CMOS checksum error

My son was working on his computer and had several programs running at once. On its own, it restarted and came up with:
CMOS checksum error - Defaults loaded
Press F to continue, DEL to enter SETUP
11/27/2003-nVidia-nForce-6A61BD4FC-00

Upon pressing F1, it said:
verifying DMI Pool Data ...... Update Success
Backup CMOS .... OK!
Boot from CD

I can't seem to get the computer to boot. His mobo is DFI NFII Ultra Infinity.
I have the power off now, the battery out and the CMOS jumper changed to 2-3. He said that, in the past, his computer has restarted on its own after running multiple programs simultaneously, but always came up with a statement that said that the computer recovered from a fatal error and all was fine. When I went into the BIOS, I noticed that the date and time was incorrect, but I'd have to look up what we had installed before to determine what else has changed. The DFI mobo does have a CMOS Reloaded feature that allows restoring one of the previously saved configurations. Before I do any damage, I figured that I better contact the experts and have you guide me through the process. I'll leave the computer as it is over night, and,hopefully, someone will be able to guide me through the repair tomorrow. Thanks for being there.

 

Barry:

That is a very nice motherboard and also one thats a little tricky to setup. For future reference, you don't need to pull the battery but you need to disconnect the 20 pin ATX power header at the motherboard and then jumper (as you did) CMOS to 2&3 for roughly 10 seconds before returning it to 1&2. DFI also recommends setting the BIOS to optimum for the first boot sequence following this procedure. I'm out of town right and am somewhat restricted as to access to some of my information re: this board but, if you could tell me what the processor is along with the memory and the system drive (SATA on the Sil controller or regular ATA on the IDE header). It would also be helpful to know the all HDD's in the machine. Note, if a SATA drive is being used, no drive can be used on the primary of the first IDE header - its either/or.

I'll try to help you out but this may bleed into next week before I can do you much good.

 

His CPU is an AMD Athlon 2500+ Barton. His PSU is an Antec TRUE550 Power Supply. He has 1GB of Mushkin dual channel memory (2X512)(991145). He has two hard drives (120GB Western Digital ATA and 160GB Seagate Barracuda ATA) along with a floppy drive, CD-RW & DVD-ROM. SATA is not being used. I've disconnected the power header. Do I need to move the jumper back and forth again, or just leave it on clear CMOS? Where in the BIOS do I set it on optimum? Thank you for helping.

 

If the date and time was off in the Bios then the battery may be weak or dead. If this is the case the Bios would reset to default and could cause booting problems. It could also be what causes the checksum error.

 

Rockster2U, I did find the place to set optimum bios and did so. The new 160GB drive that I have been setting up just keeps restarting after the Windows frame comes up, while the older 120GB drive started up. My son is saving his files to his flash drive before we go any further. I think I'll run a memory test also.
Whiskeyman, I'll check into getting a new battery. Is there a way of testing it? I could check the volts/amps or whatever you suggest.
Thanks for all the help.

 

My son tells me that the automatic restart seems to be happening when he is shutting down his programs rather than when he is using them. I'm running MemTest-86 v3.0, and all appears fine so far. When the 160GB kept restarting, I had disconnected the 120GB. After I let the MemTest run for a while, I'll restart and see if the 160GB will start properly. After that, I'll correct the date/time in the BIOS and return it to what I had originally used. Here it is, in case you might have some other suggestions:
Primary VGA BIOS: AGP VGA Card
Quick Boot: enabled
System BIOS cacheable: disabled
Video RAM cacheable: disabled
Parallel Port Mode: ECP+EPP
EPP Mode Select: EPP 1.9
Init Display First: AGP
Everything else was just left at Optimum.
I purchased 2GB of GSkill dual channel RAM (F1-3200PHU2-2GBZX) for his birthday next month and know he'll want to overclock his computer then. Any suggestions on that would be appreciated also.
Also, I went on the DFI site to see if there were any driver updates for his computer. http://us.dfi.com.tw/Support/Download/driver_download_us.jsp?PRODUCT_ID=2141&STATUS_FLAG=A&SITE=US
It states "Please download the following Driver according to your motherboard version where applicable." His manual says Rev.A+, while his CD says nForce2 Ver. 001. I downloaded the USB and audio updates that were listed as Ver. 001, but wonder if I should download the system drivers for versions 2.45 or 5.10, and I'm not sure what the utilities are that have updates, so don't know if they would be of any use to him.
Thanks for the help.

 

The battery only tested at 1.3volts, rather than 3 volts, so I replaced it.
I am still having a problem with the 160GB drive not loading, though the 120GB works fine. The 160GB gives me the choice to start normally or in safe mode. No matter what I choose, it just restarts the computer.

