Save my computer from being thrown out the window!

Pck21

Pck21

New Member
Holy jeebus am I ticked off and frustrated. I'll keep this post PG, but I make no guarantees. Allow me to let you in to my world with a little back story and then the problem.

Basically, my parent's old Gateway 827GM was acting wonky so I decided to upgrade some of the components on their dime. I got a new Asus M3978-EM mobo, WD 320GB SATA hd, AMD 5000+ X2 black edition CPU, 4GBs of OCZ Reaper DDR2 ram, and a Corsair 650TX PSU. I put it all in this afternoon and everything went swimmingly. However, when I went to install XP (the original, pre-SP1 edition) I could only get to the "Windows is Setting Up..." and then I would get the BSOD. That was problem number 1.

To solve said problem, I got the genius idea of removing the CMOS battery (as there were no jumpers) and reset the CMOS. Now I can't get past the BIOS splash screen. :mad::confused:

Can anyone help me figure why I can't get past the splash screen and/or the Windows issue as well? I'm about to go mad here and I'm at my wit's end!
 
JTM

JTM

New Member
This could be caused by driver support issues. But I'm leaning more towards XP having trouble installing on SATA. Most likely your BIOS didn't have SATA as the controller and when XP saw it, it BSOD. As for the MOBO not being able to get into BIOS I'm not sure. Removing the CMOS battery wouldn't cause damage, it would just reset BIOS.
 
Pck21

Pck21

New Member
JTM said:
This could be caused by driver support issues. But I'm leaning more towards XP having trouble installing on SATA. Most likely your BIOS didn't have SATA as the controller and when XP saw it, it BSOD. As for the MOBO not being able to get into BIOS I'm not sure. Removing the CMOS battery wouldn't cause damage, it would just reset BIOS.
Click to expand...

I've heard the same things about driver issues too. Someone mentioned something about "slipstreaming" SP2 in with my CD install but I don't know how to do that. I tried the Windows 7 beta cd and it came up with some error that it couldn't read a ".wim" file or something. I should have just tried linux...sigh...

I didn't think taking out the battery would do damage either. This battery is seated vertically though...maybe I put it in backwards? If I flip it around, will I do damage to it if it was in the right way to begin with? I'm this close to just giving up on technology altogether...
 
JTM

JTM

New Member
Just put it in the way it was in. It should be fairly straight forward, I even think it should boot without the CMOS battery. Your priority should be to get your mobo to boot into BIOS. I would recommend changing your hdd controller to sata. That may take away your issue of installing XP. Even further you could possibly find a BIOS revision of your board.

So take the battery out and make sure you put it in the right way. Let me know what happens next.
 
Pck21

Pck21

New Member
JTM said:
Just put it in the way it was in. It should be fairly straight forward, I even think it should boot without the CMOS battery. Your priority should be to get your mobo to boot into BIOS. I would recommend changing your hdd controller to sata. That may take away your issue of installing XP. Even further you could possibly find a BIOS revision of your board.

So take the battery out and make sure you put it in the right way. Let me know what happens next.
Click to expand...

Well I triple checked to make sure the battery was in the correct way and it definitely is because it won't fit any other way. I'll try to boot it without the battery and see what it does, but I just don't want to do damage to the board in any way. My only hard drive is a SATA, but what do you mean by hdd controller? I miraculously updated my BIOS (when I was able to get into BIOS in the first place) by using the CD that the mobo came with. I used EZ Flash 2 and it allowed me to update the BIOS using the CD, which seemed to work great.

I turned it on again this morning and it's still hanging at the BIOS splash screen that says "ASUS." It used to go to a black screen first with wording related to "Express Gate" but now it doesn't even show that. I tried hitting delete and tab to go into BIOS or just another screen with 2 different keyboards and still nothing. Maybe the mobo is actually bad?

Thank you for all your help by the way. Honestly, I'm totally frustrated over here but I feel better knowing that I have someone who I can bounce ideas off of. No one around me has a clue what to do lol.
 
JTM

JTM

New Member
Pck21 said:
Well I triple checked to make sure the battery was in the correct way and it definitely is because it won't fit any other way. I'll try to boot it without the battery and see what it does, but I just don't want to do damage to the board in any way. My only hard drive is a SATA, but what do you mean by hdd controller? I miraculously updated my BIOS (when I was able to get into BIOS in the first place) by using the CD that the mobo came with. I used EZ Flash 2 and it allowed me to update the BIOS using the CD, which seemed to work great.

I turned it on again this morning and it's still hanging at the BIOS splash screen that says "ASUS." It used to go to a black screen first with wording related to "Express Gate" but now it doesn't even show that. I tried hitting delete and tab to go into BIOS or just another screen with 2 different keyboards and still nothing. Maybe the mobo is actually bad?

Thank you for all your help by the way. Honestly, I'm totally frustrated over here but I feel better knowing that I have someone who I can bounce ideas off of. No one around me has a clue what to do lol.
Click to expand...

