Help needed debugging some seriously weird errors

xet · 14 Apr 2006 at 19:15

Got my system up and running (amd 3000, 2x256mb OR 2x1gb GeiL value dual chan)

Anyway, when it was running it was sitting with 1 of the 1gb sticks in, but it was refusing to go dual chan with that (it gets kinda confusing after this)

I reflashed the bios, and after post it failed, no error message. I panick, it won't even read from floppy.

Finally some how it randomly boots and I get into the bios, have a look and everything seems fine, reboot.... uhmm, dead again...

reboot a few other times and finally manage to get it to boot off the floppy, so I reflash with a slightly older bios... no change, system sitll just randomly hanging when I try to boot or to enter the bios settings.

now for the extra weird stuff, with 1x256mb chip the system won't get past post, with 2x256mb chips in dual chan it'll get past post and sometimes (although almost never boot)

Vairous other memory configurations seem to have competely random effects as to wether or not it'll post or boot.

My thoughts is that perhaps the memory is stuffed, but I can't see how all four chips could go down like that?

Anyone got ANY suggestions?

I think I'm going to head over to a friends and try my ram on his box later on just to see if that's definately what's fallen over.... I'm at a complete loss and very frustrated!

Ohh, the motherboard is a KN8 Neo2 probably a good thing to mention that ;D

caister · 14 Apr 2006 at 19:21

Any chance of redownloading the new bios and trying to flash again maybe it messed up? I hate bios updates i messed my gfs pc up yesterday by doing a bios update took a few hours to fix it!!

xet · 14 Apr 2006 at 19:31

managed to reflash it with a slightly older bios... wish I'd gone with the original!

It's refusing to read the floppy, although this is exactly what happened and I some how got it to get to the bios settings and far enough to read the floppy drive....

going to prepare a disk with the original bios again just incase I manage to get back to that state again!

But it's the ram that's confusing me most - I was having similar problems before the board was flashed... i.e. would only post in certain (illogical) configs!

caister · 14 Apr 2006 at 19:37

is it possible to run memtest?

xet · 14 Apr 2006 at 19:42

not on that system, it's currently refusing to do anything after it passes post. It gets stuck looking for a floppy or get's stuck trying to boot the os (according to the diagnostics bracket)

I'm going to take the ram round to a friends later this evening and have him run memtest on it however

Edit: fairly sure the bios is dead as a doornail, although I think there is a shop down the road that has eprom reprogramming facilities... reckon if I take the bios chip and a bios image down there they'll be able to do anything with it?