What Am I doing Wrong?????

ok, a while ago, a bios flashed failed, i got a new bios chip from Tmod, and upon installing it, it said bad bios checksum. ok. all i have to do is reinstall the bios, right? sorta, i have to install it each time i turn on or restart the computer, it isnt a bad battery, i tried that. so, i took the board out, and put in my backup Gigabyte K7 Triton or whatever, and Aloth Xp 2400. i reinstalled windows, and when i turned it on, i would get the blue screen of death, i reinstalled it agian, same thing, so i switched out my 3200 value RAM for some 2100 off brand. I also tried switching out my CPU to an Athlon Xp 2100, didnt work. Now i turn it on, after i switched out everything, what does it say? Bad bios Checksum.

DAMN!!!!!!!!!

is there a virus or something that corrupts bioses? what else could cause this?

anybody?

Your post is kind of confusing. But yeah, if you switch out motherboards it can corrupt your Windows XP install. I doubt it's a virus but there are scripts out there that do that, I've heard. Have you tried contacting the Tmod guy?

You can try reflashing bios to the latest try and see if it works....or manually configure everything in bios and proceed on reinstalling windows.....Bad bios checksum error is generally ram timings..........i get this often with my overclocks when my ram can't handle it anymore.


BL
Vflux

Bad bios Checksum. is usually what you get when you reflash your bios. Just enter it and make some changes. It should go away then.

Actually a virus is the last thing you should worry about. The chip can only be written to when a flash is in progress and that is fairly uncommon even for us. Even then, your hard disk is not in play so the virus would have to be on your boot floppy to move into the chip. There are a few other reasons why this would be unlikely but that covers the basics.

From your description, I see one possiblilty. Did you remove the bios battery and then clear the bios first? The other stuff with other hardware is indicitave of other problems and does not really tell you anything about your bios flashing problem.

ok, let me explain this in detail:

i bios flashed my Asus K8V to a newer veriosn. It failed, so i baught a new bios chip from T-Mod. After i installed the new bios chip, it said bad bios checksum. I reinstalled the original bios that came on the motherboard. I restarted, entered the bios and changed the date and everything. I saved and exited and upon doing that, before it posted, it said bad bios checksum.

Every time i turn on or restart the computer, it says bad bios checksum and i have to reprogram my bios chip.

After i reprogramed my bios about 15 times, i got tired of doing it, so i switched in my backup board, a Gigabyte K7Triton and my Athlon 2400.
I reinstalled windows due to the fact that you almost always have to when switching motherboards. After reinstalling windows, i got the blue screen of death, you know the one that says somethings wrong with your hardware.
I switched my RAM and then i put my AlthonXp 2100, and nothing worked, still got the blue screen of death. I decided to reinstall windows again, so i did that, and then when i turned the computer on to get into windows, on my Gigabyte backup board, it said bad bios checksum. i didnt even go into bios or flash it on that board.

Im afraid that if i get another motherboard, something in that computer will corrupt the bios, again. I've already killed 2 boards with that hardware, i dont want to waist any more of my money.

Could it be my psu that killed the bioses on both the boards? if it is, could i take it back to where i baught it, hand them a receit listing all the things it killed and tell them to pay for it? (its only 1 month old with a 3yr warranty)

What else could it be?

Malpine Walis,
i did clear CMOS before i flashed the bios on my first dead board, the K8V, and about 5 times in the process of trying to fix it.

Ah, you are trying to troubleshoot bad hardware. That is one of the most frustrating things that we do. However, if you give in to the frustration, that is when you will make the mistakes that impede finding the correct result. Now is the time to stay cool as a moose and twice as hairy.

First thing first: I have an ASUS mobo (A7V266-E) as my backup and on that I cannot properly clear the BIOS w/o first disconnecting the battery (slide a piece of file card under the terminal). I am not saying that that is part of your problem but rather observing that on at least one product ASUS has set things up so that you would not get a good flash with the battery in place. Lord knows, I don't have to do that with my current ABIT but that proves nothing on its own. From what you have given us thus far, it could be a bad PSU but it could be a bad anything at all at this point. Then, it sounds like you might be changing parts in two and threes. That will also increase your frustration when you least need to be frustrated.

Do not do what follows while overclocked Not that you can clock at all right now but if you do get in, the first thing you do is drop back to stock or even lower.

If you have not returned everything already, try booting the K7 with one stick of RAM a graphics card and a floppy drive. That alone will not prove that the BIOS is really dead but it gives you a starting point to see where to go next.

Check for beep codes when you power up (you may have to do another flash first but try it w/o flashing and see what happens). If you get a code for bad RAM then changing a stick might get you one step further. If you get no drive attached (or whatever) check the cables and try again. Basically, at this point you are trying to get any usable response at all. If you can get it to post then try booting into DOS from the floppy drive.

If you get this far, then you need to do a clean install of windows on a hard drive that does not have anything important. Now comes the fun part. You get to add parts one at a time until something stops working. Usually, the first bad part that you add is the culprit but there are still no guarantees in life. When you hit the first bad part, take that out and see if you can get in with another similar item.

Try that much and let us know if you get anywhere.

to me, that sounds like a good plan, hope it works for ta bud!

Phil

ok, i tried disconnecting the battery, it didnt work.

the problem is, because i have to re flash my bios each time, it stays at defualt boot priority, floppy, hard drive, cd rom drive. i need to install windows, but it wont boot to the cd drive. Would it work to put my cd drive in the primary IDE on the motherboard?

I dont have any extra HDD's laying around, and the ones in there have everything i need on them, so it would be horrible if i lost them.

as for the K7, i havent tried anything on it yet because i put my K8V in the computer, and if i can figure anything out with that, i will put the K7 back in.

Thanks for your help guys.

okay i diddnt read all of the posts but if both of your motherboards are FUBAR now then you should check the way they are mounted. If it has big metal mounts that are attached to the case then they could be coming in contact with the traces on your board. Its a crazy idea but it just might be the problem.

Also try turning it on with nothing but the monitor plugged in (and a keyboard if it gripes at you for one).

Just remember to narrow things down and its always a good thing to have some spare hardware or to borrow some from a friend to do some troubleshooting (as in "okay with THIS it works but THIS it doesnt work so it must be THIS"). You will learn to get very good at troubleshooting.

As for the possibility of another piece of hardware corrupting the BIOS all the time, I think its POSSIBLE but not likely. If it is the case then that really sucks because every time you try with another mobo then you are screwed.

Good luck and keep in contact with us!

I think i know whats wrong with my K8V, theres a burn makr under the bios chip and it looks like some of the pins are burned.

durring all this, i emailed Asus asking for help. they told me to buy another new bios chip. I then went to their "help" desk on asus.com and submitted my problem. I told them about the burn mark, and they gave me THE EXACT SAME RESPONSE I GOT FROM THE EMAIL.

Im sending them a very angered email about all of this.
I have decided to not buy anything labeled Asus again and i encourage all of you to do the same.

Ok, thats 2 mobo makers down, Asus and ECS, no loss, still a few left....