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bios recovery ? please...

Forum Motherboards & Memory : General Motherboard - bios recovery ? please...

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gren   06-21-2002 at 08:12:48 AM

Hello !
I am new here at Tom's . and I have a serious problem with my new computer - I need your help.
First , I am not very experienced with computers so my story might not be very accurate from a technical point of view.
I bought a system a few days ago . A friend told me something like "you should update your BIOS , check on Gigabyte website for a new version". I did so , following the instructions in the user's manual : downloaded the BIOS flash utility , unzipped it on a bootable floppy , started the system from the diskette , run the utility , restarted the system after BIOS programming was completed. That was the last thing I was able to do on my computer , because now it doesn't boot.

System description :
CPU : Athlon XP 1700+
MB : Gigabyte 7VTXE+ (KT266A , DualBIOS)
RAM : 256 MB DDR (KingMax , PC2100)
Other :
- VGA : Gigabyte Maya (Radeon 7500LE , 64 MB) ,
- HDD Seagate Barracuda 40GB
- CD-ROM (Asus) , CD-RW (LG)
- OS : Windows XP (strangely , the diskette I created boots to Windows ME)

Failure description :
At power on , the systems halts with the following screen :

*******************************************************
American Released : 03/13/2002
Megatrends Amibios (C) 1999 American Megatrends Inc.

7VTX F8
Check System Health OK,
AMD Athlon XP 1700+
Checking NVRAM .. No NVRAM
262144 KB OK

WAIT....

CMOS settings wrong

Press F1 to run SETUP
Press F2 to load default values and continue
******************************************************
It also beeps (2 short beeps , 1 sec. pause , 1 short beep)

At this point , if I press :
- F1 : the screen goes completely blank and the system stops dead
- F2 : the screen goes blank for a second , displays the AMI copyright line then freezes
- DEL : nothing happens

I would like to know if there is something I can do to get my computer working (aside from buying a new motherboard)


Thank you very much
Andrei
gren@xnet.ro

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Bronze Motherboards badge o1die   06-21-2002 at 11:47:51 AM
- 0 +

I would recommend using the cmos jumper for a few seconds, but your board may not have one. If it does, enable the cmos jumper for a few seconds with the power supply unplugged and return to normal operating position. Then try rebooting using F1 or F2 again. If it won't post, I would rma the board and get a new one.

Reply to o1die
jlanka   06-21-2002 at 01:41:00 PM
- 0 +

you've got dual BIOS on that board - just switch to the other chip. The instructions are in the manual.

<i>It's always the one thing you never suspected.</i>

Reply to jlanka
gren   06-21-2002 at 07:17:12 PM
- 0 +

I figured out how to switch to the BackupBIOS - now it works.

Lots of thanks to those who took their time to try and help me ...

NOTE1 : yes , I am a moron : I flashed the BIOS for the wrong board : 7VTX instead of 7VTXE+.

NOTE2 :
The user's manual *does not* specify a way to do this ; I found the relevant info on a tech forum. The book only says that BackupBIOS activates automatically (which it obviously doesn't) when the MainBIOS is corrupted
Besides , the Gigabyte tech support seems to be clueless too : their reply to my request was something about taking out the CMOS battery. The procedure I used was simply to hold down the END key while power on - this switches the boot bios ; power off and on again , then use the Q-flash utility to copy the backupBIOS to mainBIOS.

Reply to gren
jihiggs   06-21-2002 at 08:01:06 PM
- 0 +

slap your freind, if it aint broke dont fix it goes for bios especialy.

how do you shoot the devil in the back? what happens if you miss? -verbal

Reply to jihiggs
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