Gigabyte Mainboard, BIOS ROM checksum error on startup

[ando57]

Hi,

I have a brand new Gigabyte GA-8ST800 Mainboard.

When I boot the machine up sometimes I get a display and sometimes I do not (2/3 of the time I don't get a display). I have tried 2x graphics cards (NVIDIA Sparkle and Radeon 9600) and they both do exactly the same thing.

Sometimes when I boot up the display has several horizontal bands of black with flashing white letters (and characters that look like ticks), there are also rectangular blue blocks on the display.

Sometimes the display shows garbled pre-bios text with additional random characters all over the screen.

Other times when I boot up there is a message on the screen, see below for the exact layout:


Award BootBlock BIOS v1.0
Copyright (c) 2000, Award Software, Inc.

BIOS ROM checksum error

Detecting floppy drive A media. . .
INSERT SYSTEM DISK AND PRESS ENTER


I think that although this is a brand new board that the BIOS is corrupt

I have downloaded the latest 'bios_8st800_f2.exe' from the Gigabyte website and unpacked it.

I created a windows boot disk and copied the 2x files to the floppy as well:

flash867.exe
8ST800.F2

I created an autoexec.bat file that reads:

@ECHO OFF
flash867 8st800.f2

When I pop the disk in the a: and startup nothing happens except getting a garbled screen however on any other PC the floppy brings up the flash utility.

any ideas?

have I got a busted mainboard or am I just doing something incorrectly?

Thanks in advance,


Jeff.

 

[GoatyGoat]

Try:

a) resetting CMOS (see your MOBO manual on how to do this...)
b) Buying a new BIOS chip - your current one may have busted

 

[ando57]

It was the RAM!!

How weird is that, I had a 'DDR 512 400' in one of the slots that I exchanged for a 'DDR 512 333' and it booted, detected my IDE's etc.

 

[GoatyGoat]

Well I'm glad you solved it after one post that didn't help at all lol