GA-7VT600 1394 bios/reboot woes

[Guest]

Archived from groups: alt.comp.periphs.mainboard.gigabyte (More info?)

Newly purchased a GA-7VT600 1394, put in an Athlon XP 1500+, and it
mostly works fine. Occasionally, though, after a reboot, I will get a
blank screen, and the HDD LED will be stuck on. It never reaches the
POST screen showing BIOS info, memory test, etc. Just stuck there with
a blank screen and a few clicking sounds from the disk drive.

When this happens, I need to disconnect power from the PSU for 30
seconds or so before booting up, or else the same thing will occur. On
the first successful post afterwards, I get the following message
immediately after IDE auto-detection:

Warning!!
Some changes in chipset or clock settings caused boot failure.
Defaults for these settings have been loaded.

I'm prompted to hit F1 to continue- I do so, and it boots no problem.
It sounded to me like maybe it wasn't detecting the memory type
correctly (I'm using 2x256MB PC2100 Kingston, but I also tried 1x512MB
PC2100 Crucial, without luck.) So then I tried flashing to the latest
BIOS, (taking it from F5 to F7), and that didn't change anything
either.

GA-7VT600 1394
Athlon XP 1500+
2x256MB PC2100
ATI Radeon 7000 64 MB AGP
WD 80GB IDE HD (WD800JB)
Antec True 380S 380W PSU

Anyone with a similar experience or suggestions?
Thanks!

 

[Guest]

Archived from groups: alt.comp.periphs.mainboard.gigabyte (More info?)

I have the same board. Using an Athlon 3200+ in it. I let a friend put the
board in for me. (big mistake) Had problems with rebooting by itself, losing
video etc. Got the same message. Always ran fine till the next reboot. The
nitwit put the board in so tight he scrunched some of the standoff's into
the mounting holes. Getting a new one tomorrow. (RMA) Hopefully everthing
will be fine. What bothers me about your info is the HDD making clicking
sounds. Last time that happend to me my WD went belly up. Didn't just die,
it clicked more and more then started hanging, woudn't boot. Had an older
board with no backup bios. Took several tries to get it going.

PS: I like the board. Running two WD Raptors on it. If you want things done
right, do it yourself!! Hang in with this group, plenty of good
help/suggestions.

Rudy

 

[Guest]

Archived from groups: alt.comp.periphs.mainboard.gigabyte (More info?)

Thanks for the info, Rudy. I also like this board- I have been running
another one of these for 6+ months with no problems at all.

This board was supposed to be a replacement for a GA-7VTXE, which I
suspected might be flaky. On the GA-7VTXE I had a very similar blank
screen problem- the only difference being the lack of a warning
message. I just thought of it as a minor annoyance, until I had a hard
disk develop bad blocks, and lost some files. (That drive is now in
the garbage.) When I replaced the m/b, I also replaced the power
supply, because I didn't know what the source of the problem was. In
fact, just about the only components left over from that original
system are the CPU, hard disk, mouse, and keyboard. So I guess the
next things to test are the CPU and hard disk.

Good luck with the new board, hopefully we'll both get these running
one of these days...

Thanks,
Dan

On Thu, 13 Jan 2005 07:31:55 -0500, "Rudy Kube" <rudykube@comcast.net>
wrote:

>I have the same board. Using an Athlon 3200+ in it. I let a friend put the
>board in for me. (big mistake) Had problems with rebooting by itself, losing
>video etc. Got the same message. Always ran fine till the next reboot. The
>nitwit put the board in so tight he scrunched some of the standoff's into
>the mounting holes. Getting a new one tomorrow. (RMA) Hopefully everthing
>will be fine. What bothers me about your info is the HDD making clicking
>sounds. Last time that happend to me my WD went belly up. Didn't just die,
>it clicked more and more then started hanging, woudn't boot. Had an older
>board with no backup bios. Took several tries to get it going.
>
>PS: I like the board. Running two WD Raptors on it. If you want things done
>right, do it yourself!! Hang in with this group, plenty of good
>help/suggestions.
>
>Rudy
>

 

[Guest]

Archived from groups: alt.comp.periphs.mainboard.gigabyte (More info?)

Just posting my conclusions in case anyone else runs into this...

I replaced the CPU (Athlon XP 1500+) with a new Sempron 2800+ and the
problem totally disappeared. So I'm 99% sure it was a bad CPU since it
was one of the only components in common with the old system. The
"lesson" I'm taking from all this is to never ignore a problem, no
matter how minor it seems. It will bite you one day.

