AW9D-MAX on it's way out??!!

[jake77]

After 3 years of no issues, the mobo finally has me puzzled. Tried to boot up last night and, just as windows came up, the system rebooted and hung on the splash screen. Postcodes such as C1, 52, 6F, and 7F showed upon several successive reboots. Reset the CMOS 3 times as well as disconnected the battery twice - still no go. I have been able to access the BIOS a couple of times and after checking/adjusting values, I get a checksum error on the successive reboots and my changes get rolled back. Everything worked fine up to this point with no precursors to the issues I have now. Also, I have not installed any new drivers or software within the past month. Any ideas or suggestions would be VERY greatly appreciated.

My system
Windows XP 64 bit
Q6700 Interl Quad Core
4 GB PC6400 OCZ Titanium Revision 2 RAM
250 GB Western Digital System Drive
2 x 400 GB Storage Drives
2 x ATI Radeon X1600 in Crossfire

 

[Mondoman]

Perhaps the fact that you have no power supply could be a problem?
For POST code errors, it's got to be something basic. It's probably the MB, but in theory it could be the PS. What do the post codes signify, according to the manual?

 

[jake77]

oh yeah, psu is an OCZ 700W.
C1 and 52 relate to memory - that was my first trial. Pulled all four sticks and found 2 that SEEM to work (was able to get to the BIOS for the first time in all this). Once in the BIOS I saw that the boot priority was listing floppy first instead of hard drive, switched that and fixed the date/time, rebooted, and received a checksum error that rolled back the BIOS to the defaults. Tried again but got the same checksum error. Reset the CMOS unhooked/rehooked the battery, rebooted and same result. Now postcode 6F appears which refers to 1. Initialize floppy controller
2. Set up floppy related fields in 40:hardware. Any ideas?

 

[Mondoman]

I'd try installing just one DIMM, then booting with a bootable CD of memtest86+.
Also, do you have a floppy drive installed? It also wouldn't hurt (and won't cost much) to install a new CMOS battery.

 

[jake77]

Will give that a shot. No floppy installed just LG DVD-ROM and Sony DVD-RW drives.

 

[Mondoman]

The floppy errors might be due to it not finding an actual floppy drive, but thinking there is one because of CMOS data. After you install the new CMOS battery, try reloading default settings in the BIOS.

 

[megamanx00]

Yeah, it could just be that you need a new CMOS battery, but be sure to run memtest.

 

[jake77]

Finally got BIOS settings to stick (after once more resetting the CMOS and removing/replacing the battery) and running memtest on one stick of ram right now. Once completed should I run it on all dimms individually?

 

[jake77]

Mondoman, you are a lifesaver! One of the dimms was shot. Down to 2GB RAM but up and running with no issues!

 

[Mondoman]

Glad it worked out!