Abit AA8XE - 3rd Eye - Intermittent Cold Boot - Post Code 9.0
pcpilot
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 湟uru 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.