Hi

I am running an ASRock KT7VT6 mobo with an AMD Athlon 2400XP CPU, 1 Gb RAM, a 40Gb HDD, a CD-RW, floppy, & a CD-R. The OS is Slackware 10 stand-alone with Net dial-up.

Having checked the mobo specs http://www.asrockamerica.com/Products/K7vt6.htm It would appear that I am well within the range of RAM and components, and I have not attempted any overclocking.

The problem is this:

1. On boot up, it will sometimes hang on NVRAM check requiring a hard reboot

2. If it gets beyond NVRAM check successfully, it then hangs on loading the OS.

2.1. I changed the boot sequence to /dev/floppy and rebooted. The problem persisted - i.e. the BIOS did not pass control to the floppy drive to boot from the floppy

2.2. I changed the boot sequence to CD ... ditto. For 2.1 - 2.3 beyond the AMIBIOS screen (which correctly identifies the hardware) there was no LILO text indicating the system was loading ... just the block of AMIBIOS text

2.3. The above attempts were punctuated by periodic freezes while within the BIOS setup screen requiring hard reboots

3. Occasionally when I boot up, the LED indicator on the box lights up, the machine makes a start up noise but no power goes through the system (i.e. monitor doesn't come on and drives don't seem to start).

Google has not yet yielded anything particularly illuminating but I will continue checking.

The diagnosis (groping in the dark here) is:

1. On the basis that the system won't load from the HDD, the floppy nor from the CD it appears that the one thing in common is that the BIOS is not passing control over to the devices - irrespective of the devices

2. On the basis that the BIOS setup screen freezes would seem to indicate that the problem is localised to the BIOS

3. On the grounds of this, I flashed the BIOS by removing the battery and then rebooting and resetting the time/date, etc but this didn't help either.

I am thinking that there is one of two problems here:

1. The BIOS is corrupted - although I couldn't really verify this because it does seem to run through its routine and recognises the hardware
2. The battery is dead or dying (although the mobo is maybe a year old or slightly older)
3. The motherboard got cooked somewhere along the line which may or may not have something to do with the reason I brought the system down: my CD-R was giving problems, refusing to play CDs to the end and then seizing up the system so that I would have to flush the mount device to play another CD. I don't know if the two are connected.

The questions are:

1. Has anyone else experienced this before and if so, what was the fix?
2. Would it best just to buy another mobo and rebuild the system from the new mobo up since I cannot even boot a floppy to run any BIOS fixing programs
3. Any other possibilities that I should explore.

Many thanks. I look forward to any ideas.

Cheers

Andy

An update:

I am going to double check the POST beeps and match those against the manual notes. I'll report back here on any info in case others are having a similar problem.

Have you recently put that ram into the box? Maybe try a different stick and see if that makes a difference.

Thanks for that Homey. One of the items on my checklist when I get home tonight is to reseat the RAM and check, and then remove one of the sticks and check and then the second (if necessary) and then if necessary replace these sticks with what was originally in my machine.
If it does turn out to be the RAM, why would this cause this kind of problem and how can I find out in a more rigorous manner which RAM will work with my mobo?

Cheers

You would need to look at the mother board specs to really see what kind of memory you can use. Mostly just find one that works and keep using that style.
The live cd from http://www.sysresccd.org/ has memtest on it, you select f2 at the boot prompt. That could be a problem running if the machine won't boot.
If you have friend in the computer business, they might put a fancy ( expensive ) memory tester to work for you.
On a small scale basis, people usually just switch and swap to isolate the problem.

Homey,
Thanks for your info. I did a methodical check on the RAM modules and was able to isolate a module that was screwing the works up, so have removed it. I'll see if I can exchange it tomorrow or replace it - either way.
I learned something useful from this concerning using the beep codes as a diagnostic, so that was really useful for longer term reference. I am now up and running, albeit on only 500MB of RAM, but no apparent system response loss.

Thanks for your help - I didn't realise that a RAM module could cause such havoc

All the best

Andy

P.S. The lesson kids is "Always check your RAM modules systematically"

Glad you got it going!
Bad ram if fairly common in my rounds.