CMOS Lock-up

[shaky]

Hi guys I am a new member and I hope I am posting in the right place, any how I am working on a GA 7VKMP motherboard and I am having problems with it my PC keeps un shuting down by it self, I checked the temp on the procesor and it is fine, also updated my Bios and still doing it, I formated the hard drive to reinstall the OS and can not do it becasue of it.

Has any of you had a similar problem, and any idea which pins I need to jump to clear the Cmos??

Thank you very much for your help.

shaky

[AMDave]

Hi shaky. :hello2:

Firstly let me say welcome to the forum. Hope you enjoy your visits. Welcome to the world of Distributed Computing projects where we like to get the most out of our machines. Speaking of which...

Sounds like a very annoying problem you have there.

I came across an MSI board that did something similar. The temp reading was ok but it kept rebooting itself.

Through bench testing (over and over and over ...phew) we found that it was a faulty CPU temp detector. I disabled the CPU temp monitor and it has behaved well ever since. It is the only instance of this that I know of and is rare. But there you go it can happen. (Note - the mobo temp monitor still worked fine, it was just the CPU temp that was faulty)

However, this might not be your problem, but since you mention temperature I'll focus on it here...

Note that a faulty D-Cell battery can have the same effect
also check the seating of the RAM in the slots and the seating of the mobo-power connectors (pls unplug from mains when doing this :shock: )

You will find the online manual for your board here:
http://america.giga-byte.com/MotherBoard/FileList/Manual/manual_7vkmp_e.pdf

The first thing I notice is that the mobo layout diagram does not show a BIOS clear jumper anywhere. It appears that there is not a jumper for this on that board.

On page 27 the manual advises that if you want to clear the BIOS
1. Turn OFF the computer and unplug the power cord.
2. Remove the battery, wait for 30 second.
3. Re-install the battery.
4. Plug the power cord and turn ON the computer.

That should get you back to your factory settings.

Try the machine for a while with the settings you put in after that

After that, if it still keeps rebooting...then try different temp settings (min max and disabled) for the temp monitor to find out which is initiating the reboot.

Something else I notice is that both CPU and mobo temp monitors exists, but the BIOS has only one shutdown trigger.

On page 51 of the manual a default of 110C/230F is shown. Thats nuts. On the next page they show the temp ranges for the temp monitor on that board. The whole range was implemented too high.

At 90C you can get damage to your CPU. I run my temp shutdown triggers at 70C.

The manual does not say whether the restart is initiated from the CPU temp or the mobo temp, which is annoying.

NOTE - if you have OCd the board, I highly recommend that you un-OC it if you are going to run with the temp monitor off.

Gd luck shaky. I hope that no permanent damage has been done and you get back to having a useful computer.

All the best for 2006. :D

[vaughan]

Good advice AMDave.

One other thing I have done when I had a similar problem with an ASUS A7N8X board was I had to UNDER clock it. Has run OK since but is still a bit temperature sensitive. It just shuts down when the computer room ambient gets over 28°C. Outside temp is currently 31.4°C so we'll see how long the air cond can keep things tolerable. My thermometer says 28°C now so the ASUS will be close to shutdown!

Welcome to the team shaky and yes you posted in the right place :!:

[NVM]

i'd leave the battery out for more than 30 seconds to be sure.i looked at the mobo layout too and didn't see a jumper.

[NeoGen]

Believe it or not I saw once a similar case where the problem was that there was some kind of bad contact (short circuiting) between the board and the computer case.

If I removed the motherboard with cpu and etc outside of the case and just put it running laying on top of a cardboard, it would run perfectly hours and hours. Even stress testing it.
When I put it back in the case and attached it, it would start shutting itself down and rebooting by itself in a matter of a few minutes. And it was no heating problem, when I attached it to the case I always left the case wide open.

[shaky]

wow thank you for the nice welcome guys I appreciate it, also thanks you for all the feed back, I checked the temp and my CPU is running at 72c , which is a bit high.

I will follow your instructions and get back to you, tnx again.

shaky

[AMDave]

If it is running that high, you might want to try re-seating the CPU with some silver-gel (available at most good PC shops) - be careful though.

In the "hardware" forum there was a link to a stp-by-step recipe on another site for doing this correctly.

I have an engagement to get to right now, perhaps someone else can find it for you before I get back.

6 hrs til new year for me in Brisbane ;)

[AMDave]

The thread is here
http://www.amdusers.com/modules.php?name=Forums&file=viewtopic&t=1188

The CPU re-seating task sheet is here
http://www.crazypc.com/articles/hsfinstall.htm

[shaky]

Thank you so very much guys I appreciate your help.