resurrection20

Specs:
AMD 3200+
Asus A7v880 Mainboard
2X512 Corsair XMS Pro series DDR 400
Radeon 9800 Pro
IDE Maxtor Storage Drive
2X Sata 1 Raptor I's in Raid 0 (Install drive)
Soundblaster Audigy 2 Value
Asus DVD-ROM/CD-ROM Combo Drive
Antec Truepower 550 Watt PSU.
(Can go deeper if need be).

I recently solved a problem in the BIOS section of these forums, but now I have a new issue. After spending two days getting my PC working, I hooked everything up and flicked the power and for some reason one of my fan cords lit on fire, I slammed off the power and blew out the fire, removed the offending fan/wires and turned it on again, no worries!
Or so I thought.
Now when I boot, it says my CMOS settings are wrong and asks me enter them or accept the defaults and move on.
When I go to enter my BIOS settings and restart my PC simply turns off and when I turn it back on no BIOS settings have been changed.
It's making it kind of annoying, since if I accept defaults it boots to my IDE drive which is just storage and not my RAID...I can get it to boot if I remove my IDE drive, but...I'd be much happier tweaking my settings and making use of all my hard drives!
Any help would be appreciated,
-Res

MaverickUK

Jesus, it lit on fire?!

Try reset the CMOS and then boot-up, set your time and date in Windows and then restart the computer and enter BIOS - are the time and date current? If so, restart again and enter your BIOS, set your settings as you want and continue to boot up - see what happens, are they saved?

If not, there could be a case of a corrupt BIOS. If the date and time are current as above then this would rule out a dead battery as a possible cause.

Nick.

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resurrection20

Yes, my PC looked like Trogdor for a split second, before it ate all plastic off the fan's wires and went out.

Yes, BIOS holds my date/time settings that I set in Windows.
The only way I can boot into anything is if I hit "load setup defaults and continue" when I receive the error that my CMOS settings are bad.
In order for my PC to change BIOS settings it reboots, I'm assuming then after rebooting it loads the new settings? When my PC reboots it simply turns off.
And after I turn it back on again, low and behold, nothing is set.
However if I set date/time in Windows, I can reboot from windows until doomsday with no problems!
Only when I try to set new BIOS settings does my PC shut off.

Also, I tried out some newer 3D games to push my power output...Well, not newer.
With my current BIOS settings my PC is at 1.1 Ghz instead of 2.2 and my FSB is at 100 instead of 200...and my RAM timings are all way up, lol.
But I did manage to play Warcraft III and Counterstrike: Source for about six hours last night, and then shutdown my PC and started it up today and no problems...

It's either BIOS/PSU, but I don't have a spare board/PSU and yeah...*sighs*
I miss running things at their rated speeds. v_v

dai

replace the cmos battery

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resurrection20

I put in a 400 watt Raidmax PSU I borrowed from a friend with only the VGA, mainboard, and a keyboard hooked up. Same deal. Shuts off instead of restarting and setting BIOS.

So...my friend suggested that my CPU might not have its heatsink properly seated on it...and since I just installed the Heatsink...do you think that'd be worth a look? I've tried two other CMOS batteries that I know worked in other compys. I took one of my friend's working gaming rig, and another from an older P3 I had lying around, neither changed the scenario.

I really am at a loss, and I have no idea if this thread even belongs here anymore!

I'd be happy to consider speculation as this point, lol.

Doby

When you replaced the battery was the computer unplugged from the wall outlet?

The reason I ask is because normally removing a battery will clear the bios settings but if the computer was plugged into the wall outlet maybe you did not get a good clear.

I would unplug it remove the battery, move the clear cmos jumper on the motherboard, all this for 10 minutes. Now replace ever thing back for normal operation and try and set up your bios again.

If that don't work my guess would be corrupted bios

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Doby

One other question, are you sure this is a 3200 processor and not a 3000, almost sounds like your setting the fsb to high.

Try setting the fsb to 166 and a multiplier of 13 this will give you 2.1G
Thats the setup for a 3000+ barton

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speedster123

Follow Doby's leed
Only some of the Barton 3000's are 400 FSB

Inspect the caps on the mainboard for any bulged or leaking units.

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resurrection20

*solved*
Yes, it's a 3200+.
But I couldn't change any settings.
My friend suggested that I reseat the CPU Cooler...
When I took it off I noticed that the CPU Cooler's Copper Contacts were only half-touching the CPU Core...the other half of the CPU was touching the cheap Heatsink material...so I put on some grease, put it back on the other way, took it off to check and low and behold the CPU core was right in the middle of the copper part of the heatsink...then I cleaned off both the CPU core and HSF, reapplied my arctic silver 5, and booted up.
And...my BIOS settings saved. I was able to change them.
It was like magic and london bells and monkeys and biscuits and OMG hax.
I changed every setting to just the way I liked it and rebooted, except I forgot to do date/time. I recieved the two beeps "error, CMOS date/time not set" and then my PC auto-turned off. I was terrified. I turned it back on and all my settings had been saved and loaded and it gave me no error beeps...it quietly booted into windows.
I loaded up CPU-Z to check my settings...they were all exactly where I wanted them to be!
I rejoiced!
I haven't touched my BIOS, I set my date/time from inside windows.
Frankly, I'm scared to touch anything.
I'm just happy to be gaming again!
I appreciate all your input/time, and I'd like to give back to the community, so, I was figuring on hanging around for awhile, offering my two cents here and there at problems.

-Res

Doby

Great job, glad you got it fixed!

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