P4P800 acting flakey bios checksum failure

[Stacey]

Running a P4P800 with 2 channel DDR400 ram not over clocked with a 2.8C P4
and an ATI 9800 pro running win98SE and mandrake 9.0.

It was running fine for the last couple of months, it's not my main machine,
use it mostly for games and video editing so it's not used 24/7 like my
other machine. Anyway the other night when I went to boot it up, it started
to power up but I got no video signal. Turned the power off and back on and
it booted up fine. I went upstairs to cook dinner, came back down and the
video was in "power saving" mode but wouldn't wake up. Did a cold boot
since the machine seemed locked and it gave me a "bios checksum failure"
and it started looking for a bios file. I didn't have a bios file on a
floppy to feed it, so shut it off and downloaded one on another machine.
When I went to restart it, it booted back up like nothing was wrong. I
thought maybe the bios was corupted so flashed it to the newest bios.
Seemed to be OK after that. Well tonight I was playing a game and it jumped
to the desktop and gave me some windows error message when I tried to
restart the game (can't recall, not blue screen but some linked file
missing?) Decided just to reboot and see what happens. I get the bios
checksum failure again, try a cold boot and get the weird no video again.
So give it about 20 seconds, power up and it boots up fine, except when
windows tries to boot, explorer.exe won't start, get a "you need to
reinstall windows" white box and the missing linked file error. So it looks
like I'm getting data corruption as well. Checked the temps in the bios
when I was poking around trying different power settings etc and they
looked fine ~ 40deg C.

I'm wondering if the board has flaked out since I keep getting these bios
checksum failures etc. Anyone ever seen something like this?

 

[kony]

Running a P4P800 with 2 channel DDR400 ram not over clocked with a 2.8C P4
and an ATI 9800 pro running win98SE and mandrake 9.0.

It was running fine for the last couple of months, it's not my main machine,
use it mostly for games and video editing so it's not used 24/7 like my
other machine. Anyway the other night when I went to boot it up, it started
to power up but I got no video signal. Turned the power off and back on and
it booted up fine.

At this point, I would suspect a failure of the power supply 5VSB circuit,
or problem with the main AC to the system. What power supply's in it?

I went upstairs to cook dinner, came back down and the
video was in "power saving" mode but wouldn't wake up.

Which power saving mode?
Did the system, in the past, *always* wake up properly from that mode or
has your use of the system been atypical enough that this might've been a
common, unrelated problem that went unnoticed?

Did a cold boot
since the machine seemed locked and it gave me a "bios checksum failure"
and it started looking for a bios file.

I'm not familiar with that particular board but that sounds odd... what
exactly do you mean by "started looking for a bios file"?
Did it not allow entering the bios setup and (re)saving the settings?

I didn't have a bios file on a
floppy to feed it, so shut it off and downloaded one on another machine.

Might've been just as well, with the stability questionable it might've
crashed during the flash.

When I went to restart it, it booted back up like nothing was wrong.

A power off/on like last time or RESET instead?

I thought maybe the bios was corupted so flashed it to the newest bios.
Seemed to be OK after that. Well tonight I was playing a game and it jumped
to the desktop and gave me some windows error message when I tried to
restart the game (can't recall, not blue screen but some linked file
missing?)

.... might be significant or might not... games do crash and "sometimes"
when a part of windows crashes it takes a reboot before that function
works properly again. I suppose the main issue here is your level of
confidence that the game and driver worked well enough together that the
odds are high enough to assume that [whatever the problem is], it's
causing this in additon to the other symptoms.

Decided just to reboot and see what happens. I get the bios
checksum failure again, try a cold boot and get the weird no video again.
So give it about 20 seconds, power up and it boots up fine, except when
windows tries to boot, explorer.exe won't start, get a "you need to
reinstall windows" white box and the missing linked file error. So it looks
like I'm getting data corruption as well.

Not necessarily data corruption, could be hardware problem (not related to
hard drive) but still, it's possible, might be necessary to reinstall
OS/Apps/etc eventually, depending on exactly what's happening.
You're getting errors in both Win98 & Mandrake? If so, do they seem
related in any way?

