Emergency!! A7N8X stopped booting!!!

[PimpJack]

Today i was reading a post in here about people running their 2600+ at 250 fsb on the epox boards. They also mentioned that their corsair ram was not eager to run at rated speeds or above. Since my asus became unstable at sync mode past 196fsb i tried to run at 211fsb and 80%ram (~170) Well the first restart the bios changes did failed so i hit reste and windows failed. I then went into bios to change from agressive cpu to optimal and when i hit sav and exit the comp froze. After that i haven't gotten a single atempt at boot. The sys only turns on the PSU and all devices and thats it!!!!!! Don't tell me i blew away a $300 cpu!!. Please give me pointers and things i can do. I tried clear cmos multiple times of course. And i'm all out of ideas.

Could it be that since the comp froze during saving bios, the bios became corrupt and needs to be flashed externally some how?

[mdzcpa]

I hate to say this but your BIOS is fubar'd and the mobo is likely dead and in need of RMA or a new BIOS chip.

Unfortunately, there seems to be a good number of reports of dead A7N8X mobos due to BIOS freeze ups after making changes and trying to save and exit. In fact, the number of reports has really grown in the last week or so.

I had one do the same thing a few days ago so I RMA'd it back to NewEgg. After making a simple BIOS change the BIOS froze up. On reboot the board was totally dead. No amount of clearing the CMOS helped. Nor did stripping down the system and rebulding it. Trying to flash from a floppy and the boot block was useless.

There is definitely something quirky about the BIOS on these boards which cause save and exit problems which corrupt the BIOS.

For more info, Here is an AMDMB thread about the dead A7N8X problems.

[PimpJack]

thanx for the great info. How do i rma a board loaded with dialectric grease? HEHEH is that voiding the warranty? Also where can bios chips be obtained?

Thanx =) and =( lol

Edit: What would be a better alternative to the asus mobo. Still looking at nf2 ofcourse. Is the abit ever going to have mounting holes? they are a must to me.

Also can a cpu die because of a high clock? I believe its only overvolting and high temps that can kill a cpu!

[mdzcpa]

I was faced with the same thing, but I managed to clean it up pretty good. Took a little time but I got all the dielectric grease out of the socket with q-tips.

I ended up RAMing hoping to 1) get another later revision board, and 2) not mess around trying to find a BIOS chip. The mobo is new and the BIOS chips are hard to find right now.

Good Luck I'll let you know how my new A7N8X does.

[gntlmn]

You may find a set of pins on the motherboard that will clear the CMOS. You will have to short those. They will not be pins like you would use with a Jumper. I had my motherboard do that except I received alternating beep sounding like an english police car. For me though I cleared the CMOS and got a screen but other things were bad so I received an RMA and sent it back.

[QuadDamage]

some bad news, cos i was hoping my board is still alive same thing happened to me. i was playing around with multiplier and it froze on "save and exit y/n" screen... i thought it's just the cpu being stressed to much or something. i let it cool down a bit and hit power on button - nothing. no, beeps, no nothing. well, psu powers all the fans and such, but no post. sounds friggin weird.

[PimpJack]

I noticed the cpu is not getting any juice as the temps are not rising (i have a probe on the chip). Can i safely rule out the cpu as the culprit. I believe i should be getting beeping errors if that is the problem. I took out ram and no beeps.

[PimpJack]

getting an Epox now... ASUS

[mdzcpa]

I should have my A7N8X RMA from newegg by next Tues. It shipped today. I'll try it next week and post if it does any better. If the BIOS frys again the board will soar like a frisbee...that's one thing for sure.

[mikedick6969]

I run 152x11.5, and mem @133%/200mhz, and no prob yet. You guys are really scaring me, and making me doubt my choice of boards.LOL! Keeping my fingers and toes crossed!

[mdzcpa]

Originally posted by MickeyMouse
BTW where you guys changing around the async memory options when all this happened? say 200mhz fsb with 80% ddr or something along that line..

Nope...I was changing the FSB from 194 to 193...that was it. Granted, I was into the BIOS a lot (aren't we all), but a simple BIOS change like that shouldn't have caused a dead BIOS chip.

The Save and Exit routine seemed a bit quirky from the beginning. Sometimes when trying to save it would just freeze with a garbled BIOS screen. Eventually it did this one last time and then was dead.

