Hi,
Hope that somebody can assist me with this frustrating issue which continues to perplex my limited computer system knowledge
To offer brief background this system was my primary PC until Jan 2010 prior to replacement with a custom built i7 system. Prior to this new setup I was having to leave the system powered 24/7 as it had become a struggle to reboot successfully from cold However, once booted the system would function flawlessly and happily reboot/restart at will until switched off and a cold restart attempted.
Following a Motherboard failure resulting from a blown PSU on an unrelated Gigabyte spare system I deceided to utilise and upspec memory and PSU on the AA8XE system as a replacement. NB. At this stage the system has no OS or HDD's installed just CPU, memory and floppy/IDE optical drives.
Once again the intermittent cold boot issue has arisen always resulting in a post code fail at 9.0 (Complete µGuru initial process AWARD BIOS take over booting job) with no display. Several Power Off attempts/restarts later and I can successfully boot to FF and Disk Boot Failure (no HDD's installed remember!). Subsequent reboots/restarts are a breeze........until next 'cold' start of course.
I have noticed that when the cold boot 9.0 fail occurs the Graphics Fan does not spin up at boot however when the full boot sequence initiates correctly the Graphics fan comes immediately to life as soon as the power button is pressed. NB. I have tried reseating the graphics card but it has made no difference.
Also the power button will not power off the system when at 9.0 fail......though I suspect this is because the system boot sequence has not fully initiated?
I have also removed all memory and still have the same issue excepting when successful restart fails at C1. Memory sticks replaced and swapped one at a time to eliminate bad memory and no issues found...problem persists.
Once booting normally CPU is recognised all memory (including above test configurations) recognised correctly and IDE optical drives recognised.......even boots off an OS cd!
Have already tried CMOS reset and I am running BIOS defaults at this stage other than 'graphics initialise PCIx' rather than default 'PCI' ......the settings are not currently overclocked.
Seem to recall that RAM voltages at AA8XE default were wrong (.....only a distant memory so may not be correct on that) if so might this cause a 9.0 and this issue??
As the issue is intermittent and relates only to a start from cold I suspect that it is related to the motherboard and wonder if it is possibly a problem with the BIOS chip?
Would welcome any advice to resolve this issue.
Hope that somebody can assist me with this frustrating issue which continues to perplex my limited computer system knowledge
To offer brief background this system was my primary PC until Jan 2010 prior to replacement with a custom built i7 system. Prior to this new setup I was having to leave the system powered 24/7 as it had become a struggle to reboot successfully from cold However, once booted the system would function flawlessly and happily reboot/restart at will until switched off and a cold restart attempted.
Following a Motherboard failure resulting from a blown PSU on an unrelated Gigabyte spare system I deceided to utilise and upspec memory and PSU on the AA8XE system as a replacement. NB. At this stage the system has no OS or HDD's installed just CPU, memory and floppy/IDE optical drives.
Once again the intermittent cold boot issue has arisen always resulting in a post code fail at 9.0 (Complete µGuru initial process AWARD BIOS take over booting job) with no display. Several Power Off attempts/restarts later and I can successfully boot to FF and Disk Boot Failure (no HDD's installed remember!). Subsequent reboots/restarts are a breeze........until next 'cold' start of course.
I have noticed that when the cold boot 9.0 fail occurs the Graphics Fan does not spin up at boot however when the full boot sequence initiates correctly the Graphics fan comes immediately to life as soon as the power button is pressed. NB. I have tried reseating the graphics card but it has made no difference.
Also the power button will not power off the system when at 9.0 fail......though I suspect this is because the system boot sequence has not fully initiated?
I have also removed all memory and still have the same issue excepting when successful restart fails at C1. Memory sticks replaced and swapped one at a time to eliminate bad memory and no issues found...problem persists.
Once booting normally CPU is recognised all memory (including above test configurations) recognised correctly and IDE optical drives recognised.......even boots off an OS cd!
Have already tried CMOS reset and I am running BIOS defaults at this stage other than 'graphics initialise PCIx' rather than default 'PCI' ......the settings are not currently overclocked.
Seem to recall that RAM voltages at AA8XE default were wrong (.....only a distant memory so may not be correct on that) if so might this cause a 9.0 and this issue??
As the issue is intermittent and relates only to a start from cold I suspect that it is related to the motherboard and wonder if it is possibly a problem with the BIOS chip?
Would welcome any advice to resolve this issue.
