NF7 won't boot

Dr Bolouswki

Hi Sportsfans

so I just built a system for me housemate with an NF7 mainboard, 512MB DDR400, FX5600 with 256MB (piece of crap) and an AMD 2500...

So it booted up nice and sweet first time - in we go to the BIOS and changed some small settings (just boot sequences, disabled floppy etc) all perfectly fine and didn't touch any overclocking features...

Anyway, saved and exited and then as I was gonna move the box underneath the table I powered off and this big red warning comes up on screen...

'Do not attempt to power off machine while BIOS is updating'

....and then the machine powered off!!

So anyway the machine wont boot. I reset the CMOS jumper - still won't boot. Tried holding down 'insert' while powering on - still no boot. Don't even get no beep codes or nothing... all that's different is that a very bright red LED is illuminated beside the battery even when the PC is powered off - a little green LED comes on when system is powered up but still nothing coming up on screen...

Here is a photo of what I see near the CMOS jumper and Battery...


I currently have the motherboard battery taken out in the hope that this will reset the BIOS... while I'm waiting, anyone got an NF7 and anyone got any ideas?

I'm doubting this is fatal...

Stephen

I don't know if your board is knackered or not, but the red light is normal for this board whilst its connected to the mains and switched on at the back.

Woden

yeah red light is normal when connected to the mains, my green light is on now but i don't know what that means tbh

Giblet

The lights are to do with LAN connections.

Anyway, did you try reseating everything. Your connector to the power button might of fell out or something. Same happened to me and I was going mad, and then I realised the wire was loose going to the power button!!!

Col_Loki

AFAIK the red light has to do with compatible graphics cards that are installed (not powered on red / green when power going to it) ...... although i might have been dreaming

Very strange that it booted fine and now it wont. Normally unpluggin the power cord for a few mins does the trick or the CMOS jumper....... battery is definetly the next step.

Is your PC booting at all? Ie is it starting and mabye your screen isint re-acting?

Dr Bolouswki

I feel like weeping...

system powers up no bother, fans all go on etc - but I just am not getting any beep codes etc etc - no signal to the screen... nada...

just put the battery back in after leaving it out for 3 hours and still the same...

I'm gonna try reseating everything and using a different vid card but jaysus this is freaking me out....

I mean - all I did was power off AFTER I had exited the BIOS and now this???

The BIOS features, for the 2 minutes I was in there, looked reeeaaalllllll tasty, but I'm begininning to doubt if these NF7's are too robust atall atall...

keep ideas coming - much appreciated....

Dr Bolouswki

Ok - still nothing...

here's what I changed in the BIOS

Disabled all floppy options

set CPU auto power off to 65C

set CPU alarm to 60C

set boot sequence to HDD first CDROM second

saved and exit

good god this is infuriating.....

Col_Loki

Is it staying powered on? Is there a green light comming on when you boot up? Are you sure your screen connection isint loose?

Give as much detail as you can about whats going on. The LED should tell you if the GFX card is ok or not (ie it goes green if thats not a problem), you generally get beeps if theres a CPU / Ram problem, if its a heatsink problem the PC will power on for a couple of seconds and then shut down (some wierd case), .........

Check your screen, PC might be booting fine and the screen isint picking up on it.......

Dr Bolouswki

Ok

checked other monitor - still the same

red light is on the board when system is plugged in (normal)

hit power switch and green led comes on (normal) red LED stays on (normal?) and all system fans, DVD drive, CPU fan etc come on (normal)

... nothing happens... no POST beep... just humming fans everything seeming as normal but.... nothing happening... no output to screen... my next step is trying another VID card...

I mean - I can't even flash the BIOS from a floppy as the machine won't even POST...

:mad: :dunno:

Col_Loki

Everything sounds totally normal there, im thinkin the same as you are.... very strange. I have had a screen that stayed in sleep mode while the computer booted up fine without problems........

Sir Random

Were you using a windows flash utility?
Some mobo CDs have an autoflash utility that will update the BIOS from a .bin file on the CD while rebooting. If this process is interrupted, the BIOS is wiped. It can be cured though, by hot swapping the BIOS chip from another identical board.

Big Chief

arent there corresponding numbers on the motherboard? check the manual is how i found out my problem, when the board sticks to one number (think mine came up as 79 it stuck on, and a quick check of the manual showed that this corresponded to the hdd's...) after a play about with the ide cables i got to the root of the problem that one of my ide cables was knackered and board booted up fine afterwards..

Big Chief

ok nevermind this says NF7 not AN7 like the board i have...

apologies..

have you tried booting up with the bare minimum and seeing if anything comes up? graphics card and hdd only and put one bit on at a time separately..

could also try seating the board outside of the case to see if its been shorted if all else fails

Woden

big chief are you thinking of a led numbering system that you can just look up and it tells you the problem? the nf7 doesn't have this facility but i did see it on a new motherboard somewhere recently and thought it was a good idea. perhaps you are referring to something else though?

data

[edit] damn your swift correction big chief [/edit]

Dr Bolouswki

not using any flash - simply powered on after first build, disabled floppy in BIOS, set CPU alarm to 65C (system was running at 38C) and exited... powered off machine about 5 seconds AFTER exiting BIOS and got a red flash screen that warned 'Do not power off while BIOS is updating' then the machine powered off and now all I have is this...

