ASUS K8V BIOS problem

Ashley J Gittins amd64 at purple.dropbear.id.au
Thu Apr 15 21:57:47 UTC 2004


On Fri, 16 Apr 2004 03:44 am, Mike Cooper wrote:
> This isn't Linux specific at all, but ASUS Tech Support is non-existant
> so I'm hoping someone might have seen this before...
>
> I have an ASUS K8V with Athlon64 3000 CPU and a 512MB DIMM (one that's
> listed in the K8V manual as being approved).
>
> The problem is the BIOS never attempts to boot from any device (DVD, IDE
> disk, or floppy).  I never seen any activity light on any boot device.
>
> It also almost never goes into BIOS setup mode when I hit <DEL>.  After
> the BIOS startup screen showing config info, it goes to the RAID
> initialization screen, then the screen clears and I get absolutely
> nothing.  The monitor is getting a video signal still, but the screen is
> blank.  Sometimes I can hit <DEL> at this point and I'll get "Entering
> Setup ...", but nothing happens.
>
> If I hit <DEL> during the initial BIOS "booting" screen I can see it say
> "Entering Setup ..." mixed in with the normal BIOS boot messages, but it
> still just goes to the "on, but blank screen" mode.
>
> Twice I was able to hit <F8> to get the BIOS boot menu.
>
> Once I was actually able to get into BIOS SETUP.  That was the first
> time I powered on after building the system.
>
> I've replaced the K8V and the replacement has the same problem.
>
> Anybody seen anything like this?
>
> 	mike

Hi Mike,
	I have an Athlon64 3400+ in an Asus K8V deluxe, which has the 3com gigabit 
interface (so perhaps a later revision than the one Seth's experiences relate 
to). I've not had problems like you've described, so I might not be of much 
help other than to say that the board _can_ work :-)

A friend bought one and had trouble with booting it reliably, but it turned 
out he was sent the wrong ram - he had registered ram installed which caused 
instability with one simm, and no booting at all with two.

I'd recommend going back to the basic checks, especially since you have tried 
two mobo's. Check that the heatsink is properly installed, with either the 
heat-transer pad properly applied or with heatsink compound (since you had 
the board replaced I expect the pad would have to have been replaced). Also, 
your power supply might not be up to the task (I'm using a 550W supply), and 
could cause the intermittent behaivour you have described, as could 
motherboard mounting hex-bolts in the wrong places.

Bizarrely, mine came with a spring lodged in the FDD connector which caused 
the floppy controller to not work, although the rest of the mobo worked ok, 
and all was fine after removing the superfluous spring - perhaps some of 
Asus' assembly line is falling apart and donating parts to the motherboards 
:-) - but again, if this is the second mobo, it's unlikely to be a mobo fault 
(assuming both were new, and not from old stock somewhere).

Just so you know, you usually don't get into the bios setup screen until after 
the raid controllers have gone through their initialisation (unless I'm just 
slow at hitting delete), which might be a pain if for some reason the promise 
or via controllers have issues.

Cover the basics, remove all cards not required for booting (ie, all but 
video), check or swap out the power supply, go over the mobo mounting, 
heatsink/fan (make sure the cpu fan is connected to the right header so the 
bios can check the fan speed), and failing that, dig around at reshape for a 
PCI POST card so you can find out if it's always failing at the same bootup 
checks.

Perhaps try a different vga card too if you have access to one.

For exactly what's in my system you can look at
http://www.purple.dropbear.id.au/node/view/6
but it's not likely to be much help, as I suspect you have either an 
incompatibility problem or a faulty piece of hardware somewhere (and not a 
faulty mobo).

Cheers,
	Ash.





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