Setting up the BIOS .

[Olgark]

I fear I have done some serious damage to the new pc i was building.
I got it up and working but the mobo would not recognise the athalon 3200 xp cpu that I had put in it. So I tinkered with the FSB a little and managed to get it working ok. But the system shut down now and again and so was unstable. So I lowered the settings a little and now I cant get the mobo to even load up in BIOS . It hangs there dead with the CMOS check sum LED on and sometimes the MOBO speaker beeps every 3 seconds. The screen on the monitor is blank also.

I have tried to clear the CMOS but this has not helpd. I cant even get it to DOS mode either.

The mobo in question is
LanParty NFII Ultra 400 FSB
Athalon + 3200 XP
PC300 512 meg DDR ram from cruicial memory
Blaster FX 5600
and running Win XP pro.


any ideas ?

I got a funny feeling I have blown up the cpu or mobo.

 

[(Shovel)]

You were overclocking I assume?

Have you tried the "reset to safe defaults" option within the BIOS itself?

Since you currently can't get into the BIOS to do that, can you tell us which BIOS you have? The "Beep Error" is a recognised way of reporting a hardware failure, but it varies depending on BIOS manufacturer and BIOS version. If you can find out that, then you'll be able to track down what is causing the error

 

[Olgark]

ok thank you for the quick response.

I am using the Award bios for the lanparty nfii ultra.

I cleared the cmos ealier tonight in the vain hopes that it would help and this time left it on the jumper for a good 10 mins. when i went back to try again the pc was up and running again . I found out that the memory was not getting registered on boot up and so locked the pc down.
I have now ramped up the bios so it says i have a athalon 3200 xp cpu which is whats in the machine and its running at 2.16 ghz now.

The system is a tab unstable still so I am now fine tunning it down to see if it helps.

 

[Sawtooth]

Check for an updated BIOS, tho you would think that wouldnt be a prob with a 400 fsb mobo . My Chaintech zenith ultra didnt recognise my Athlon 3000+ until I upgraded the Bios.

I always start from the safe defaults too before tweaking anything. If you cant get that stable then why bother imo.

 

[kameleon]

Updated bios for the DFI Lanparty NFII board here Make sure you follow the instructions http://www.dfi.com.tw

 

[Insane]

im certain theres something in the NFII Ultra manual regarding fiddling with the timings of memory or FSB then powering off could cause BIOS corruption in special circumstances.. but then i could be wrong (i only scanned the manual quickly)

i've found the DFI board is a bit grumpy when you fiddle with memory timings on crucial memory, you have to keep it conservative or the system can hard-lock on you with wrong timings input.

set your memory to standard/spd/conservative and see if it gives you any more problems in the long run.

on a co-incidental note, i believe DFI havnt given crucial memory a PASS status on the board regarding compatibility.. check the FAQ section of the lanparty NF II Ultra to see what i mean.

 

[Olgark]

ok thanks. things here have gone tits up for me. I dropped the CMOS battery on some pins at the bottom of the board and now I cant get it to work at all. All 4 LEDS are on and it wont even load up or activate the screen.

I have taken everything out to see if it was any of the ram sticks or GFX card but still the same results.

 

[Insane]

Originally posted by Olgark
All 4 LEDS are on and it wont even load up or activate the screen.

you see, thats a funny thing.. all 4 diagnostic LEDs when on indicate final initialisation.. which means the machine is booting up, do they come on instantaniously or do they go through the start-up order?

does the fans spin up and does the board make any beeps when you turn it on? or is it dead silent?

I presume when you refer to the "pins at the bottom of the board" your either referring to either the 3 firewire connectors under the PCI slot, the USB in the middle of that area, or the front connector pins. did it buckle or short any of them out? have a quick inspection just in case.

if all else fails, it might be worthwhile getting it RMA'ed to the company, see if they will take it back as its clearly faulty.. it was an unstable board already and it just seemingly died.. never heard of a motherboard dying because a cmos battery hit some pins ( reminder, both TOP and BOTTOM of the cmos battery must come into contact to throw current across the item)

have you read the two yellow pages included in the jumbo-manual called "addendum"?

just noticed ive got rev a+ of the board here.

 

[Olgark]

I have just recently found out that if the 4 LEDS come on before it boots up then the BIOS chip is fried.

PC World will not take any hardware back after 3 weeks and the office for DFI is in Holland. I either have to cut my looses and buy a new one or post it over to Holland .

The two yellow sheets just tell you how to enter and save the BIOS. Nothing about the problem I have got. uke:
its how I am feeling at the moment.

 

[Insane]

theres a simple way of doing this.

Go back to PC world with the broken component and the receipt, and ask to speak to a Manager of the store.

tell them that the product was faulty, and you wish for it to be replaced with a similar model or one of the same price. remember not to step back or agree for something else at this point, show you are determined to either get a replacement product or a FULL refund and that you are not scared of them.

you have a 12 months manufacturers warranty as standard on the board, and i think its in the customers right to get a product placed from the original retailers for free if the original is faulty or not of merchandisable quality.

if your unsatisfied, drop hints about dealing with going to Trading Standards regarding this, as they have sold you defective products which are not of merchandisable quality, normally makes the manager jump into place and do their best to help them, if not.. then dont bluff and do go to trading standards about how you have been dealt with.

my two pieces of yellow paper explain about having to reset the bios if you change processors with different FSBs, and about changing the FSB and powering down could loose your bios.

have you contacted DFI yet about it across the phone? im not certain but i think they refund you the cost of delivery if the board is faulty and pay for the return delivery themselves.

I hate PC World, i went and paid an extra £5 to get it from an on-line retailer who i could trust about after-sales service.

 

[Olgark]

ok a update I went to PC world and got them to change it no problem. So now I have a new mother board and hoping that the fault did not take out my cpu and ram.

 

[kameleon]

Here endeth the lesson. Don't buy anything from PC World. Go to a reputable hardware dealer in your area. Besides being cheaper than PC World, they will have decent technical staff, who know what they are talking about, have a reputation to uphold and generally don't employ 16 year old spotty school leavers.

 

[Olgark]

yeh lesson learnt . Thanks to all who helped me with suggestions here. I have been lucky to have had some expierenced souls to help me along the way and it looks like that the CPU and RAM along with the gfx card is ok.

Now that bit for me is a big weight off my shoulders.