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Help! Computer not posting!

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Silent Buddha

Member
Joined
Nov 30, 2003
Location
Bellevue, WA
So I come back from school this afternoon and my computer won't post (specs are in sig). So I do the usual, I reset the CMOS. It doesn't post again but I can tell the CMOS was reset because the Speech reporter thing says "Memory failed test" (I turn off the speech reporter thing so only a CMOS reset could have turned it back on). I tried to boot using only 1 stick of RAM and any combination I could think of and it wouldn't post. So I put my 2 sticks of RAM back in their original slots and try to reset the CMOS again and it magically posts again. I go into BIOS to set everything to my normal configuration and it freezes while I'm doing it. So I say what the hell and I reset the CMOS again. Except this time it doesn't post. And I've tried really everything up my sleeve now and it still won't post. This computer has served me well for the past 2 years =/ but also in the past year I've been getting more restarts and no posts than usual.

Power supply is a non-issue, my Fortron has always had rock-solid rails and everything powers up.

Memory is probably not a factor... I only ran it at 2.8V because I never ended up volt-modding my motherboard. And I'm sure BH-5 can take 200MHz @ 2.8V no sweat =]

CPU has served me very well, I doubt it's my trusty Barton 2500+. I run it 24/7 @ 2.2GHz with watercooling and it stays nice and cool, never above 40 C.

GPU no problems, also watercooled... not the problem.

HDD is 1 year old after old WD 120GB SE died on me but I've never witnessed data corruption or other signs of hard-drive failure with this RMA drive.

Motherboard is probably the culprit but I'm wondering if anybody knows anything I can do to make my computer post. All my freaking college essays are on my computer and not backed up anywhere else (and that's like 10 essays) and I would like to not re-write them.

Help =/
 
I had a similar issue with that same board. I believe the BIOS is corrupted. There are a few things you can do.

1) You can send your BIOS chip over to the guys at www.badflash.com and get them to reflash your chip.

2) If you have a spare motherboard that can accept your bios chip, you can try hotflashing it. Basically, boot up the other system with its original bios, and boot into dos with your flashing utilities on the floppy disk. Take out the bios chip, and insert your Asus' bios chip(make sure its mounted properly). Then flash it with any force tags needed. I've used this method to recover several bioses successfully.
 
Basically the only other computers in my house is a Dell P3 733MHz and a laptop =/

It just kills me to have my BIOS get corrupted at this time =/ I need those darn college essays =[

I will give badflash.com a look, thanks.
 
Your welcome, they don't seem to offer reflashing your old chip anymore, but they can send you a new bios flashed with what you need.
 
Silent Buddha said:
So I come back from school this afternoon and my computer won't post (specs are in sig). So I do the usual, I reset the CMOS. It doesn't post again but I can tell the CMOS was reset because the Speech reporter thing says "Memory failed test" (I turn off the speech reporter thing so only a CMOS reset could have turned it back on). I tried to boot using only 1 stick of RAM and any combination I could think of and it wouldn't post. So I put my 2 sticks of RAM back in their original slots and try to reset the CMOS again and it magically posts again. I go into BIOS to set everything to my normal configuration and it freezes while I'm doing it. So I say what the hell and I reset the CMOS again. Except this time it doesn't post. And I've tried really everything up my sleeve now and it still won't post. This computer has served me well for the past 2 years =/ but also in the past year I've been getting more restarts and no posts than usual.

Power supply is a non-issue, my Fortron has always had rock-solid rails and everything powers up.

Memory is probably not a factor... I only ran it at 2.8V because I never ended up volt-modding my motherboard. And I'm sure BH-5 can take 200MHz @ 2.8V no sweat =]

CPU has served me very well, I doubt it's my trusty Barton 2500+. I run it 24/7 @ 2.2GHz with watercooling and it stays nice and cool, never above 40 C.

GPU no problems, also watercooled... not the problem.

HDD is 1 year old after old WD 120GB SE died on me but I've never witnessed data corruption or other signs of hard-drive failure with this RMA drive.

Motherboard is probably the culprit but I'm wondering if anybody knows anything I can do to make my computer post. All my freaking college essays are on my computer and not backed up anywhere else (and that's like 10 essays) and I would like to not re-write them.

Help =/
If your mobo is curupt you can buy another board and **NOT** have to install windows again because itll be all the same hardware.So for a small fee it the reflashing dosent work you know you can get your work back.

If you get it going ide save all your work to disk or floppy.
sorry couldnt b more help.
 
Does the Dell use DDR Ram? You could always try that RAM. That fact you managed to get a post albeit breifly whilst adjusting the RAM leads me to thinkings its either the RAM itself or the ram slots on the mobo - have you tried cleaning the RAM slots?
 
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