Man, beating myself up over not having the patience to just let it reboot itself after coming out of the bios!

All comments much appreciated - I'm gonna crack this - there's NO WAY that this problem is fatal....

Stephen

it sounds like you powered it off whilst it was still saving the changes you made to the bios.

like someone else said, hot-swapping a working bios chip might be your only solution.

Dr Bolouswki

I thought these sort of problems would be easily solved by jumping the BIOS???

I mean - hot swapping seems like such a huge risk - I'd just RMA the board and get a replacement rather than get into hotswapping a chip....

Stephen

Jumpering the bios just resets the settings to their default configuration. If its been corrupted due to power loss whilst writing or whatever, it can't do anything about that.

madboy

I've got the same board and have screwed the bios setting many times anytime it wouldn't boot i just reset the cmos or removed the battery and unplugged it, or just power down and back up and it resets to last settings.believe me this board has takin a beating and comes back for more but I never powered off when it was saving the Bios.If none of these work it doesn't look good

cheradenine

I'm actually typing now from a pc with the same board as you i've just put together, I got the same red warning sign you did when I first booted up and entered the bios, I didn't power off like you though, in my case the pc was just rebooting during the red screen so maybe you interrupted the process. I do know though that these abit boards have very touchy bios's, a friend of mine managed to use the windows flash tool to flash the wrong bios, we tried everything, taking out the battery, pci 3d card, resetting bios etc, in the end he had to order a blank bios chip from somone who flashed the bios he needed onto it. It was fairly cheap though as I recall.

I've never really looked at the bios chip itself on this board but I guess if you could find an old board with the same physical chip you could flash the bios the abit uses with a floppy and stick that in your board as an alternative.

CivilServant

Have you tried holding down the insert key before powering up your system? This will reset the bios thru the software. Definitely try setting the bios jumpers for at least 60 seconds, then put it back to normal. Do this 3 times before moving on, or RMAing.

Dr Bolouswki

yep - looks like an RMA to me...

damn

Dr Bolouswki

Out of interest (I'm defintiely gonna RMA the board)

How would one go about hotswapping a BIOS chip? Does it involve soldering etc? Is it very risky?

I've got a feeling that I don't even want to THINK about trying it....

I suffer badly from impatience... must get machine working....

(by the way, I ordered a new board this afternoon - stumped up for next day delivery too... tap tap tap tap....)

VeVeX

Red screen after Bios changes is normal. Happens everytime you change and save.

Red LED on the board is also normal its purpose is to show a power supply to the board. Green indicates that everything is fine. FAQ's and the forums on abit-usa.com are a great resource and would probably be the best place to get answers. I had to use it on a number of scary occasions when I was building a new box last week.

Its never plain sailing is it ?

Dr Bolouswki

ahhh - very interesting Keithd.... even though I've ordered the new board I'm still convinced there has got to be some way of getting the toher one working without having to hotswap...

thansk for the tip - abit-usa.com here I come!!!!

Col_Loki

try http://www.excaliberpc.com/default.php?cPath=156_157&sort=1a&&page=5 , shipping to here is like €11-12 ........... good company and will save an RMA !!

They stock all the abit gear btw

cheradenine

It's been a while since I looked but I recall someone on ebay selling bios chips flashed to your needs, a lot of these boards take the same physical bios chip, the only difference being the bios flashed to it, the guy on ebay was flashing bios's to blank chips, might be worth having a look.

Sir Random

Originally posted by Killah_B
Out of interest (I'm defintiely gonna RMA the board)

How would one go about hotswapping a BIOS chip? Does it involve soldering etc? Is it very risky?

I've got a feeling that I don't even want to THINK about trying it....

I suffer badly from impatience... must get machine working....

(by the way, I ordered a new board this afternoon - stumped up for next day delivery too... tap tap tap tap....)

Hot swapping just means taking out the BIOS chip (they pop out) and replacing it. The "Hot" bit refers to the fact that the mobo is powered up when you do the swap.
If you use a plastic tool to prise out the BIOS, there's no chance of shorting any pins.

Dr Bolouswki

Nice - got some good advice from Abit forums too - I can get a pre flashed to latest rev of the BIOS chip for €25 (like 17 eurons)...

I think RMA'ing the board will be no problem, but for certain swapping the chip seems pretty easy awlrite...

Great response folks - thanks for all the help.

Woden

i don't see why you should have to pay anything as you got a dodgy board, sent her back

cheradenine

Like I said before, if you're looking around for a new bios chip check ebay, a friend had a similar corrupted bios and there was someone selling spares for about 5 pounds sterling. If you can get it for a price like that it's potentially worth it just to avoid the joy that is RMA.