 

Hi Barry,

Change that setting "Quick Boot" to disabled at least until the system is completely stable (I never enable it). Quick boot bypasses the BIOS detection system and does not allow hardware (and especially new/added hardware) to be indentified correctly. It will cause problems when the BIOS keeps getting reset to defaults. It will probably keep going back to enabled until you replace the CMOS battery and then disable it.

It seems like the 160Gb drive Windows installation is only new. Try a fresh reinstall after you get the new battery and disable Quick Boot.

Matt

 

Sorry I missed the action but it sounds like you are making some progress. I would make sure both drives are jumpered to Cable Select and then I ask for some clarification as to what is supposed to be on each and the position of each. With CS jumpering, your master will be on the terminating connector (the end) and your slave will be on the intermediate connector (middle). While trying to do an installation or setup, I would recommend having only one drive connected but it sounds like you are well past that point.

I would have told you not to worry about the battery but if its output is as you referenced, yes - replace it.

Couple of things here. Your son's Mushkin is PC3200 rated to run at 3-3-3-8. I have found DFI's run better with manual memory settings but lets go a little further. That 2500+ Barton is a 333MHz processor but if its a good stepping it will run at 400Mhz on that board and you can try 11 X 200 which is 2200MHz or the equivalent of a 3200+ processor. This too will require a manual setting and you are going to need to bump your stock core voltage of 1.65 to something more like 1.675. this can be tested in increments and you don't want to go any higher than 1.725. Lets save all of this for later and first concentrate on getting the thing running as a stock 2500+ Barton running at 333Mhz.

You should have 3 memory banks and want to populate only two - the two that give you dual channel.

Since he is having trouble right now, I'd cut the chase and do a repair installation. If you need help with this, holler, but basically you want to boot to the XP CD and select the second R prompt (first R prompt is the repair console and you don't want that) - proceed as if doing a clean install and you will be given an opportunity to repair the exisiting windows installation. Now, there were different revisions of that board and we will need to know if you have 4 SATA headers or 1 SATA header and a pair of IDE Raid Headers along with a pair of of regular IDE headers. You should have a driver floppy for the RAID drivers which is going to be needed unless your board revision has 4 SATA headers and only two IDE headers.

I'll be checking back in later, so let me know if you have any questions or need additional guidance.

In answer to your CMOS jumper question, do not try to boot unless you are bacl on 1&2. And, yes, to clear CMOS you've got to go to 2&3 and then return to 1&2. This will become very familiar if and when you start to overclock that puppy.

Regards,

 

The CMOS problem occurred again today. When I pressed F1 it said that it couldn't find an operating system. I went into the BIOS, found that the date and time was returned to 01/01/2002 and 12 midnight. I fixed the date/time and returned it to optimum settings and then the computer started up fine.
The hard drives are both set on CS.
The 120GB is on the end and the 160GB is in the middle.
I figure it is best to wait till he puts in his GSkill F1-3200PHU2-2GBZX sticks (http://www.gskill.com/indexen.html) before overclocking. Here is what the site lists the ratings as:
Capacity 2GB (1GB x 2)
Speed 400MHz DDR (PC3200)
CAS Latency 2-3-3-6 (PC3200)
Test Voltage 2.6~2.75 Volts
though the sticks themselves state 2-3-2-5 and 2.6-2.7V
The present sticks are in the blue dual channel banks.
The mobo has 4 SATA headers and 2 IDE headers. I was under the impression that only the SATA interface supported RAID 0 and RAID 1.
He doesn't use the SATA headers or the RAID.
I did put in the CD for a clean install and it told me that it found one unformatted partition rather than his 8 formatted and installed partitions. Did I somehow lose everything and need to start over from scratch on this drive, or is there something preventing the computer from reading it?
I also checked the power output to see if that was a problem. SpeedFan reports the following:
VCOREA: 1.60-1.65V
VCOREB: 1.47-1.49V
+3.3V: 3.12-3.25V (mostly above 3.2)
+5V: 4.86-4.95V (mostly above 4.9)
+12V: 11.73-11.98V (average 11.86)
-12V: -12.12 - -12.14V
-5V: .485-.632V (average .565)
+5VSB: 5.35-5.46V (average 5.41)
VBAT: 3.12-3.17V (average 3.14)

The negative 5 volts appears to be a problem. Would this cause this issue? What is the -5V used for?
Maybe I never set the BIOS to quick boot, as I can't even find that option in the BIOS.
I think I answered all the questions. Let me know what is needed now.
Thanks for the help.

