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Thread ID: 140176 2015-08-30 22:19:00 One dead PC....CPU or Mobo...or??? kioti (17360) Press F1
Post ID Timestamp Content User
1407640 2015-08-31 05:59:00 The CPU thats on the mobo. You didnt install another more recent / up to date one did you?[/QUOTE]

No Speedy, The CPU I mentioned is the one I have had for past 6 years close enough. I have been considering upgrading and buying a Gigabyte or Asus mobo running the 990X Chipset, both have Crossfire capability and getting one of 2 AMD FX CPU in the 4GHz range with 8 or 16GB DDR3Corsair RAM. But have not done anything along those lines yet. Need more RAM as now I find in Task Manager that Firefox and Adobe Flash Player are chewing up close to 1GB of Memory while I am playing Criminal Case in Facebook. Absurd amount of Ram to play an Internet game.
kioti (17360)
1407641 2015-08-31 06:06:00 The CPU thats on the mobo. You didnt install another more recent / up to date one did you?[/QUOTE]

No Speedy, The CPU I mentioned is the one I have had for past 6 years close enough. I have been considering upgrading and buying a Gigabyte or Asus mobo running the 990X Chipset, both have Crossfire capability and getting one of 2 AMD FX CPU in the 4GHz range with 8 or 16GB DDR3Corsair RAM. But have not done anything along those lines yet. Need more RAM as now I find in Task Manager that Firefox and Adobe Flash Player are chewing up close to 1GB of Memory while I am playing Criminal Case in Facebook. Absurd amount of Ram to play an Internet game.
kioti (17360)
1407642 2015-08-31 06:10:00 ]

The CPU thats on the mobo. You didnt install another more recent / up to date one did you?[/QUOTE]

Mo Speedy, no new CPU. The one I mentioned is the same one I have had for 6 years, maybe 7.
kioti (17360)
1407643 2015-08-31 06:17:00 Since you cleared the CMOS / BIOS. Reconfigure it. If you can get into the BIOS with the hdd connected.

The BIOS has to detect it before windows will see it.

Thanks Speedy. However I cannot get into BIOS at all. As I mentioned in a reply about eventually getting the computer to boot and it hanging at HDD detection, I have no keyboard being found for me to hit Del and Enter Setup (BIOS)
kioti (17360)
1407644 2015-08-31 08:30:00 Problem solved. Unable to get into BIOS and with the monitor screen having decided to turn black after 15 seconds of showing no HDD detection everytime I rebooted the computer, I decided to try getting at the insides using Linux GParted Live CD. So I power off computer, plug the power molex into the optic drive, reboot and push button to open the Drive tray to insert the GParted disc asap and on screen comes a Yellow and Blue window stating Checksum updating or something like that but definitely Checksum then POST screen detects both C HDD drive and Optic drive and computer opens to in 7. Now after being open for a few minutes computer has rebooted itself as is now at open Windows/ Desktop. Maybe I need to spend a bit of time setting it all up again and adding back the other hardware like HDDs and Graphics card.....one at a time......hell, I had even connected a PS2 keyboard to try getting BIOS to open as no USB keyboard would function.,,,,,,Now how to I mark this post as being solved:clap?? And thank you all for your time and advice. kioti (17360)
1407645 2015-08-31 08:43:00 If its a checksum error it sounds like a BIOS prob. Or maybe a corrupt BIOS.

If it's still working update the BIOS. Just make sure you get the right BIOS for the revision of the mobo. Since, there's 4-5 revisions of this motherboard