On Fri, 14 Jan 2005 23:35:02 -0500, Pimpbot 5000 <bob@pimpbot.org>
wrote:

>Thanks for the info, Rudy. I also like this board- I have been running
>another one of these for 6+ months with no problems at all.
>
>This board was supposed to be a replacement for a GA-7VTXE, which I
>suspected might be flaky. On the GA-7VTXE I had a very similar blank
>screen problem- the only difference being the lack of a warning
>message. I just thought of it as a minor annoyance, until I had a hard
>disk develop bad blocks, and lost some files. (That drive is now in
>the garbage.) When I replaced the m/b, I also replaced the power
>supply, because I didn't know what the source of the problem was. In
>fact, just about the only components left over from that original
>system are the CPU, hard disk, mouse, and keyboard. So I guess the
>next things to test are the CPU and hard disk.
>
>Good luck with the new board, hopefully we'll both get these running
>one of these days...
>
>Thanks,
>Dan
>
>On Thu, 13 Jan 2005 07:31:55 -0500, "Rudy Kube" <rudykube@comcast.net>
>wrote:
>
>>I have the same board. Using an Athlon 3200+ in it. I let a friend put the
>>board in for me. (big mistake) Had problems with rebooting by itself, losing
>>video etc. Got the same message. Always ran fine till the next reboot. The
>>nitwit put the board in so tight he scrunched some of the standoff's into
>>the mounting holes. Getting a new one tomorrow. (RMA) Hopefully everthing
>>will be fine. What bothers me about your info is the HDD making clicking
>>sounds. Last time that happend to me my WD went belly up. Didn't just die,
>>it clicked more and more then started hanging, woudn't boot. Had an older
>>board with no backup bios. Took several tries to get it going.
>>
>>PS: I like the board. Running two WD Raptors on it. If you want things done
>>right, do it yourself!! Hang in with this group, plenty of good
>>help/suggestions.
>>
>>Rudy
>>

 

[Guest]

Archived from groups: alt.comp.periphs.mainboard.gigabyte (More info?)

Pimpbot 5000 Wrote:
> Just posting my conclusions in case anyone else runs into this...
>
> I replaced the CPU (Athlon XP 1500+) with a new Sempron 2800+ and the
> problem totally disappeared. So I'm 99% sure it was a bad CPU since it
> was one of the only components in common with the old system. The
> "lesson" I'm taking from all this is to never ignore a problem, no
> matter how minor it seems. It will bite you one day.
>
> On Fri, 14 Jan 2005 23:35:02 -0500, Pimpbot 5000 bob@pimpbot.org
> wrote:
> -
> Thanks for the info, Rudy. I also like this board- I have been running
> another one of these for 6+ months with no problems at all.
>
> This board was supposed to be a replacement for a GA-7VTXE, which I
> suspected might be flaky. On the GA-7VTXE I had a very similar blank
> screen problem- the only difference being the lack of a warning
> message. I just thought of it as a minor annoyance, until I had a hard
> disk develop bad blocks, and lost some files. (That drive is now in
> the garbage.) When I replaced the m/b, I also replaced the power
> supply, because I didn't know what the source of the problem was. In
> fact, just about the only components left over from that original
> system are the CPU, hard disk, mouse, and keyboard. So I guess the
> next things to test are the CPU and hard disk.
>
> Good luck with the new board, hopefully we'll both get these running
> one of these days...
>
> Thanks,
> Dan
>
> On Thu, 13 Jan 2005 07:31:55 -0500, "Rudy Kube" rudykube@comcast.net
> wrote:
> -
> I have the same board. Using an Athlon 3200+ in it. I let a friend put
> the
> board in for me. (big mistake) Had problems with rebooting by itself,
> losing
> video etc. Got the same message. Always ran fine till the next reboot.
> The
> nitwit put the board in so tight he scrunched some of the standoff's
> into
> the mounting holes. Getting a new one tomorrow. (RMA) Hopefully
> everthing
> will be fine. What bothers me about your info is the HDD making
> clicking
> sounds. Last time that happend to me my WD went belly up. Didn't just
> die,
> it clicked more and more then started hanging, woudn't boot. Had an
> older
> board with no backup bios. Took several tries to get it going.
>
> PS: I like the board. Running two WD Raptors on it. If you want things
> done
> right, do it yourself!! Hang in with this group, plenty of good
> help/suggestions.
>
> Rudy
> --

Pimpbot:

I was getting the same exact error during bootup myself. I recently
built a PC with the Gigabyte GA-7VT600 1394 and an AMD Athlon 2800+
processor.
I contacted AMD, who told me that it was either one or two things, the
first, being bad BIOS (and I did not want to flash the BIOS), or the
CPU could be reporting bad clock settings to the motherboard. Without
a replacement nearby, I contacted Gigabyte support.

Gigaybyte support had me unplug everything from my motherboard and
remove all my PCI cards (just a NIC). Still got the error. Swapped
out the memory sticks, and still received the error. On the next
bootup, the technician had me go into the BIOS and press F9.
Everything looked good, as my board was shipped with the latest BIOS
updates. The tech finally had me select the LOAD FAIL-SAFE DEFAULTS
from the BIOS menu, and reboot the machine. I did not receive the
error message.

The technicians advice was to plug each device in one at a time and
boot the machine each time to find the faulty device. So I started
with the floppy drive. Plugged it in, rebooted the machine, and wham,
here was the error message again. Unplugged the device, rebooted the
machine, and wham, another error message. I loaded the fail-safe
defaults once again, said the hell with it, and plugged everything back
in. Rebooted the machine and now it seems to be working fine. There is
no pause after the BIOS detects the IDE drives on bootup, and no error
message.

I have rebooted the machine over 20 times since then, and I have yet to
receive the error message. I am not sure what was causing the error,
and neither was Gigabyte. The only changes I made in the BIOS earlier
was I Enabled USB Keyboard and Mouse support, and disabled the Onboard
LAN. I am not sure why those changes would make a difference. I am
leaving the settings as they are for now.

Wish me luck!


--
bowilnd1