Re: p4p800-vm
- From: "gg" <GGsomeone@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Thu, 03 Aug 2006 23:14:53 GMT
Paul, thank you very much. much appreciated. the instruction is clear and
gave me the solutions for possible problems I may run into. Great work. I
will give that a try.
BTW it is refreshing to see great people like you esp. contrasted with
service shops that I gave the same problem description and they tried to get
diagnostic fee and telling me there are all sort of problems including other
problems from Ram and CPU...,etc. I don't mind diagnostic fee credit
towards repair as much as tales of problems obviously non related
"Paul" <nospam@xxxxxxxxxx> wrote in message
news:nospam-0208060251510001@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
In article <DnRzg.302383$iF6.250262@pd7tw2no>, "gg"
<GGsomeone@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
the pc got stuck at checking NVRAM
what can one do? I tried looking the manual. It mentioned about crash
free
bios recovery. but since the PC is stuck at checking NVRAM and displaying
a
few jittery horizontal lines across the LCD
http://www.ami.com/support/glossary.cfm
"NVRAM - Non-Volatile Random Access Memory
A type of memory that retains its contents when power is
turned off. One type of NVRAM is SRAM that is made non-volatile
by connecting it to a constant power source such as a battery.
Another type of NVRAM uses EEPROM chips to save its contents when
power is turned off. In this case, NVRAM is composed of a
combination of SRAM and EEPROM chips."
On a motherboard, these correspond to the CMOS battery
backed RAM, and the DMI/ESCD area in the flash chip.
The Southbridge chip on a motherboard, has a small chunk of
circuitry, that contains a real time clock and some RAM.
The circuitry is isolated in a "well" on the silicon die,
and is powered by the CMOS battery. When the computer is
unplugged, the CMOS battery continues to power this chunk
of circuitry, keeping the RAM contents alive.
The RAM in the CMOS well is too small for all necessary
data. Only critical settings are in there. The RAM might
be, like, 256 bytes of memory. It is designed for low
power consumption, so the CMOS battery can last for years.
When more space is needed, there are sections of the flash
chip, near the end, that can hold more info. When the computer
is booting, the BIOS enumerates the hardware, compares the
hardware detected, against a "cache" of info stored in the
flash chip from the last time. If the inventory has changed,
the NVRAM will be updated. You would see this, for example,
if you added a stick of RAM. On the very next boot, the
BIOS screen would mention "updating the NVRAM".
Now, when these messages show up, I don't really know which
store of info they are referring to. Things to try:
1) Reset the CMOS. Unplug the computer. Use the ClearRTC
jumper, following the instructions in the manual. When
finished, you will have to enter the BIOS and load
setup defaults, followed by re-entering any custom
settings. (On some motherboards, there are now options
to store your favorites, for instant recovery, but that
is not a common feature.)
2) Reset the NVRAM area (DMI/ESCD) in the flash chip.
One way to try to do this - unplug the computer, remove
all the RAM, start the computer (listen for the pitiful
beep pattern which says "I cannot find my RAM"), let it
beep a bit, then shut down and unplug, reinstall RAM,
power up and observe the BIOS screen. See if it says
"updating NVRAM", meaning it should be recording the
memory config in NVRAM.
Another way to do it, would be to re-flash the same version
of BIOS. If the whole BIOS image gets flashed to the BIOS
chip, it will overwrite the NVRAM, and the NVRAM will be
recalculated on the next boot. Since you are not able to
do anything right now, I'd try the first method.
3) If (2) is failing to get you anywhere, it is time for a
new BIOS chip. The BIOS chip has a limited lifespan in
terms of being erased and flashed. If the NVRAM is updated
each time the PC is booted, that is slowly chiselling
away at the max flashes. You can contact badflash.com and
get a replacement BIOS chip, pre-flashed with whatever
version of BIOS image you want. This would be in the
vicinity of $25 or so. The actual chip costs maybe $3
(when you could get them at mouser.com), so if you had
friends and tools, the material cost could be a lot less.
There are undoubtedly more precise answers for this problem,
but I doubt I will find them in Google. So the above is what
I would try.
HTH,
Paul
.
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