P4P800SE hang on NVRAM check? huh?

Well guys,


This was "911 hardware & data salvage" weekend.

Hardware before:

-Asus P4P800SE motherboard
-3.0E Prescott
-1 Gb RAM ( 1 supertalent stick, and one Kingston, both PC2700 )
-Cooler Master Hyper48 Cooler
-WD 160Gb SATA HDD
-Maxtor 80Gb External Hard drive salvage, installed as a backup drive for ghost images
-Antec SLK1650B case with Smartpower 350w
-AGP Vivo edition MSI NX6600GT

About a week ago, When i would start up the box, and it would hang in post. It would post up to "Checking NVRAM" and either sit there for at least 5 minutes and then resume normal boot up, or it wouldn't get beyond that point at all, i wasnt even able to get into the BIOS to check/change settings. Sometimes i would be able to press the reset button and it would boot up fine, thinking that this would be a problem with the hard drive not spinning at nominal speed by the time it checks for NVRAM. I tried clearing the bios, and taking out the battery... both of which did not help the problem, although it did allow me to access the BIOS setup menu.

Last week, that wouldn't even work. Being the junky that i am, i keep an "extra" motherboard on hand for just such an occasion. I figured that i'll just use a new motherboard for now, while i try to figure out whats wrong with the old one later (hence this post)

New build:

-Asus P4P800SE RMA replacement motherboard (spare)
-3.0E Prescott
-1 Gb RAM ( 1 supertalent stick, and one Kingston, both PC2700 )
-Cooler Master Hyper48 Cooler
-WD 40Gb IDE HDD master
-Lian Li PC-7 case with Antec Smartpower 350w
-AGP Vivo edition MSI NX6600GT


The computer now seems to still get hung up on NVRAM checking for a minute or two, but no where near as long as before... still happens to some degree. Has anyone had this problem before? I put in a new drive figuring it was a borked OS install, but its not that either. Any help would be appreciated.


~ Gos

Update on the system,


Took the box to a buddy's shop last night. At boot, it posts the DDR333 @ 320 MHz with both 512 sticks in, and invidually. Also, when it does decide to boot fully into the OS, The Marvell gigabit LAN refused to start (code 10)

for the record, i had OC'd this system (the first board) to a 3.2ghz, but then reverted back to stock a few mins later.

On my system, there is a 350w Power Supply, the owners manual of my NX6600GT states that i should use a 350w PS or more, do you think being on the border line like this could be causing my system to behave this way? My bguddy had been in the buisness of building computers and providing support for them professionally for at least 13 years... and he said he had never seen this before, that it was just strange

Any ideas?

~ Gos

Update again!

I tried an "allied" 400w Power Supply in the computer last night after the bios flash i did failed to change the situation, and it worked! It posts normally now, taking only a second or two checking nvram.

The Marvell Yukon gigabit LAN still is having it's "cannot start" issue. I disabled the card through Device Manager and installed a little generic 10/100 card, that gives me lights, but isn't getting a connection... i have to do more with it tonite.

Before it would do the same thing too, with other NIC cards i had around. I tried 3 different cards so far and still the same thing, which is "limited to no connectivity" warning. I know the router works properly, since i have a P4P800 with the old 3com lan chip that works flawlessly ( my email box & backup ) I've tried swapping all the cables around, which does nothing. I'm at a loss here, and now its been 2 weeks without my main rig.

~ Gos