asked on
Asus P4C800-E will-not-Post-oddness
Howdy,
So, I am perplexed. Built a desktop witht he following components:
P4 3.06C
1 GB Kingston 3200 (matched pair)
2 200 gb Western Digital SATA Drives in striped mode
ATI Radeon 9600XT
The machine worked fine, without any problems, like a champ for several months (luckily long enough to finish Half Life 2). Then one day I came home and it was off (I have surge protectors). Tried turning it on and nothing, well kinda nothing. The machine turns on, fans go (onCPU and in Chasis, power light on Mobo is lit, but it fails to POST. Absolutely nothing sent to monitor, no critical beeps, nothing. Have tried swapping all components including CPU, limiting number of memory chips used, banks used, tried several video cards (hoped for some BIOS AGP setting error, and even tried an old PCI video card), remounted Mobo..... My problem is that since I have abolutely no fault tolerance, if I screw around with the BIOS (resetting either with jumpers or CMOS battery removal), I will lose mappings and consequently all my data. When I purchased the board and installed it about three months ago I verified it had the most recent BIOS revision. Any suggestions? Probably missing something obvious here, but damned if I can see it.
Thanks again,
Sean
So, I am perplexed. Built a desktop witht he following components:
P4 3.06C
1 GB Kingston 3200 (matched pair)
2 200 gb Western Digital SATA Drives in striped mode
ATI Radeon 9600XT
The machine worked fine, without any problems, like a champ for several months (luckily long enough to finish Half Life 2). Then one day I came home and it was off (I have surge protectors). Tried turning it on and nothing, well kinda nothing. The machine turns on, fans go (onCPU and in Chasis, power light on Mobo is lit, but it fails to POST. Absolutely nothing sent to monitor, no critical beeps, nothing. Have tried swapping all components including CPU, limiting number of memory chips used, banks used, tried several video cards (hoped for some BIOS AGP setting error, and even tried an old PCI video card), remounted Mobo..... My problem is that since I have abolutely no fault tolerance, if I screw around with the BIOS (resetting either with jumpers or CMOS battery removal), I will lose mappings and consequently all my data. When I purchased the board and installed it about three months ago I verified it had the most recent BIOS revision. Any suggestions? Probably missing something obvious here, but damned if I can see it.
Thanks again,
Sean
Desktops
Last Comment
seanmf
ASKER
So, reviewed question and I left out a large and important portion: if I have to swap Mobo, reset BIOS etc. is there any way to save/restore data on the striped set?
ASKER CERTIFIED SOLUTION
THIS SOLUTION ONLY AVAILABLE TO MEMBERS.
View this solution by signing up for a free trial.
Members can start a 7-Day free trial and enjoy unlimited access to the platform.
ASKER
Alright, I was waaaay too tired last night when I posted this question. One obvious correction: its a P4 3.0E.
For economy i also just wanted to restructure the question into two parts:
1) anyone have experience or have advice with the hardware problem I am experiencing (detailed above)
and
2) what options for data restoration do I have, if any, if I swap the mobo for like kind. I cannot verify this, but it seems as the on board Promise controller stores the info required for the RAID array to be accessed. Can I get a new board or new BIOS flash to see it without overwriting the data. Hell, does anyone know if there is a promise raid chip I can pull, place on new mobo and just set BIOS to boot from RAID again? Further, if the promise controller and the BIOS are seperate entities can I mess with the BIOS to my hearts content without fear of corrupting the Promise controllers mappings?
Thanks again, will work on not writing to strangers for help when I am too tired to see anymore, Sean
For economy i also just wanted to restructure the question into two parts:
1) anyone have experience or have advice with the hardware problem I am experiencing (detailed above)
and
2) what options for data restoration do I have, if any, if I swap the mobo for like kind. I cannot verify this, but it seems as the on board Promise controller stores the info required for the RAID array to be accessed. Can I get a new board or new BIOS flash to see it without overwriting the data. Hell, does anyone know if there is a promise raid chip I can pull, place on new mobo and just set BIOS to boot from RAID again? Further, if the promise controller and the BIOS are seperate entities can I mess with the BIOS to my hearts content without fear of corrupting the Promise controllers mappings?
Thanks again, will work on not writing to strangers for help when I am too tired to see anymore, Sean
SOLUTION
THIS SOLUTION ONLY AVAILABLE TO MEMBERS.
View this solution by signing up for a free trial.
Members can start a 7-Day free trial and enjoy unlimited access to the platform.
SOLUTION
THIS SOLUTION ONLY AVAILABLE TO MEMBERS.
View this solution by signing up for a free trial.
Members can start a 7-Day free trial and enjoy unlimited access to the platform.
I know that for a RAID set created with a hardware controller card, it is possible to swap in an identical controller card and it will work. I don't think it applies to software RAID, which comes with onboard controllers.
ASKER
Thanks so far everyone.
Nobus thanks a lot for the connects. I will use several of the products from the page if I can get over the hardware hurtle.
Collander: thanks for the outline. It mirrors my general process. Motherboard shouldn't be shorting since it worked fine for several months, I remounted it to make sure, and the board recieves power: power light on mobo itself lights up, the fans for both the chasis and the cpu power up. Unless I am wrong about the symptoms of a short: in the past when I have had a short the machine does absolutely nothing, has this changed recently with the new chipsets? Cmos wasn't touched. Verified pin is in non-flash position. RAM, video card, and cpu work in different machines. Will try PSU, but the damn thing is rather new. About the RAID, plan to pester the hell out of Asus as soon as I can finally reach them.
eccs19: thanks for jumping right to the one thing I hadn't checked. I will and let ya know.
But again and seriously thanks for the advice everyone.
Nobus thanks a lot for the connects. I will use several of the products from the page if I can get over the hardware hurtle.
Collander: thanks for the outline. It mirrors my general process. Motherboard shouldn't be shorting since it worked fine for several months, I remounted it to make sure, and the board recieves power: power light on mobo itself lights up, the fans for both the chasis and the cpu power up. Unless I am wrong about the symptoms of a short: in the past when I have had a short the machine does absolutely nothing, has this changed recently with the new chipsets? Cmos wasn't touched. Verified pin is in non-flash position. RAM, video card, and cpu work in different machines. Will try PSU, but the damn thing is rather new. About the RAID, plan to pester the hell out of Asus as soon as I can finally reach them.
eccs19: thanks for jumping right to the one thing I hadn't checked. I will and let ya know.
But again and seriously thanks for the advice everyone.
Another item: if the cpu is improperly mounted, doesn't have the heatsink fan connected to the cpu fan header on the motherboard, or the fan itself does not work, that can also stop some motherboards from booting.
ASKER
So, finally got ahold of Asus after three days with several promises of a technician calling me back. Learned one thing of use for those of us with the P4c800 series: when board fails to post it will default to the onboard audio chip, which if connected will report post errors. Seems that the CPU wasn't detected. But that doesn't necassarily mean that the cpu is fried or mounted poorly, it means most likely for this board either a bad board or inadequate PSU. Will swap out PSU tommorrow. Asus was leaning towards a bad board (the cpu is brand spanking new).
Let ya know what I find out, Sean
Let ya know what I find out, Sean
ASKER
So, finally got the mobo back from Asus. Their diagnosis was and I quote: "electric and fatal". Unwilling to expound upon this. New board work fine with all the original parts. Did learn one thing: if the raid o array drives are replaced in their former order, the arrays integrity will remain intact on the new board. Thought the array info was stored on the onboard promise chip, but it is all asoftware. Since noone really could have diagnosed this one I am splitting the points, thanks everyone.