Re: Problem reinstalling Windows - think it's a hardware issue

taa800 wrote:
I have an Asus A8V board with an Athlon 64 3500 processor. I have one
1 gb Corsair value select memory. I have a Seasonic 380 watt power
supply and Sapphire Radeon 9600 video card. I just tried a new power
supply and it ran for longer than normal (about 5 minutes), but still
gave me a blue screen. I don't know how to change my memory
settings. I see things in my bios, but nothing obvious that would
make me feel safe to change the settings.

After I swapped out my psu and it blue screened, when I rebooted the
pc, it gave me a cmos checksum error, and nothing works now. If I
remember correctly, that means my battery is bad???
Again, any help is appreciated.


No, that doesn't mean your battery is bad.

First of all, *promise* me you won't flash the BIOS ? I can see
where this is headed, and before I can finish writing this post,
you'll probably flash the BIOS and completely fry it. That is
because the onscreen prompt will suggest that as a course of
action, and that is not a good idea when the computer is
unstable. To flash a BIOS, the computer should be perfectly
stable, as you cannot afford a crash in the middle of flashing
the BIOS. So now is not the time for that.

You're going to reset your CMOS. Either use your paper manual,
or preferably, download the A8V manual from here, because it
will be easier to read on the screen of your backup computer.

http://dlsvr03.asus.com/pub/ASUS/mb/socket939/a8v/e1994_a8v.pdf

The only thing critical at this time, is switch off the PSU
at the back, and then unplug the computer. Then follow the
procedure on PDF page 40 "Clear RTC RAM". (Unplugging the computer
before working inside, should become a habit. It guarantees
no voltages are present inside.)

When the Clear CMOS procedure is complete, the computer should
be returned to defaults. You should be able to enter the BIOS
and set up any custom settings. The most critical thing there,
is if you were using any special settings for your boot disk,
now would be the time to restore the settings.

To expose some useful settings in the BIOS, to work on the
original complaint, see PDF page 83 and set "AI Overclocking" [Manual].
When the manual setting is used, you'll have the opportunity
to set the Vdimm memory voltage. A good place to start, is 2.7V.
The normal value is 2.5V for DDR333 or slower type memory, or
2.6V for DDR400 (PC3200) memory. Sometimes, a little extra,
like 2.7V, will reduce infrequent errors, if they are present.
It is even possible, that the "Auto" setting for Vdimm, is
using 2.7V anyway.

Paul
.

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