I have a new homebuilt PC,
ECS Elitegroup C51GM-M Athlon64 and Nvidia chipset and the Award bios has not been flashed, and displays a 'checksum error' message, and offers F1 or del keypresses, del enters bios setup, but it never is able to save settings, and I get a blank screen after rebooting, so I must powerdown the PC, reposition the cmos clear jumper, replace it after 30 seconds, and restart, to again arrive at the checksum error screen, and pressing F1 allows the system to boot with bios defaults. One of which is 'boot order', hard-disk and CD boot after removeable devices, and I was able to install Suse 10.3 from a dvd drive that I hooked up to a usb hardisk interface. I tried a new cmos battery, tried leaving it out for 10 minutes, no luck. (Note that XP, and other main linux versions failed to install from the usb-dvd setup, only Suse worked.)
The bios defaults to 32 megs shared video memory, and a few other limiting
settings, but Suse is #4 on my list of preferred distros, so I need a functioning cmos-save. Could it be the cmos memory at fault? I read where it is bought dirt-cheap and untested by mobo mmakers. Any tips greatly appreciated. Can I make a bios flashing bootable CD in K3b, or is there a
windows bios flasher that might work from WINE, DosBox, or a clever commandline script? thanx for listening!

This problem could either be a bad CMOS chip or a bad battery. You can check if the battery is good with a voltmeter. Power off the system and unplug it, so that power is not coming from anywhere else, and then check the battery voltage while it is still in the motherboard (and supplying power to the CMOS chip). Most of them are around 3V if good, but check what your battery rating is. If the battery is good, then you probably have a bad CMOS chip. If it is socketed, all well and good; you'll be able to replace it without much trouble. Otherwise, you will have to find someone who knows how to use a soldering iron and related tools to remove and replace the chip.

Good luck.

Hi, thanks for replying, it looks like a socketed chip is on the mobo, near the cmos jumper, I'll find the makers website and try to verify...monitor was on crippled last legs too, so got a couple nice 17" at the Goodwill store for $7 each, now I can see what is what again, installed xp, and promptly renewed the venomous hatred for that waddling beast masquerading as an OS...besieged by popup bubbles, OS nagscreens, firewall, mal, spy and vi-ware warnings and messages ad-nauseum...dug out the old Directory Opus CD, to preserve sanity (flushing sound in background is Windoze Explorer circling the cyber drain...good riddance, hey did I mention that I don't like using
windoze?
Have a great week!