[Wiltshire] BIOS flashy thing.

[Simon Iremonger (wiltslug)]

> Computer:  4G RAM; 250G hd + 500G hd; psu 350wats max;
> nVidia gforce gt430 graphics card; TV card; DVD read/write drive.
> It was unused for several months.  Put in new graphics card.
> Would not boot - nothing to monitor.

> Tried it a lot of times, on 4 occasions something happened.
> Once got a message saying BIOS corrupt;  booted up normally
> twice (when I hard rebooted)  left it on second time and it
> went down after a few hours; once gave BIOS setup, did not
> take opportunity to flash bios - generally have had some
> sort of death wish with it.

> Tried removing RAM and putting one in; unplugging things,
> that sort of stuff.  Tried switching it on with CD with
> bios on it in which, I think, should allow it to repair bios.


Given the intermittency you saw, I would more suspect something
  along the lines of iffy power supply or failing capacitors
  somewhere.
This could easily CAUSE errors like the "BIOS corrupt" etc.
  but the actual flash-data in the BIOS itself is less likely
  to be faulty, just something is going wrong such that it
  "cant think straight" and hence gives errors, etc.

Try attaching only:-
Motherboard, ram, cpu  (those that were working)
Older graphics card    (that used to work)
Plug in monitor/keyboard/power...
With your PSU,
But NO Hard disk or CD Drive, attached (neither to board
  nor to power supply).

Does that start consistently into the BIOS setup?

If not, I would very much suggest trying another PSU.

Power Supplies, are something I could go on to talk about
  for ages, but in short: the QUALITY of power supplies
  is NOT measured in 'watts' -- they are more a number
  that 'sells power supplies' to those who dont know...

If you reduce the load on your PSU by using less stuff
  attached to it, and the older graphics card...  It
  may help to identify the likely problem ;-).



If you can get BIOS setup appearing consistently, you
  should then try to boot Memtest86 (e.g. using the
  boot-menu on an older ubuntu CD, having reattached
  cd drive, of course).  You may be able to get to
  memtest86 on newer ubuntu cds by holding down shift,
  or something like that.
Once that works, move on from there...  Try to get
  memtest going with all your hardware attached.
It is VITAL that memtest can run continuously without
  errors, before trying to ''fix'' any software.
  It should get to at least 1 "pass"....
  Otherwise you just get more 'corrupted data' and
  things go downhill from there...

--Simon