How about underclocking the system, will that reduce or eliminate any/all
problems within the OS?

Checked the temps in the bios
when I was poking around trying different power settings etc and they
looked fine ~ 40deg C.

I'm wondering if the board has flaked out since I keep getting these bios
checksum failures etc. Anyone ever seen something like this?

I presume you've already done some troubleshooting but you don't mention
what.

The basics would include:

Voltage reading of the system battery

Power supply voltage readings with a meter, including the 5VSB level

Verifying the cards (and BIOS EEPROM) are securely in the slots/sockets

Cables well-seated and intact

Fans - Did you check video card and power supply fans?

Careful examination of Motherboard, Video card, power supply, for failed
capacitors or other problem. Cursory examination of other cards.

Unplug external devices- PS/2 or USB, see if that increases odds of
correct POST or even eliminates the problem.

The good ole "strip to down to nothing then test, add items back one at a
time, test, test, test" method to see if anything stands out.

 

[kony]

Unplug external devices- PS/2 or USB, see if that increases odds of
correct POST or even eliminates the problem.

LOL, at the very least your game won't have a chance to crash without any
way to run it ;-)

 

[ElJerid]

Running a P4P800 with 2 channel DDR400 ram not over clocked with a 2.8C P4
and an ATI 9800 pro running win98SE and mandrake 9.0.

It was running fine for the last couple of months, it's not my main machine,
use it mostly for games and video editing so it's not used 24/7 like my
other machine. Anyway the other night when I went to boot it up, it started
to power up but I got no video signal. Turned the power off and back on and
it booted up fine.

At this point, I would suspect a failure of the power supply 5VSB circuit,
or problem with the main AC to the system. What power supply's in it?

I went upstairs to cook dinner, came back down and the
video was in "power saving" mode but wouldn't wake up.

Which power saving mode?
Did the system, in the past, *always* wake up properly from that mode or
has your use of the system been atypical enough that this might've been a
common, unrelated problem that went unnoticed?

Did a cold boot
since the machine seemed locked and it gave me a "bios checksum failure"
and it started looking for a bios file.

I'm not familiar with that particular board but that sounds odd... what
exactly do you mean by "started looking for a bios file"?
Did it not allow entering the bios setup and (re)saving the settings?

I didn't have a bios file on a
floppy to feed it, so shut it off and downloaded one on another machine.

Might've been just as well, with the stability questionable it might've
crashed during the flash.

When I went to restart it, it booted back up like nothing was wrong.

A power off/on like last time or RESET instead?

I thought maybe the bios was corupted so flashed it to the newest bios.
Seemed to be OK after that. Well tonight I was playing a game and it jumped
to the desktop and gave me some windows error message when I tried to
restart the game (can't recall, not blue screen but some linked file
missing?)

... might be significant or might not... games do crash and "sometimes"
when a part of windows crashes it takes a reboot before that function
works properly again. I suppose the main issue here is your level of
confidence that the game and driver worked well enough together that the
odds are high enough to assume that [whatever the problem is], it's
causing this in additon to the other symptoms.

Decided just to reboot and see what happens. I get the bios
checksum failure again, try a cold boot and get the weird no video again.
So give it about 20 seconds, power up and it boots up fine, except when
windows tries to boot, explorer.exe won't start, get a "you need to
reinstall windows" white box and the missing linked file error. So it looks
like I'm getting data corruption as well.

Not necessarily data corruption, could be hardware problem (not related to
hard drive) but still, it's possible, might be necessary to reinstall
OS/Apps/etc eventually, depending on exactly what's happening.
You're getting errors in both Win98 & Mandrake? If so, do they seem
related in any way?

How about underclocking the system, will that reduce or eliminate any/all
problems within the OS?

Checked the temps in the bios
when I was poking around trying different power settings etc and they
looked fine ~ 40deg C.

I'm wondering if the board has flaked out since I keep getting these bios
checksum failures etc. Anyone ever seen something like this?