 

Sounds like he wants to make this simple for you ..........

My suggestion was and still is to do a repair installation.

As to date & time, if the CMOS battery is dying as it appears your readings indicate, this is likely to happen every time you power off or disconnect power. If this is happening after you've replaced the battery then we have a different issue.

re: Raid - I think I said if you have 4 SATA and only 2 IDE you didn't have to worry about drivers on a floppy seeing as how you have two IDE drives and no SATA drives.

You'll need to figure out which of those 8 is his system partition and do a repair install on that and only that partition. Windows should find this for you when booting from the CD. If you reformat, you stand a good chance to lose some stuff by selecting the wrong partition. Now, the big question - why 8 partitions? More importantly, does he have some kind of a third party boot loader on there?

 

I wish it was as easy as reinstalling the OS on that partition. Unfortunately, none of the partitions appear anywhere, so I wouldn't know where to put it. I used Partition Magic to make the partitions, but I'm not sure how to use that program when the drive isn't recognized anywhere other than in the BIOS. Is there a way to identify that partition, or do I just need to start from scratch? All that is recognized with the Windows CD is one unformatted partition, the size of the entire drive. By the way, his partitions are FAT32, OS, Games, Maya, Music, Pictures/Documents/Programs, Ghost & Downloads. How could a partitioned and formatted drive lose everything? That doesn't make sense to me. It must be there. I wish I knew how to find it.
The date/time change only takes place when he gets that CMOS error. It doesn't change other than that. When he gets the CMOS error and I go into the BIOS to fix it, the date/time has changed.
There is no third party boot loader.
Do you know what the -5V power lead is used for in the computer? Is it something that must be addressed?

 

Just an update:
I just realized that the new battery I installed was deader than the original, so I reinstalled the original and now need to buy a new battery. I'm still not sure how this wiped the new drive of its partitions, though.
I received the following response from Antec about the -5V lead:
"The power supply you are using is an ATX12V v2.0 model. Our power supplies and enclosures are manufactured to the Intel Standard. For the ATX12V v2.0 standard, the -5V rail has been removed because it is no longer needed. That is why you will notice a missing wire in the motherboard connector. You will find this missing WHITE wire on older power supplies. For more information, you can take a look at the Power Supply Design Guide here: http://www.formfactors.org/developer/specs/ATX12V_PSDG_2_2_public_br2.pdf. If you suspect that lack of -5 is causing your mobo to not work, you will need to check with the board manufacturer to see if it is necessary or not. "
I wonder what -5V was used for in older boards?

 

Barry:

That battery isn't responsible for the loss of any partitions - there's something else at play here. I'll go back and re-read this thread later on and comment this evening. Its been hectic here today and I just got a few free minutes after being online early this morning.

Can you give us any more history?

 

Barry:

Just went back through the thread and you referenced that it started up fine a few posts ago but more recently that no partitions show up anywhere, other than the full drive capacity being recognized when booting from the XP CD. I'm also assuming that the 160 is the only drive connected at this point in time. I also have it that you once could get to a windows splash screen and prior to that got to a black screen with several boot options including last known good working, safe mode, normal & etc. but can no longer get to either of these. Please correct or update this as I may have it bass akwards.

From the description of no partitions in your more recent post, it sounds like the drive may have been wiped but nothing you have described thus far would have done this and even if you had mucked things up trying to do a repair, you would have had to remove eight partitions in eight different steps with two confirmations for each deletion - (in other words, you'd know it) - so we can safely say this isn't the case. Lets verify that the 120 is disconnected and the 160 is on the terminating connector (end). Try booting to the HDD without the XP CD in either optical and if no go, power down (4 second hold on the on/off button), then restart while tapping the ctrl key continiously. If no go that way, lets try booting to the CD again and going all the way to a repair install (second R prompt). This should give us a fix on recognized partitons or tell us that there is indeed just one and whether or not an existing installation is evident. You can cancel out of this with an F3 but my suspicion (if I understand your last couple of posts) is that somehow this drive was wiped or a boot loader like Partition Magic has been corrupted. I know, you said there was no third party boot loader but I'm at a loss as to how your 8 partitons were given "time off for the holidays ".

Post back and we'll get that puppy rebuilt for you regardless.

