Abit ab9 pro - Out of ideas...

[fungus]

Hi, It's been fine for years then many problems. After a cmos error I changed the battery. Now it wont get past boot. F1 and Del dont seem to work. I cant get into the bios. I'm out of ideas, other than taking a hammer to it... Any advice would be great (and yes I know the hammer probably wont help, he he)

 

[jaquith]

My first best guess is a faulty PSU. Try another from a different PC or purchase another from a company like Best Buy with a good return policy.

 

[fungus]

Thanks for your reply Jaquith

My first best guess is a faulty PSU. Try another from a different PC or purchase another from a company like Best Buy with a good return policy.

Hmm, it seems to be powering the board,the led light up, the fans spin and the hard drives purr.
It diplays (on the motherboard);
C1 - Auto-detection of DRAM size, type and ECC
-Auto-detection of L2 cache (socket 7 or below)

C3 - Expand compressed BIOS code to DRAM

25 - Early PCI Initialization:
-Enumerate PCI bus number.
-Assign memory & I/O resource
-Search for a valid VGA device & VGA BIOS, and put it into C000:0

I'm not ashamed to say this means nothing to me. I have disconnected everything and tried to fault find, everything seems ok.

 

[jaquith]

Hmm...most PSUs have multiple rails so you can get partial power. It's one of the reasons I prefer single rail PSUs. A failing PSU can do all sorts of 'oddball' things, run for a while then freeze, multiple device failures, you name it BIOS errors.

The other is a faulty MOBO.

The other day a faulty PSU blew a MOBO, I've had and seen on too numerous to count occasions a bad PSU blow GPU(s), CPU, you name it. IN ALL cases fans, beeps, etc all going on.

Therefore, again, 'try' a different/new PSU. Also, try booting with 1 stick of RAM -- failure try the other stick.

 

[fungus]

Thanks again Jaquith, I'll try a new power supply. Thanks for your help.

 

[fungus]

I've just removed the second ram stick , and....... I'm in the bios!

Thankyou Jaquith. Job done

 

[jaquith]

Since your MOBO has Dual Channel memory, and if your RAM has a Lifetime Warranty send Both back for a -- new Matched-Set.

At least you know what the root cause is now.

 

[fungus]

I'm on it.... ;-)