Question Old ASUS M4A78LT-M No Display

[jitter1127]

A guy gave me this old PC to work on and I can not get it to display anything to a monitor. So far I have tried VGA, DVI, HDMI, along with installing a spare graphics card and trying that. I have tried a different PSU along with re-seating the Processor. I have tried removing the RAM and replacing one stick at a time and disconnecting all internal devices.

I also tried clearing the CMOS. I have a PCI mother board anaylzer and I am getting the code EE00 which does not make sense. According to the manual EE says "Looking for a floppy diskette in drive A: Reading the first sector of the diskette." This PC does not have a floppy drive.....00 says "code copying to specfic areas is done. Passing control to INT 19h boot loader next." The board has no internal speaker and I did order a speaker to hook up, but other than that I am lost. The MB manual says it has a crash free BIOS option, but I am not sure how to use it. I copied the BIOS to a USB drive and plugged it in, but I have no idea if it is doing anything.

I tried both the extracted ROM and compressed ROM. I did rename it per the MB manual. Anyone have any suggestions?

Thanks

 

[Darkbreeze]

When you installed the graphics card, did you MOVE the display cables to the graphics card and THEN do a hard reset of the CMOS? You won't have any display if the cables are connected to the motherboard video outputs and you install a graphics card. Cables need to be going to the graphics card.

Or, when you tried using the integrated HD3000 graphics on the motherboard, did you try a hard reset?

What graphics card did you try and are you SURE it works, because you've tried in recently in another system to verify that it works?

BIOS Hard Reset procedure

Power off the unit, switch the PSU off and unplug the PSU cord from either the wall or the power supply.

Remove the motherboard CMOS battery for five minutes. In some cases it may be necessary to remove the graphics card to access the CMOS battery.

During that five minutes, press the power button on the case for 30 seconds. After the five minutes is up, reinstall the CMOS battery making sure to insert it with the correct side up just as it came out.

If you had to remove the graphics card you can now reinstall it, but remember to reconnect your power cables if there were any attached to it as well as your display cable.

Now, plug the power supply cable back in, switch the PSU back on and power up the system. It should display the POST screen and the options to enter CMOS/BIOS setup. Enter the bios setup program and reconfigure the boot settings for either the Windows boot manager or for legacy systems, the drive your OS is installed on if necessary.

Save settings and exit. If the system will POST and boot then you can move forward from there including going back into the bios and configuring any other custom settings you may need to configure such as Memory XMP, A-XMP or D.O.C.P profile settings, custom fan profile settings or other specific settings you may have previously had configured that were wiped out by resetting the CMOS.

In some cases it may be necessary when you go into the BIOS after a reset, to load the Optimal default or Default values and then save settings, to actually get the hardware tables to reset in the boot manager.

It is probably also worth mentioning that for anything that might require an attempt to DO a hard reset in the first place, IF the problem is related to a lack of video signal, it is a GOOD IDEA to try a different type of display as many systems will not work properly for some reason with displayport configurations. It is worth trying HDMI if you are having no display or lack of visual ability to enter the BIOS, or no signal messages.

 

[jitter1127]

Yes i moved the cables to the graphics card, but i did not do the hard reset then. I know the graphics card works and i know the display works because it is hooked into my main PC. I also reset the BIOS with the jumper not by just removing the battery.

 

[Darkbreeze]

Using the CMOS reset jumper is only a halfway measure. Try the full hard reset procedure. Don't assume you KNOW anything about the process, just follow the steps exactly as outlined. There is a reason for each step.

What is the graphics card model?

Crash free BIOS doesn't help if there is something wrong with the motherboard or the BIOS ROM itself. It simply helps you recover a bad or corrupted BIOS image, or in the event that a BIOS flash fails to complete correctly.

 

[jitter1127]

Ill do a full reset w/ both the graphics card and onboard video. The graphics card is an R9270x that I had in my main PC until i upgraded. I also have a new 2032 battery i can throw in.

I tried all that with no luck. Just for fun I threw in another GFX card and tried via HDMI and no luck. Hopefully my MB speaker will come in tomorrow because at this point I have no idea where I am at w/ it posting or not posting or what.

 

[Darkbreeze]

Did you, or anybody, have this system completely apart? As in, the CPU out of the motherboard? Have you checked for bent pins?

Honestly, based on what you posted in the OP, those codes seem like gibberish and may simply indicate a faulty board. This might be why the system was not used anymore to begin with if that's the case.

Might be a good idea to simply bench the whole works to see if maybe any of the connected devices are to blame. Disconnect all drives etc.

How To - Motherboard bench testing

Finding the problem through bench testing If you are here then it’s likely you have encountered a serious hardware issue and have been unable to resolve it using the standard no-POST troubleshooting procedures. If you have not yet attempted to resolve your issues using the no-POST...

forums.tomshardware.com

 

[jitter1127]

Yeah i think that code reader is gibberish. I did have everything disconnected and I did have the processor off. The pins looked good. The only issue I saw was the thermal paste was totally shot between the heatsink and processor. I hooked up the internal speaker today and I got one long beep and 2 short beeps which from what I can tell is the MB is not detecting RAM. He had three sticks of RAM and I have tried them individually along with channel A / B and its still beeping. I find it hard to believe all three sticks are bad, but I guess you never know. I have some RAM in an old system going to test that out if its compatible.

 

[Darkbreeze]

What is the motherboard model?

 

[jitter1127]

Its an ASUS M4A78LT-M

 

[Darkbreeze]

Well, this is something new. This is the first DDR3 or DDR4 motherboard I've found where the second and fourth DIMM slots are not the recommended slots for primary two DIMM population.

On your board, you will want to use the A2 slot, which is the slot closest to the CPU, if you are using only one DIMM, and the A2 and B2 slots, which on this board (And this is what makes it completely different from pretty much everything in the last ten or twelve years or so) are the first and second slots over from the CPU socket for two DIMM operation. Make sure if you are using only one DIMM that you use the slot closest to the CPU and for two use that and the one next to it.

One problem that is possible for this configuration is that it is old enough to require low density DDR3. Most DDR3 out there is not low density and hasn't been for quite a while, but there are some boards that require it because they were designed before higher density memory became a thing. I don't THINK that's the case, in this case, but it's possible and you might want to look into that.

What is the CPU model you are trying to use with this board?

 

[jitter1127]

The Cpu currently in there is a AMD Phenom II x4 840 . I'll try one ram at a time again. i think i had it in A1 before but not 100% sure

 

[Darkbreeze]

Well, that CPU is on the CPU support list IF it has a new enough BIOS version. I'm going to assume that this system WAS running, with THIS CPU, at some prior date? Did you happen to try the other memory you had yet?

Otherwise, I'd say this looks very much like a faulty motherboard which is probably why it was taken out of service in the first place, originally, if it was.