Re: Need help with an ASUS K8S-LA in a Compaq SR1365CL

Peter Bogiatzidis wrote:
Hello,

I'm trying to fix a Compaq SR1365CL that has an OEM ASUS K8S-LA motherboard with an AMD Athlon 64 3300+ processor. The PC will boot (not completely) and I am able to enter BIOS, but it will never start Windows XP Home. I've even tried using a new SATA drive in order to install a fresh version of XP without any success.

In the process, I brought it to a local computer shop and was told that either the motherboard or BIOS is at fault. On this motherboard the BIOS can't be updated unless you can start Windows. So I'm not really sure if one or both are causing the problem.

I'm doing this as a favor for someone who can't afford to buy a new PC and was given this with the hope that they could have it fixed. I just want to help them get started using a PC. It would be nice if I could fix it for under $100. I should also mention that the person who passed the PC along did something that either broke it in the first place or tried to fix whatever had happened to it, but I'm not aware of what occurred or was done to it.

Searches haven't turned up much. I would like to reuse the processor that I mentioned above (socket 754) in order to keep the cost down. Does anyone here have any troubleshooting tips that might help to get this PC fixed? If I have to replace the motherboard, does anyone have any specific sources or know of one that I can substitute in its place? Does it make sense to stay with an ASUS motherboard or would any socket 754 board do? Also, do the chipsets matter?

Thanks in advance to those who post a reply to the group.

Peter.

If the BIOS chip is in a socket (PLCC square socket, could be brown in color),
then you can pull the BIOS chip and put in another. Badflash.com is one
company that can provide replacement BIOS chips. That is the repair procedure
if the original BIOS gets wiped out, and you cannot otherwise recover from
the problem.

The chip is in the lower right hand corner, with the yellow sticker. But I
cannot tell for sure, if there is a brown socket around the black chip.

http://h10025.www1.hp.com/ewfrf-JAVA/Doc/images/c00258619.jpg

The trick is, to take the HP sp26627.exe download file, and get the power_of_two
sized BIOS file from it. For example, the BIOS might be 524,288 bytes in size.
Now, I tried executing the sp26627.exe, but it doesn't seem to make a temporary
folder, so I cannot get at the BIOS file. That is what I'd be trying to do,
to get the necessary BIOS file to send to badflash.com.

You have other testing alternatives. You can boot a memtest86+ floppy
(memtest.org), for example, and give the machine a quick memory test.
You can use a hard drive manufacturer test diagnostic, which again might
boot from a floppy, and it can attempt to test the disk drive. This will
exercise parts of the hardware in the computer.

You can also try a Linux Live CD distro, and boot the computer with that.
I have a Knoppix CD (knopper.net) and a Ubuntu CD. Both of these do not
require installing any software. The CD will boot into Linux. In doing so,
the software will use many of the same resources as Windows would use.
Knoppix at least, shows progress messages on the screen, during the boot,
and you can glance at those, to get more hints about the nature of the
problem.

So, while you could attempt to get badflash.com to flash up a BIOS chip
for you, there are other, easier things you could try first. Maybe this
is a memory problem for example, and the program from memtest.org will
tell you that. The Linux distros are a 700MB download, so I would only
attempt to get a copy of Knoppix, if you are on broadband. (It usually
takes me an hour, late at night, to download Knoppix.) If on dialup,
I'm not sure the phone company will leave the phone circuit open long
enough to finish the download.

You could also try contacting HP and see if the BIOS flasher is available
in another form, like on a floppy. A 512KB raw BIOS, and a flasher program,
should easily fit on a floppy. Flashing from WinXP seems a dangerous
thing to do (but I didn't have the guts to continue with the sp26627.exe
program).

Just out of curiosity, did you try resetting the CMOS ? That is a
catchall procedure, for computers that don't behave right. The procedure
is at the bottom of this page, and after you are done, you'd have to
re-enter any custom settings in the BIOS. Not that I'd expect a lot
of custom things in an HP BIOS...

http://h10025.www1.hp.com/ewfrf/wc/genericDocument?docname=c00257657&cc=us&dlc=en&lc=en&jumpid=reg_R1002_USEN

Paul
.

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