[Sinfulwish]

-System Specs-
-Pentium 4 2.4ghz 800fsb
-2x 256mb HyperX PC3200
-Asus P4P8X motherboard
-ATI Radeon 9000 128mb
-and honestly, the rest of the components were scrapped from another PC.

Out of nowhere, last night my PC kept shutting down on me. I figured it was just overheating due the the summer heat and me leaving my PC on all day. So i left it alone for a few hours, then tried it again....same problem. It was running at around 78 degree F. I figured i'd try it again in the morning.

Woke up today, tried to hop online to surf the web and maybe play some counter-strike....bam, "Bad BIOS Checksum". It was looking for a floppy, no floppy w/ the bios, so i threw in the CD-Rom.....flashed.....told me to turn off power and restart it up. I did.....Bad BIOS Checksum, loaded the bios, flashed, told me to restart.....blah blah blah.

Well......i'm stuck in a major loop. I figured it may be bad RAM, so i got it replaced. Tried to clear my cmos, nothing. I've tried using boot floppies.....nothing. I've tried pretty much everything i can think of. But for some reason, i cannot get beyond that point.

I'm stuck. I need help. I tried calling tech support for asus (they have a division in my city), and they closed 15 minutes early I'm working tomorrow till 7pm, so earliest i can call again is Thursday.....and honestly, do not want to wait that long. PLEASE HELP ME!

If anyone would be willing, i'll even bite the charges and call someone, or someone can call me so i can speak with someone live who knows what the hell to do.

Ugh, someone please help.

 

[clintfan]

Well I haven't had that problem yet (knock on wood) but you already tried the CD, now I think it's time to try the floppy. But you will need to get on another PC where you can construct a boot floppy and put the two BIOS files on, unless you can do that from your own PC using using a boot floppy you already have, plus stuff off the CD. [Actually it was never clear to me whether it has to be a boot floppy, you might just be able to put the .ROM file on there and have it work)]

Please check out the middle part of Asus P4P800/P4C800 Series: How to Update BIOS, steps 1 through 4. Name the filename using what I gave for your particular mobo. Then put in the floppy, power up and hit Alt+F2 for recovery. Maybe you already tried this. It's my only idea.

I just cannot understand why people's BIOS gets bad checksums overnight. I didn't think anything had write capability into the BIOS, except for the setup program and the ROM, maybe the Windows system-time-clock facility. Not sure how all that stuff works. So it seems to me there's still another mobo bug out there that's causing this. It would be good to report it to Asus, if enough people call with similar problems maybe they'll look into it.

-clintfan

 

[Sinfulwish]

Problem is, it doesn't seem that i can boot at all from a floppy. It automatically goes straight to the Automatic Recovery thing where it tries to update BIOS automatically. I've tried booting from a floppy.....nothing. I'm just about to load the .rom file to floppy to see if i can get it to work.......anyone else have a suggestion??

 

[clintfan]

Oh, sorry, I didn't realize "P4P8X" was the name of yet another new mobo, I thought it was just an abbreviation for P4P800.

For the P4P8X use name P4P8X.ROM for recovery. For regular installs, use the AFUDOS tool to save and/or update the BIOS.

-clintfan

 

[Sinfulwish]

Ok, little update......After thinking i may still have bad ram....i removed one, leaving me with only 1 256mb stick. It worked. It loaded windows, everything was fine. Got home from work today, PC was frozen, wouldn't get out of a stuck screen saver. I rebooted the PC, and now I don't even get a display. The fan's turn on, hard drive spins.....monitor is on, but is blank. I have no clue what the heck is going on. This is really starting to piss me off.

The reason for this message.....RAM SUCKS! LoL sorry. couldn't resist.

 

[clintfan]

Hmmm... first, about the hang.
had you run Windows Update after you installed Windows? Lots of things could cause such a hang (though your dead PC afterwards, is suspicious). You could even have picked up a worm or virus during the day while you were away.

The latest BIOS for your mobo says nothing about this, but the latest one for the P4C800-E claims a fix for "Fix PS/2 keyboard and PS/2 mouse cant wake up the system from Suspend-to-RAM (S3) and Hibernate(S4)". Since they probably leverage BIOS from model to model, maybe yours has the same problem and they just haven't gotten around to producing an update for your model yet. No help I know, just a thought...

Next time the system's working, if you have any of that power-management stuff enabled in your BIOS Power- APM screen, mostly "Hard Disk Power Down Mode" I would set it to "Disabled".


Now, about the won't-boot.
Can you still boot from floppy and CD?

-clintfan

 

[Sinfulwish]

I can't do anything. I'm going to need to go out and pick up and cheap disposible PCI graphics card. Just to make sure its not my current card.

My monitor never turns goes "green". It just stays in the "hello, i'm still waiting for you to turn your PC on" mode.

Oh, and my mouse and keyboard are USB (wireless). I have tried to use a standard PS/2 keyboard also, still nothing. Only thing i can think of is to try and replace the graphics card now.....

I'm on hold at Asus.....i'll see if they have any suggestions

 

[bustagut]

Sounds like .......

A low cmos battery or a virus.

Good luck m8

 

[Scorp]

I have the P4C800 Deluxe and I got the bad bios thing in the beginning of boot up and also did freeze on the screensaver. (it was the My pictures screensaver)

Since then I have restored the BIOS, updated the BIOS (today) and changed the screensaver. I think it is the CMOS battery and will buy a new one this weekend. However I do not havea virus. SO I am assuming the battery is bad.