Author Topic: any ideas appreciated.... (Read 297 times)

humble · « **on:** June 24, 2007, 03:30:31 PM »

I went ahead and bought I new drive (needed anyway) and reloaded a clean install of XP and Vista. I wiped the old drive and loaded linux on it. I've got ongoing problems of various kinds. In Vista if I run AH its fine (although it loads slowly (meaning initial in game images have alot of grey area) then seems to run fine...but if I tab to desk top I get bad video (wavy or straight lines on colored background) which can only be fixed by rebooting. In XP it ran fine for a bit now it will load and play then it freezes after 15 sec or so and crashes and I get the send error report.

As of now i'm guessing I do in fact have a virus in bios but also looking to trouble shoot other possibilities. My bios (AMI) has both dos and windows utilities. I dont have a floppy and cant seem to make a system disk CD (help appreciated). Assuming in fact I do have a boot/bios virus will flashing the bios in windoes actually help?...otherwise either I need to pop on a floppy or create a bootable CD....

I ran passmark on all components earlier and everything passed....other thoughts troubleshooting ideas appreciated.

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Spatula · « **Reply #1 on:** June 24, 2007, 05:00:13 PM »

Is there an option in your BIOS to reset to factory defaults? Have you tried that if its there? You could always try flashing it as you mentioned - seems like you have little to loose. There must be a way of wiping and reinstating the BIOS.

Have you tried another MOBO? If you suspect a faulty component, its often cheaper and faster to replace it and see if that fixes your prob. Just replace one thing at a time till you're back in business.

Also booting off a CD or floppy may not get you around a BIOS virus, as BIOS needs to boot first in order to even be able to see any drives attached.

Vulcan · « **Reply #2 on:** June 24, 2007, 05:29:52 PM »

BIOS virus's are rare.

What you probably need to do is a burnin test overnight that stresses your system. This will highly marginal components. I'd start with the MEM386 test.

Google Ultimate Boot CD, download and burn it. It contains lots of useful tests for such situations.

humble · « **Reply #3 on:** June 24, 2007, 06:15:19 PM »

I'd be zero'd in on a MB issue if Kapersky hasnt reported so many things. I went ahead and picked up a P5K-E. I'm gonna use the jumper to reset the bios...I used passmark standard burn in to stress test and all passed....

Will DL as per your suggestion vulcan...thanks all...