but more power management ... voltage regulator?

Anyone have any ideas/suggestions? Buying a new board is not an option right now.
 
try updating the BIOS
Here is the link to the update: http://www.msicomputer.com/support/bios_result.asp
You have to Select Motherboard - AMD Platform
and MSI K7Turbo2 for the motherboard.
This will bring up a list of about 10 to 15 updates.
Here are the links to the individual BIOS updates you need.
They are listed in the order they should be installed (top one first)

http://216.158.218.35/edoc/bios_uploads/6330v35.exe

http://216.158.218.35/edoc/bios_uploads/6330v36.zip

REMINDER, BIOS FLASHING IS EXTREMELY RISKY!!!
EITHER HAVE A TRAINED PROFESSIONAL DO THE UPDATE FOR YOU!
OR MAKE A BACKUP OF EVERYTHING ON YOUR HARD DISK!
A FAILED BIOS FLASH COULD RENDER YOUR MOTHERBOARD USELESS

That said, here are the steps needed to flash your BIOS
As told by the MSI website, these instructions are specifically for your BIOS ( BTW I have the same mobo )

1. Extract the BIOS-archive that you have downloaded by double clicking to c:\test

2. Boot your system from a Win98 or WinME boot-floppy.
How to make boot floppy in case your don't have it ready:
For Win9X, You can type [C:\ format a:/s] from the DOS prompt.
For WinMe, You can make a boot floppy from control panel--> add/remove program-->make boot floppy. Remove autoexec.bat & config.sys file if there's any.
For Win2000, there's no way to make boot floppy, so you have to either use Win9X or WinME boot floppy.
For WinXP, you can make a DOS boot disk. Go to Your Computer, right click drive A:, select Format, select copy system files.

3. When you get the A:\ prompt, type the following sequence:
C: <enter>
cd\test <enter>
C:\test> awdfl783m w6330vms.320 <enter>
(w6330vms.320 refers to BIOS file, this will depend on the board model)
(to save or not to save old BIOS is the user's decision)

4. Reboot your system when prompted

If the BIOS flashing should go awry, go here for instructions on how to recover from the fouled flash ( you need to use a working PC for this if your flash went bad ).
http://www.msicomputer.com/support/BIOS_award_Recovery.asp
 
Thanks for the info, my board is a KT7 Pro, however. Should I install each version at a time leading up to newest version they have? Or will flashing only the newest version listed be sufficient?
 
Just flash the most up to date BIOS. Doing it in steps isn't necessary.

I hope it fixes your problem. Good luck!
 
Well failure is not an option. But if by some chance I destroy the mobo I won't be buying another VIA chipset or MSI board in my life. :)

I'll post again after i've flashed and let you know if it worked or not. Thanks alot for answers, they are really appreciated. :)
 
Ok, well flash went ok. No problems there, didn't even do it with a boot disk... just rebooted in MS-DOS mode.

My problem hasn't been fixed, though. On reboot it still hangs at that one spot. (50% of the time, sometimes it actually does reboot)

Occasionally i'll boot cold and it will say something about checksum, CMOS, and that the defaults have been set. Again I think back to volt regulator, or maybe a dead/dying battery?

Any ideas/suggestions? :)
 
Loosing your CMOS settings could definitely be caused by a bad CMOS battery. The good news is, they cost very little. So pick one up, and see what difference that makes.
 
Yea, but I live in a very rural area, and unless they have them at Walmart i'm out of luck for awhile. :)

I just read another article about someone stabbing his board, and then having it hang on 0100 (same thing mine is hanging on) ... now when I put the sink on, the clip itself might have hit the board ... damn thing must be putting 50lbs on the CPU ... there are no marks or scratches that I can see, though, and the system DOES boot, just has trouble on reboots.

That problem isn't really a majorly big deal, because it seems to boot fine on a cold start.

Another problem with it is the integrated sound. For some reason when installing the drivers for the AC'97 Audio the system locks right up, then reboots automatically. Been messing with this for awhile now, and still haven't figured it out. If anyone has a suggestion i'll be happy to try it :)


:edit: Fixed the audio problems ... it does help when you have the right chipset drivers ... helps even more if the place you bought the mobo from actually sent the right drivers... oh well, i fixed it ... reboot problem still there, tho.
 
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Ok, one thing I have noticed about this problem is that when I reset CMOS the system will boot fine. The first time CMOS is reset, it will boot fine (100% of the time). I'm thinking perhaps it's something i'm changing in bios.

The things I change are:

-system time
-set 1.44mb 3.5" drive A to none (i have no floppy drive connected)
-change boot devices to only boot from HDD-0 and LP123(something)
-FDD controller disabled (nothing connected to it)
-look for vcard on AGP first
-Sound Blaster enabled
-PnP OS enabled (windows 98)
-and I set the shutdown temp to 75°C

...I may have missed one or two things, but thats basically it. All other options stay at default.

Only one of these that stands out to me would be the floppy, but I never heard of a system not booting right because of not having a floppy. :(

Anyone have any ideas, or could maybe tell me what else happens when clearing CMOS? I will probably end up RMAing the board to MSI unless I can get this figured out.

Thanks for replies. I appreciate all the help.
 
Lucky for you, they will have them at Wal Mart. It should be a CR2032 watch battery, take a look and make sure.

If the battery is bad, it'll default to the factory settings. One of the defaults is generally that there is a floppy attached, and it will look for it on boot, and halt if it doesn't find it.

So replace that battery, and then see if you still have a problem. From the sound of things it should take care of it.

Also, make sure your Clear CMOS jumper is in the correct position. I've heard of motherboards being shipped with the jumper in the Clear position.
 
Ok, picked up a 2032 battery at Walmart tonight, poped that in and it made no difference.

First thing it wouldn't boot cold, ended up having to reset CMOS with the jumper and as usual it booted fine that first fresh boot.

I got into BIOS and changed 1 setting, saved and rebooted ... and of course it wouldn't boot.

So after another clearing of CMOS I booted up and didn't change any settings at all, left them all at default, saved and rebooted. And, yet another boot failure.

So I wonder what else besides resetting BIOS settings does clearing CMOS do? What else does it save that could possibly be giving me such troubles?

Hmm, anyone have any more ideas or should I just go ahead and try a RMA?
 
You sound pretty close to an RMA to me.
You can try swapping the RAM to another slot, if you haven't already. The MSI board (KT3 Ultra) in a computer I put together for a friend was picky, and refused to boot at all a couple of times until I swapped the RAM to a different slot. Even though it had been working prior to that.

It was a little different problem than what you are experiencing, but worth a try.

As far as what is actually wrong with your board (the actual hardware at fault), I couldn't say.
 
I switched from 1-2 to 5-6 ... I haven't tried the 3-4 slot yet, i'll do that though.

I'll probably just end up buying an ASUS A7V or Abit KT7 and not even bother with the RMA. After all the restocking and shipping and various other costs they would surely tack on, i'd end up with about $5 back. Maybe I can get some luck on ebay.

Any suggestions on either ASUS or Abit? Or that might be subject for another thread? Thanks for the help.
 
Good luck with whatever you do. I haven't kept up on the pros and cons of the latest from either Abit or Asus. But it does seem like there are a lot of problems with the A7N8X from what I've read here at the forums.

The one Abit board I've owned is an old KT7A. I bought it a little over 2 years ago, and it is still going strong. I did have to replace some of the capacitors though. But that wasn't Abit's fault, many manufacturers also had the same bad capacitors.

My most current motherboard is an Epox 8K3A+, and it has sold me on Epox.
 
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