 

Rockster2U, here are the latest discoveries. Partition Magic worked when I only had my WD 120GB drive attached. When I attached the Seagate 160GB also, Partition Magic wouldn't open, saying that EZ-Drive was corrupt and needed to be reinstalled. In doing research, I discovered that only Western Digital used EZ-Drive, not Seagate, and Western Digital claims to no longer use it, as it has been replaced by their Lifeguard Tools. I put in my Seagate CD, and it shows the existence of all my partitions, but says that the operating system partition is bad, probably from improper shutdown. It will let me reinstall XP SP2, but only on my first partition rather than on my second, where it should go. Possibly, the OS partition became corrupted when the low battery caused the CMOS problem and restarted without shutting down the OS properly first.
When both drives are attached, I have the option to choose which to startup. If I choose the Seagate 160GB, I get the window that allows me to start normally or safe or last best. Whatever I choose on that page triggers a restart. When only the 160 is attached, the computer just keeps restarting, unless I tap ctrl, which brings up the start normally, etc, window. When I put in the XP CD and allow it to repair, it only shows one unformatted partition. When I go into disk management, with both drives attached, it shows the existence of the drive, but as one partition and all unallocated.
I hopes this gives you some ideas. Thanks for being there.

 

Well lets say it confirms my suspicions and definately provides us with the necessary information. Unfortunately, from my perspective you are hosed because of that EZ Drive, a third party drive utility which appears to be corrupted. Windows isn't going to play to nice with this and my best advice is that you need to kiss it good bye. If it were me, I'd pull everything off the machine that you want to save and back it up to another drive or removable media and then start from scratch. Those third party drive utilities like EZ Drive should be avoided at all costs.

The ball is in your court and while some like all kinds partitions, I'm not among them. (I'll get considerable dissention here, but .......) I'd keep the 160 as a 160 and the 120 as a 120 and I'd delete all partitions and reformat both with one partition each. Then I'd do a CLEAN INSTALL with only one drive connected and add the second drive after I was finished. Whichever drive is the faster of the two would be my system drive. If they are both rated about the same, I'd use the samller of the two as my system drive. It may raise some eyebrows but personally, I'm using 36Gig drives for system drives.

Now that I've given you my opinion, lets get back to giving you some help. If you want to salvage what you have in terms of partitions, the current OS and loaded applications, I'm going to need to get you some assistance because I'm not the guy with knowledge needed to help you work your way out of this corrupt EZ Drive situation.

Ball's back in your court Barry - should we get you some help here?

 

Hi Barry,

Maybe I missed something here, but did you try booting from the Partition Magic CD, or better still from the Rescue disks you made? If PM can't find anything that way I think you're stuffed.

Roger

 

OK, I've been thinking about this and have come up with some options. I'm not sure which, if any, will work, but I'll throw them out for input.
1) I could boot with Seagate CD and delete partition #1 & 2. After doing that, I could create a new partition where they used to be. With that new partition made, I could use that partition to format and then install XP. Afterwards, I could use Partition Magic to break that partition into 2 partitions. Once done, I could either accept that my boot will be on my 2nd partition, with my OS, or I could use XXClone to copy the boot onto partition 1, or I could use bootcfg /rebuild to make a new boot, hopefully on partition 1.
2) I don't have the Partition Magic CD, so maybe I could select all of the contents of my Partition Magic folder and then send it to my burner and see if that CD will be bootable.
3) I could then make a rescue disk using Partition Magic or Ghost to prevent this from happening again.

I don't know where the EZ-Drive came from, where it is or how to fix or get rid of it. I know that I was able to use Partition Magic when I first set up the drive, and it saw both drives and all the partitions.
Everything on that drive is already backed up, as I was doing a fresh install, but I don't have access to anything on that drive anyway, if I didn't have it backed up.
As far as the partitions, here is my thinking, based on what I've read. When people try to hack into a computer, they tend to go to the C drive. If my C drive is a FAT32 partition with no OS, it makes it more secure. As far as the other partitions, it seems to make sense to me that if he is doing his memory intensive programs like Maya 3-D graphics/animation, it would be faster if all the data was stored close together rather than just being put where it falls, all over the drive. Defragging multiple partitions seems to be less cluttered than one large drive. Also, putting things that are rarely used (ie ghost copy and downloads) on their own partitions would reduce the area used to process other data, so it wouldn't have to stumble over that data to seek or store. Any thoughts on this?
I agree that the fastest drive needs to be the system drive.
I don't see any purpose in having EZ-Drive, so if you can find a way of removing it from the system, whatever drive it is on, that sounds healthy.

Let's see where all this takes us.

 

HI Barry,

It certainly is worth while making the PM rescue disks when you can, so that any possible repairs can be made in DOS and not through the OS. What I don't really understand is why you say that hackers go into the 'C' partition. I thought that the break-in was made through a running process, eg IE, OE, or whilst down-loading, and therefore would be via whatever was running, to the OS partition.
I look forward to other comments on this.

Roger