PC losing entire CMOS occasionally (1 Viewer)

[Mike_J_Potter]

I have a strange problem my PC seems to be losing the flash on the CMOS. The PC is a P4 2.8 ghz with a Asus p4p800s Motherboard, 1024 megs of ram, 40 gig HD, Sound Blaster Live 5.1, a 330 watt Antec true power power supply. and a ATI radeon 9800 pro. What will happen is that the PC will crash, sometimes blue screening other times freezing up. Then when I try to reboot the ASUS bios crash recovery will come up and tell me that the bios has crashed and to insert my Motherboard CD to recover. Which I do then restart the PC as told, then when it boots it goes right back to wanting the CD again. It will do this anything from once to several times before the system will boot into my OS again. I thought it was video card and swapped out the power hungry 9800 for a old agp card I had laying around and the results are the same. I have also reflashed the bios with a floppy and newest version and it doesn't seem to help. Anyone have any suggestions, or is my board toast like I think it is?

 

[Glenn Overholt]

How about a new battery? Just an idea.

Glenn

 

[Joseph DeMartino]

Yeah, definitely sounds like the battery that keeps the CMOS date intact when the system is powered off has given up the ghost. Check the motherboard manual for an exact replacement. Many boards will also take a battery that plugs into a couple of jumper-style pins on the board. Radio Shack and other places sell these batteries made by Durcel, Energizer, etc.

Regards,

Joe

 

[Mike Fassler]

the battery wont matter if the pc is plugged into the wall,modern systems have a standby system, thats what the lights on the mobo are about.try flashing to a newer bios and see if that cures the crashes. any overclocking or anything going on?

 

[Mike_J_Potter]

The system has been stable for about a day after I got past the Bios Recovery, and reflashed with a bootable floppy and current bios. So I think somehow the bios intially got courrupted and the built in recovery that used the CD didn't reflash properly. I am thinking the 330 wtt power supply isn't enough to power the system with the 9800 pro and caused a dip in voltage that scambled the Cmos

 

[Wayne Bundrick]

That sounds plausible. Scotty, we need more power!

 

[Mike Fassler]

I doubt thats the culprit,he has a good PSU,I have a 9800 pro,barton 2500 overclocked to 2.2 ghz,2 hard drives(250 gig and 40 gig),one gig of corsair pro ram,cd burner,dvd-rom,floppy drive, Abit NF7-S mobo,and 6 LED case fans and my cpu fan all runnin on an Antec 350 watt PSU without any problems. you may be able to just buy a new Eprom for the mobo and then you should be fine, they are generally only about 12-14 bucks or so.

 

[Mike_J_Potter]

I think your right, my box doesn't have nearly as much stuff as yours (Only 1 hard drive 1 dvd burner 9800 Pro and 3 case fans + CPU fan and a Sound blaster 5.1, 1 gig of ram) and it runs on a 350 watt. Not to mention the system would crash randomly, not during say something that pushes the system to the limit like Doom3. I think I'll drop asus a line since I believe that the board is still under warranty. I'll throw the 9800 pro back in this weekend and make sure that it is stable for sure.

 

[Mike Fassler]

yeah definately give them a jingle, better to be safe than sorry. their customer support has always been very good when I've delt with them.