BIOS problems on K7S5A

[KC5AV]

I have a K7S5A that is losing its mind every time it is turned off. The system was built for someone else, and for whatever reason, he doesn't like the idea of just leaving his pc on 24/7. When he goes to boot the system, he gets cmos checksum errors and everything has reset to default. I replaced the battery on the board, and I thought that solved the problem. It turns out he just hadn't used the computer for a few days. Any suggestions on what to try next? If it makes any difference, here are the other things in the system:

K7S5A Motherboard
256 megs of Crucial pc133
64 meg MSI Geforce 4 MX440
15 gig HD

Thanks for the suggestions... If all else fails, I'll just RMA it to Newegg.

 

[bigtimmn2]

Has the CMOS battery been replaced?

That should cure the problem, simple, quick and inexpensive.

Of course, that may not be the issue, but i would try that first.

Bigtim

 

[bigtimmn2]

see what i get for not reading the post fully... whoops.

Hmm... dont know what to tell you, ocworkbench has a huge board devoted to this board, and alot of issues that are associated with it. you may want to check it out.

 

[KC5AV]

Thanks for the heads up... I'll look over there.

Anyone else? Anyone?

 

[Peter]

Do you get any additional messages alongside the "CMOS checksum error"? "Battery low", "memory size mismatch"? Only the former indicates bad battery, other errors need following.

You also need to check on the power supply - min. 1.5A on the +5Vstandby rail are required. Also, check whether the battery is even connected ("CMOS Clear" jumper set to Normal?).

 

[KC5AV]

The jumper is set correctly. I'll check the voltages. I've got an extra power supply floating around somewhere, I may give that a try.

Thanks.

 

[Peter]

The important thing everybody seems to miss is to read the reason for the CMOS checksum error from the line above that message.

 

[KC5AV]

I would do that, except it isn't on my machine. It's one I built for someone. Of course, no one ever writes down error messages.

 

[Krugger]

I think this is one of the common problems some users have encountered.
try this board for info board
there are posts there and links to solutions that are much more clear than anything i could put here.

 

[HermitGuy]

I think this is one of the common problems some users have encountered.

This is correct, it is one of the common problems with this board. I only have the problem about every six weeks or whenever I start thinking it's fixed, whichever comes first.

As far as I've seen nobody has come up with a definitive reason for why this happens or a real fix, but since it's only an intermittent thing for me and otherwise the board is very stable I'll live with it until my next upgrade.

I have changed the battery and done bios upgrades, I also turned off the quick boot setting in the bios because there were reports that this would solve the problem, it was a no go for me.

 

[Krugger]

PS i believe this is commonly referred to as the 'cold boot' problem, in case that helps in your searchs.
-Krugger

 

[drake6]

HMMMM, are you using the latest bios ? Also when I was using the onboard nic I was get a cmos error about every two to three weeks. I just recent took out my old kingston intel chipset nic (I was having dsl problems which I though were nic related NOT!) which I was using and in a 10 month period and had only one cmos dump the morning after I was I was doing overclock experment with the cheepoman bios (150fbs cleared cmos with j4 jumper). Recently I went back to the onboard lan and the last week Ive had to reset my bios setting 3 times? I going to test my theroy out later this week. But I had fewer cmos problem when not using the onboard lan wierd but true. Also you might want to try the last offical bios on the ecs site it very stable and alot of people have seen alot of stablity improvement and fewer cmos dumps with it hope this helps and good luck

 

[Krugger]

Originally posted by: Krugger
PS i believe this is commonly referred to as the 'cold boot' problem, in case that helps in your searchs.
-Krugger

here's a post from a great k7s5a forum about the cold boot fix, and more info about it in general
link

 

[BarryAZ]

I've seen this as well -- more so on the PCChips M810 board which is, as far as I can tell, a flat out clone of this ECS motherboard.

There are some BIOS updates out there on the web which will allow you to overclock this motherboard (and the ECS motherboard). Strangely enough, overclocking (by 3%) seems to *fix* this problem in many cases.

 

[Peter]

Originally posted by: BarryAZ
I've seen this as well -- more so on the PCChips M810 board which is, as far as I can tell, a flat out clone of this ECS motherboard.

There are still people who don't know that ECS and PC-Chips are the same company ...

Besides, the PC-Chips OEM complement of the "ECS K7S5A" retail product is M830, with U and/or L suffix for USB 2.0 and LAN onboard.

 

[cherryv]

are you aware that the board though it will support high end processors was built initially when high end was 1 gig if you purchased the board recently and never bothered to update the bios it is possible the bios version your running on the board now is not suitable for a CPU higher then 1 gig ... check the BIOS version on the ECS site if your CPU is higher then 1 Gig .... tis worth a try