I don't think that taking the battery out would make any difference. The CMOS battery simply stores your BIOS settings like time, configuration, etc. When a CMOS battery dies you'll find yourself having to keep re-entering settings.

I would see if you can flash the BIOS using the disc that they gave you. See if it will boot the disc, or any disc. I'm not to sure why it is locking up like that. Just try to flash the BIOS.

Another thing is, are there any beeps or noises being made during this? Also is all the hardware seated properly?
 
Twist86

Twist86

Active Member
If its ANYTHING like the Gigabytes "auto update" feature you might have crashed your board updating the BIOS.
Always manually update the BIOS aka burn to disc then update it.


I would RMA the board...seems like it is the issue. Also make sure your HDD is in SATA1 some motherboards have funky layouts which can screw you over.

Happened to me on my Vista x64 Install.
 
Bodaggit23

Bodaggit23

Active Member
Most times after you reset the CMOS, you have to get into the BIOS
and Load Optimized Defaults, then restart.

Can you get into the BIOS by pressing DELETE when it boots?
 
Bodaggit23

Bodaggit23

Active Member
JTM said:
No, he said he couldn't. It just locks up.
Click to expand...
He never actually stated if he tried or not.

He only said he could not get past the splash screen, and that's where
the options are to load into BIOS or change Boot Device.
 
JTM

JTM

New Member
Bodaggit23 said:
He never actually stated if he tried or not.

He only said he could not get past the splash screen, and that's where
the options are to load into BIOS or change Boot Device.
Click to expand...

Actually you are wrong :D

"I turned it on again this morning and it's still hanging at the BIOS splash screen that says "ASUS." It used to go to a black screen first with wording related to "Express Gate" but now it doesn't even show that. I tried hitting delete and tab to go into BIOS or just another screen with 2 different keyboards and still nothing. Maybe the mobo is actually bad?"


As you can see he was able to get into BIOS before he removed the CMOS battery. Now he can't get into BIOS.
 
Pck21

Pck21

New Member
JTM said:
I don't think that taking the battery out would make any difference. The CMOS battery simply stores your BIOS settings like time, configuration, etc. When a CMOS battery dies you'll find yourself having to keep re-entering settings.

I would see if you can flash the BIOS using the disc that they gave you. See if it will boot the disc, or any disc. I'm not to sure why it is locking up like that. Just try to flash the BIOS.

Another thing is, are there any beeps or noises being made during this? Also is all the hardware seated properly?
Click to expand...

I tried using the disc but it still doesn't go past the BIOS splash screen. :( I don't think there's any way I ca flash the BIOS without actually getting into the BIOS unfortunately. I think the mobo might be dead.

Twist86 said:
If its ANYTHING like the Gigabytes "auto update" feature you might have crashed your board updating the BIOS.
Always manually update the BIOS aka burn to disc then update it.


I would RMA the board...seems like it is the issue. Also make sure your HDD is in SATA1 some motherboards have funky layouts which can screw you over.

Happened to me on my Vista x64 Install.
Click to expand...

I think I will have to RMA the board then, which is a pain. I'll also make sure that my SATA drive is in SATA1 as well once I get the new board. Man this has been a headache from the get-go...:mad:

Thanks for all of your help everyone, honestly. I guess I'm going to RMA the board back to newegg and get a new one. I'll update what happens when I get the new one and try to slipstream a copy of Windows XP SP2. Thanks again! :good::)
 
bomberboysk

bomberboysk

Active Member
Wow.. dude you seem to be having some horrible luck from just wanting to upgrade a power supply:( Just got a question, you have tried leaving out the battery for ~30min with the power supply unplugged? Or do you think possibly your power supply might be bad and fried the first mobo, id rma that while you rma the mobo...
 
JTM

JTM

New Member
bomberboysk said:
Wow.. dude you seem to be having some horrible luck from just wanting to upgrade a power supply:( Just got a question, you have tried leaving out the battery for ~30min with the power supply unplugged? Or do you think possibly your power supply might be bad and fried the first mobo, id rma that while you rma the mobo...
Click to expand...

Even if the battery was dead or taken out it should still boot fine. The only reason I could see taking out the CMOS battery would be if he messed up settings, but he didn't.
 
Pck21

Pck21

New Member
JTM said:
Even if the battery was dead or taken out it should still boot fine. The only reason I could see taking out the CMOS battery would be if he messed up settings, but he didn't.
Click to expand...

Yep, the only thing I changed in the BIOS settings was the time. It was like 2 hours off but that was it. No voltage or CPU changes or anything like that. I'm going to take out the battery for like 3 hours and see what that does.
 
Pck21

Pck21

New Member
Just an update to the situation: I tried taking out the battery, ram, CPU, and unplugging everything from the computer (including power) and just let it sit there for 2 hours. I replaced everything, turned it on, and still got the same screen. So I just sent back the motherboard and should be receiving a new one soon. Hope that solves it...
 
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