Have I fried my BIOS?

[Straylight]

Last night I switched my computer off while I was in the bios (basically, I just hit the switch). While I was in the BIOS, I didn't actually change anything. Now the system won't start. At the moment when you hit power, I can hear some of the usual sounds (hard disks/fans/cds spinning up). However there is no attempt to read any of the hard disks (no "clucking" sound), and no signal to the monitor. Num lock and Caps lock do not light when pressed either.

Has anyone else experienced this before ~ have I destroyed something? Also, does anyone know an easy way of fixing/replacing a BIOS?

FYI, the system is an Athlon 1600XP, and the BIOS system is "686 Amibios" (reading off the chip label). It appears to be replaceable.

Can anyone help me?

[LorentzForce]

Grab that manual or that motherboard and reset the BIOS. Usually a jumper that when becomes 'on' short-circuits the battery (which stores all the info about your boot config, like clock speed and frequencies) and everything resets, and when 'off' becomes default mode, which in default everything should work.

If it works, then all's good, and just set up your system again.

If it doesn't work, then you'll have to get a new BIOS, although it's unlikely.

Hope that helps.

[glitch1501]

if the jumper doesnt work, then take out the battery, it could take a while for the board to drain, from a few mins - days

[Straylight]

YES! Thanks Lorentz, your a legend. I've successfully reset my BIOS. Now I need to set it up again.

edit: As my next question, anyone know why my system is restarting in Windows and Linux during the boot process?

Linux failsave produces a weird error message - it dumps a load of hex to the screen under the heading "stack", along with something about a page fault and says:

"Kernel panic: Attempting to kill init!"
I'm wondering whether my memory might be screwed up...

EDIT.. don't worry, fixed that too. (tweaked some memory settings) Phew, it all works now. Morale of the story -- NEVER reset your computer whilst in the BIOS!

EDIT 3: Dang, I really thing I might have fried some memory too.. I seem to be gettin some random reboots... :/
I think I'm gonna be forced to buy some replacement memory...

[Mithrandir]

Are you overclocking? That's indicative of a heat failure due to:
1. Impropper memory speeds.
2. Impropper MB speeds.
3. Impropperly overclocking.

BTW: If these settings are one way for a while, you kinda "burn in" those settings to the chips. If you set these any differently later.... BAM!

[Straylight]

Oooh, I think I might have overclocked and then forgot about it... it was about 10% from what I remember. I guess that thing does get told to do a lotta work - the music production I do on there is quite intensive...

I suppose that just one of the strips is burnt - perhaps I can get away with running on less memory for a while. I hope so... I'm already beginning to miss my huge MP3 library.

[glitch1501]

were you flashing your bios? cause i heard that if you are overclocked while you flash, it may cause some bad problems

[LorentzForce]

Well, at least the problem is solved now

A new stick eh? Hmm... *imagines getting another 512 stick and making his machine have 1.2GB of RAM*

[shooraijin]

*smiles and softly strokes his 2GB dual G4*

[LorentzForce]

Darn it! I need a new motherboard, the one that can carry 3GB of RAM. More than some old hard drives.

[andyroo]

3 GB of RAM? That's one Gig less than what my hard drive can store... unformatted that is.

[Mithrandir]

*looks a rack of Xserves*
...
*looks a shoobie*

[shooraijin]

Yeah, but they're not in your house either, silly

*pats stockholm*

[Straylight]

I pulled a faulty strip out - and the system works fine. It just has 384mb of RAM now instead of 640. Thanks for all the suggestions!

[Mithrandir]

><