I presume you've already done some troubleshooting but you don't mention
what.

The basics would include:

Voltage reading of the system battery

Power supply voltage readings with a meter, including the 5VSB level

Verifying the cards (and BIOS EEPROM) are securely in the slots/sockets

Cables well-seated and intact

Fans - Did you check video card and power supply fans?

Careful examination of Motherboard, Video card, power supply, for failed
capacitors or other problem. Cursory examination of other cards.

Unplug external devices- PS/2 or USB, see if that increases odds of
correct POST or even eliminates the problem.

The good ole "strip to down to nothing then test, add items back one at a
time, test, test, test" method to see if anything stands out.

And also check for boot virus !

 

[Stacey]

At this point, I would suspect a failure of the power supply 5VSB circuit,
or problem with the main AC to the system. What power supply's in it?

I'm starting to suspect that as well. The only thing that has me confused is
the bios checksum failure.

Which power saving mode?

Not suspend but just turning off the monitor.

Did the system, in the past, *always* wake up properly from that mode or
has your use of the system been atypical enough that this might've been a
common, unrelated problem that went unnoticed?

It has acted flakey a couple of times turning the monitor back on before.

I'm not familiar with that particular board but that sounds odd... what
exactly do you mean by "started looking for a bios file"?

The machine didn't even try to post, the screen said "bios checksum failure"
and started looking on the floppy and the CD for a bios "p4p800.rom" file
to repair the bios. I've never seen this before either.

Did it not allow entering the bios setup and (re)saving the settings?

Nope, it was like the bios was corrupted. Then after a shutdown/restart it
acted like nothing was wrong.

A power off/on like last time or RESET instead?

power off.

I thought maybe the bios was corupted so flashed it to the newest bios.
Seemed to be OK after that. Well tonight I was playing a game and it
jumped to the desktop and gave me some windows error message when I tried
to restart the game (can't recall, not blue screen but some linked file
missing?)

... might be significant or might not... games do crash and "sometimes"
when a part of windows crashes it takes a reboot before that function
works properly again. I suppose the main issue here is your level of
confidence that the game and driver worked well enough together that the
odds are high enough to assume that [whatever the problem is], it's
causing this in additon to the other symptoms.

I think it is hardware, it was acting real flakey. I played this game about
2 hours a week ago with no problems. This time is was very unstable playing
the same levels over again.

Not necessarily data corruption, could be hardware problem (not related to
hard drive) but still, it's possible, might be necessary to reinstall
OS/Apps/etc eventually.

This install of windows has only been used for probably 30 hours at most.
It's not really acting like a bad windows install, especially the no video
and bios problems. Thanx for the advice.

 

[Stacey]

Running a P4P800 with 2 channel DDR400 ram not over clocked with a 2.8C P4
and an ATI 9800 pro running win98SE and mandrake 9.0.

It was running fine for the last couple of months, it's not my main
machine, use it mostly for games and video editing so it's not used 24/7
like my other machine. Anyway the other night when I went to boot it up,
it started to power up but I got no video signal. Turned the power off and
back on and it booted up fine. I went upstairs to cook dinner, came back
down and the video was in "power saving" mode but wouldn't wake up. Did a
cold boot since the machine seemed locked and it gave me a "bios checksum
failure" and it started looking for a bios file.

Looks like it was the PSU. Replaced the generic 300W with a sparkle 400W and
it's been running fine. This PSU ran this system fine with a Ti4200 and a
2.4Ghz B chip, I guess the ATI 9800 proand 2.8C pushed it past it's limits?

 

[kony]

Looks like it was the PSU. Replaced the generic 300W with a sparkle 400W and
it's been running fine. This PSU ran this system fine with a Ti4200 and a
2.4Ghz B chip, I guess the ATI 9800 proand 2.8C pushed it past it's limits?

Oh, a generic... yep, I didn't realize that. The generic might've
failed anyway, might not have much to do with the further upgrades of the
system. It's good to hear it's working again.