Checksum Error ECS Motherboard

Here's the board showing where the battery is located:
http://support.gateway.com/s/MOTHERBD/Shared/4006254R/4006254Rmv.shtml

I'll probably be getting one of those batteries tomorrow morning, as I have checked at walgreens and they have them + on Tuesday I get a 15% military discount.

I also checked the BIOS and in one area it gave a battery voltage and it was running at 3.02 - 3.04 V.

I hope this is not something more dire but until proven otherwise I am going to assume it is an early demise of the CMOS battery.

Only had one of those ever go out and was on an old 200 mhz Pentium Pro on a Supermicro M/B and it lasted at least 5 years and I am using an XP machine that is still working with the same battery for at leact 7, if not 8 years.

I lso know in replacing the battery it will clear the CMOS - I plan on making digital pictures of what is in the CMOS before then but I think the values were already set to default when I had the checksum error this morning and used F1 to continue.

Anyway - we shall see !!!

if it has 3.0 V the battery is fine
your cmos can be bad, but try using bios default settings, or a bios upgrade !

when do you get this error?  at boot stage? otherwise it can be also a ram problem; post back more info !

the only 1 error I got was at boot - I believe it was reset to default settings when the checksum error happened.

Should I go ahead anyway and replace the battery? I am assuming the battery value I saw in BIOS was the voltage of the CMOS battery itself.

So far the error has not repeated itself.

Silly question but did you happen to unplug the pc from power for any length of time before this error?

As a general precaution I cut the power to all power strips every night for the last year at least and when I go out of town all of my 4 computers are totally unplugged from the wall and disconnected from phone or cable lines. I have had no problems with this in my 12 years of computing.

But since you have asked - I have had some mysterious crashes and several times when I have booted the computer it has turned on - fans running, etc but the monitor is black - several tries later and it will boot up.

Yesterday morning after several of these boots I got the checksum error.

now for the battery; if you want , you can easily replace it, it is a current model, and does not cost much, around 5 $

I have been out of town for several days and have not had an opportunity to comment. So far I have not had a problem with this issue I have had, although I do get some crashes and some of them happen at boot but I do not get a BSOD, so I have no idea what the actual problem might be.

It seems like this might be one of those "wait and see issues" !!!

Not seen any but will check again - still some of this ("crashes") might be some bad software - who knows.

I can really find no software issues. I wish on these crashes that I'd have a BSOD which would leave me with some info as to the cause. So far I have not had another checksum error and not had any "crashes" in awhile now. By saying this I am not 100% sure this problem is finished, but rather there seems to be a "break in the action". I did replace the battery, which probably was ok in the first place but none-the-less was an item to be looked at.

If this poor, and not so old, computer will hold together somewhat past the first quarter of 2010 I'll have enough money to buy a decent computer and pay cash for it. I own 2 Gateways and I should have had my heard examined for getting the first one and shot for buying the second one. The next one will be a custom built one with a decent M/B, processor, RAM and video card, not to mention a first rate PSU and cooling.

Any further ideas are welcomed !

did you test with another power supply yet?  that is the first candidate here imo !

I haven't tested it with another PSU - right now I don't have the finances to purchase one & have it installed yet - perhaps after the holidays (I hope).

I also checked something out - if you will remember I was seeing a low voltage on the 3.3 V? Well I looked in the BIOS and it DOES report a correct voltage and everything else I looked at was reporting 1.76 v or something like that. So on that I figure that the voltage is ok on the PSU.

Still as of yet no checksum errors or mysterious crashes at any time. Does Vista have the capability of showing a BSOD anyway? my other computers are all XP, except my vista 64 bit which has literally not been touched since bought in July. I have been very busy and had numerous health matters to attend to and this making my attention to other matters less and less.

I still believe I need a computer that I can hire to be built from the ground up with decent components and I might have that kind of money at the beginning of the summer.

can you get yor hands on a 2nd hand one, to use the PS?

nope and nothing I can cannibalize - possibly extra $$$ in mid Dec 09

then you'll need your $$$ for presents...

Very few presents to get this year - all I mainly do is send out custom made holiday cards - already purchased ink for my 3 computers: Epson 1280, 320 & C88+ and paper and envelopes + stamps.

I guess now the only thing to do is wait and hope this thing makes it another 6 months. So far it has been working ok with no real major problems.

Thanks for all the help but this might be an issure where a full resolve is not possible.