Re: P4B-E-Bios settings lost

troop wrote:


The board is with the gf and I saw tonight what happens. There is a cold boot hang and she resets which brings up the F1, F2 message. She has been hitting F2 setting defaults which boots to the old drive as PM. Instead she will now hit F1 and then "save bios settings" and continue the boot. What remains a mystery is why the cold boot issue occurs--was it ever solved ? and why the boot hang brings up the F! F2 screen? In any event, I suppose I could disable the F1 option so the boot will not halt after a failed boot--no o/c here at all --and let the thing go forward. Is that advisable ?

Debugging a cold boot problem is not going to be easy.

I guess I tend to concentrate on the working system first,
and test whether everything is working well there.

You could use a PCI POST card, and see if it delivers a
particular code in each case it freezes. For example, this
one is displaying code 26, and you have to look those up,
to tell what BIOS routine is currently executing. This
is a long shot and not generally worth the money for the
purchase of a card ($25 to $100).

http://www.elstonsystems.com/prod/postcard30D.jpg

You could also try and test whether it is thermally related,
or time related. For example, if you shut down the computer
in Windows. Wait 30 seconds. Then press the power switch on the
front to start the computer again. Does it fail to boot in that
case ?

Now, if you waited two hours with the computer off, does it
fail to start then ?

There was one motherboard, where electrical leakage coming
down the monitor cable, caused the startup sequence of the
board power circuit to fail to work properly. Someone discovered,
that unplugging the video connector, allowed the computer to start
properly each time. Then that user would plug the video back in.

There have been other motherboards, where the problem seems to be
temperature related. Some people might notice more problems with
their computer, in winter than in summer.

If you have a way of bypassing the problem, with minimum
grief to the owner, that is better than nothing.

Is the BIOS up to date ? Have you checked the history of
the board, to see if a particular BIOS caused problems ?

There are no posts for that board on the VIP forum. Weird.
http://vip.asus.com/forum/topic.aspx?board_id=1&model=P4B-E&SLanguage=en-us

I have the P4B (retired), and never had a problem with it
to speak of. This is the forum for that one. This would be
very similar to the P4B-E, in terms of vintage and chipset.

http://vip.asus.com/forum/topic.aspx?board_id=1&model=P4B&SLanguage=en-us

The BIOS notes for P4B-E are here.

http://support.asus.com.tw/download/download.aspx?SLanguage=en-us&model=p4b-e

1008.003 latest
1007 Update P4 CPU Microcode
1006 Fix the SD device can not work under Windows system.
Fix the system hanged with new CPU when the multiple ratio is changed.
1005 Support new P4 CPU whose multiple ratio is over 25X.
Add the new P4 CPUID=F27 microcode update.
Add the support of new version B of Winbond W83L518.
Add IDE LBA 48 bit addressing mode support.
Fix the system can not boot from some Linux bootable floppy disk.
Fix the cache size will be detected incorrectly with P4 Celeron CPU.
Patch that the system can not enter some Aopen VGA BIOS setup menu.
Fix AC Power Loss Restart function can not work.
1004 Add the support of P4 Celeron CPU and new microcode update.
Fix the system can not boot with some i960 cache controller.
1003 Add the new CPU microcode update.
Fix that the system can not boot in the jumper mode when CMOS is cleared.
1002 Add new CPU microcode update to support Intel Northwood 2.0GHz/2.2GHz CPU.
Fix the system can not boot in the jumper mode after clearing CMOS.

Is the motherboard part of a home built system ? Or is the motherboard
one found in a pre-built computer (Dell, HP, Acer etc) ? You should be
careful where you get BIOS updates, if the machine is pre-built.

Is the motherboard currently set up in "Jumper" mode or "JumperFree"
mode. There is a dipswitch on PDF page 41 of the manual ("CPU Frequency Selection"),
that controls it. For example, on my P4B, the switch would be set to
100/33 (since the processor is FSB400, and 400/4=100MHz inpuc clock, and
PCI bus is 33MHz normally). My multiplier would be 18x, since the processor
is a P4 1.8GHz. Since the multiplier is locked on the processor, I don't
have to worry about the switch setting for it. But the frequency controls
would work. You could try putting the board in "Jumper" mode, using the correct
values for the processor at stock speed. Being in Jumper mode,
removed the ability of the BIOS to crash in the process of setting
up the JumperFree BIOS settings. It might help you to be in Jumper mode.
You can try that, before considering a BIOS change.

http://dlcdnet.asus.com/pub/ASUS/mb/sock478/p4b-e/p4be-100.pdf

Paul
.

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