BUT dont flash a BETA BIOS. Theyre beta for a reason
Speedy Gonzales (78)
1407646 2015-08-31 09:09:00 Thanks Speedy. Bios I have is FA. I had to get that BIOS back when I got this mobo and the AMD Athlon II x4 630 CPU and the RAM, back when I lived in Invercargill in about 2009 and was starting out on the Digital Media Animation Diploma at SIT (Southland Institute of Technology). I had fried the Gigabyte mobo I had at that time using Gigabyte Bios update and it had somehow as far as I could see had chosen the Chipset Drivers in its choice and I clicked the 'Do' tab and that was it. Black screen. So I am a big bit wary about updating BIOS......At that time i was signing into Press F1 as gza and lost contact and sign in details so I created a new user ID. You may remember me from when I lived in Auckland and was posting to Press F1 and you spent a good few hours on Christmas eve via TeamViewer clearing out a really messy Registry on my computer. That would have been in 2006/7. I will consider updating the BIOS to a modern one, hesitant because as you say there are 4-5 revisions of the mobo, and AIDA64 Extreme tells me it is rev4 and CPUID tells me otherwise. I will get the rev as is printed on the existing Mobo. I certainly will not be updating to a Beta version of BIOS. I remember you saying way back when I needed new BIOS to get the AMD CPU I have to seen so I could install 64 Bit W7. Thanks for the advice Oh, I am using the computer that had the problems now, only the 1 HDD (C Drive) connected and using onboard graphics for now. Tomorrow I will add back the other hardware piece at a time. I was toying with using the Dual BIOS capability of the mobo to try to see if that would repair the no HDD detection and was googling the How to Do it, when I decided to try seeing if I could get the GParted Live to open and run. kioti (17360)
1407647 2015-08-31 10:03:00 Speedy and any other person who is interested and can comment... I mentioned differences between Aida64 and CPU-Z assessment of my motherboard and other data. Here are the differences, not to forget that Aida64 sees my motherboard as being socket AM2 and CPU-Z sees it as being AM3. Also, Aida64 shows level 3 cache for the AMD Athlon IIx4 630 CPU installed and the Propus version of the C:U that I have does not have any Level 3 cache....interestingly confusing; Anyway here are the two reports:

Aida64 Extreme

Motherboard Properties:
Motherboard ID 09/03/2009-RS740-SB710-6A669G0BC-00
Motherboard Name Gigabyte GA-MA74GM-S2 v4 (2 PCI, 1 PCI-E x1, 1 PCI-E x16, 2 DDR2 DIMM, Audio, Video, Gigabit LAN)

Chipset Properties:
Motherboard Chipset AMD 740G, AMD K10

BIOS Properties:
System BIOS Date 09/03/09
Video BIOS Date 02/14/08
Award BIOS Type Award Modular BIOS v6.00PG
Award BIOS Message AMD RS740 BIOS for GA-MA74GM-S2 FA
DMI BIOS Version FA

............................................
CPU-Z

DMI BIOS
vendor Award Software International Inc.
version FA
date 09/03/2009
ROM size 1024 KB

DMI System Information
manufacturer Gigabyte Technology Co. Ltd.
product GA-MA74GM-S2
version unknown
serial unknown
UUID {30464336-3934-4631-3036-3746FFFFFFFF}
SKU unknown
family unknown
kioti (17360)
1407648 2015-08-31 21:21:00 The revision SHOULD also be etched on the mobo somewhere as well. Maybe near the middle of the mobo

There's a revision 4, 4.1, 4.3, and 4.4. And a revision 1, 2 and 3.

It maybe 4, thats the only revision 4, with FA in it. And it's the first BIOS. It matches the date you posted from 2009.

That revision is up to FK now (you're 10 BIOS'es behind)
Speedy Gonzales (78)
1407649 2015-09-01 04:29:00 will now strip out components of the sleeping PC

So it really was "sleeping"!

I could only think of Monty Python's parrot... :)

Removing the power for a while is good advice. I couldn't get Mrs Micro's Vista laptop to show anything so we bought a Pavilion k009tu

Then I discovered that removing the battery pack cured the problem :blush:

(We are very happy with the Pavilion, which I've converted to W10. It only cost $580 from DSE and is hugely more functional than tablets costing nearly twice that. I think DSE were throwing them out because buyers wanted W10 already set up. The touchscreen is a lot better than a touchpad for someone like me who has never had a laptop.)
BBCmicro (15761)
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