Overall I still think the A7N8X is a great mobo. Perfect for the average joe who just sets it up and lets it run. Very fast and smooth. But, for tweakers who are constantly tinkering...the mobo makes me nervous.

[PimpJack]

Originally posted by MickeyMouse
BTW where you guys changing around the async memory options when all this happened? say 200mhz fsb with 80% ddr or something along that line..

I was reading about people doing high fsb here on the nf2 boards so i figured my ram might be holding me back from 200fsb. I jacked up the fsb to 211 and 12.5x and my mem was at 80% or so. It first booted up at 2.6ghz!!!! and windows crapped out. Didi that 2x and then i decided to change from agressive to optimal cpu. when i hit save BOOM nothing.

So yess i was running mem lower than cpu. By the way when i first got the board i tried 166/200 fsb and although everything seemed normal sisoft didn't notice the change so i believe my mem was still at 166. Good board but maybe some revisions will help it out some. i got it the first day newegg set the nf2 boards for sale.

[detrItus]

OK well heres another unhappy ASUS story in progress:

I just took delivery of two A7N8X's that (are)(were) slated to go to office systems.
I threw them together yesterday with no problem and they both booted to the boot screen with XP1700+'s and 256MB DDR and ABIT SILURO GF4 MX's.

TITS! I thought.
So I added the WD 40 gig IDE's, floppys and BENQ CD/RWs and rebooted system 1.
I hit DEL to go to the BIOS and it takes like 45 seconds for the screen to appear! I'm thinkin WTF? But I set the CPU multis etc and save and exit...i guess it was a quirk.
THEN:
The thing takes 3 minutes (literally) to autodetect the IDE and CDrom drives.
It detected them both properly BTW, just took a hell of a long time.

By this time I was pretty spooked.

I insert a CD for the XP PRO install and it takes 10 minutes to tell me there is no detected IDE drive.
I reboot system 1 with a boot floppy to manually FDISK, thinking I can work around it.
The thing takes 7 minutes to boot from a floppy to the A: prompt.

The kicker that compunds my pain:
System 2 proceeds to act the SAME WAY.

I am utterly spooked at this time... RMA looming and i'm bummed.

anyone else havin glacial POST and boot times?

At this point I can't get FDISK to proceed.
I get "error writing to fixed drive".
Even though the drive is properly detected and hummming right along.

[mdzcpa]

A few tips that might help.

Make sure the HDs jumpers are set to cable select. Also, disable the serial ATA via the jumper if you're not going to be using it.

[detrItus]

dude!!

you pointed me right to it!

I cleared CMOS and set BOTH IDE devices to CSEL.
Then I disabled all the unused MB resources, LAN, audio..ect for now.

I had disabled the SATA previously.

Result:
one system booted perfectly and fell right through to format in XP Pro.

Thanks man...
System 2 to follow.

[mdzcpa]

Glad I could help

[detrItus]

well I got one system going...

System 2 has stopped booting altogether tho.
I'm gonna tear it down and retry everthing again.

I will NOT buy ASUS again tho.
This has been the most difficult board I've worked with yet.

Even more touchy than the POS California Graphics super7 board
that gave me fits.
I will wait a while to see what shakes out before I buy a NF2 system for myself.

I keep getting "unable to copy file" errors while XP trys to install.
I have tried 3 different CD drives and countless attempts at installing have failed.
Now no boot at all...

I DID flash the BIOS to 1001G, it flashed fine with no errors.
BAH!
10 hours and counting wasted.


UPDATE:: system 2 had a bad memory module...
They are both smOOth as silk now and all my headaches were caused by an intemittant fault in the DIMM.
Caveat: get the BEST memory for this beast....

Disregard my above statement about ASUS posted in frustration.
YThanks again for the help.

[CCW]

Hi,

This is to be my next board...although Im not too sure now...the only thing I will need to go into the bios for is to change the AGP to 4x from 8x as I only have an 8x card however is it gonna cause problems when I save and exit? Card: GeForce 4 MX440 running stock clock (270/400)

Craig

[RickCain]

I feel your pains guys. I went through three Asus Nforce2 boards before simply giving up on Asus. The last board I got was the NF7-S and it has not failed me once. Now if Abit ships the new boards with the holes around the CPU I can watercool it!

[BTank]

a few ppl have reported a sensitivity when saving the bios. waiting more than 3 seconds at the, "Y" to save Bios? b4 hitting Enter was the fix.