Help with m598 motherboard

[hendo68]

I have one of these I recently installed. After several reboots I get a primary HD failure and it asks for boot disk. I go into the bios and re autodetect, it picks up the drive and all is fine for about 5-8 reboots. Then same thing. I changed the cmos battery and everything was fine for about a day and a half now the same thing. Anybody else had this problem before? Any assistance would be appreciated.
Jack

 

[horndog61]

Hi,

Hendo68, Is this a Microstar system board model 598? If so
let me know. I think I can help you with this.

 

[Guest_imported]

I believe it is a PC Chips. I read somewhere that this may be a copycat board. I'm not completely sure of that though.
Thanks, Jack

 

[horndog61]

Hello again Jack,

Well In order for me to be able to help you, Haveing
that Info would make life easer. Can you look inside and see if there are any markings that would tell you WHO makes the system board, Sometimes they SILKSCREEN model numbers on the system board. You may want to check along the edeges for a model number or MFG. name. Also if you can tell me WHAT's on the system board as far as peripherals goes. Like I/O Sound, USB's any more info. would help me alot!

I have seen this happen on some MicroStar system boards and the fix was todo a BIOS upgrade, But you have to be sure for one, WHO makes the BIOS and what VER and DATE it has now. You can get the BIOS ver and DATE on the Boot, BUT YOU HAVE TO BE FAST! cuse it loads and tells you on the boot!

Thanks,
Frank

 

[Books4Me]

Be fast...or press the 'pause'key while booting.

 

[Sshaker]

Hendo,

Do search for a file called CTBIOS which you can also get from the AWARD site. From DOS prompt, type CTBIOS and will tell you manufacturer is VTECH or PC CHIPS and the date of BIOS as well as the website to get a later BIOS from.

Download a file called Data Advisor from Ontrack which will interogate your HDD for any probs.... namely I/O error.

Cheers....

 

[Guest_imported]

Thanks to all, problem solved. The manual said to auto detect in the bios than save the settings. I went back and switched the setting to auto detect the Primary on each start up and it seems to be working fine.
Jack

 

[Alt255]

I was about to say that. You can't trust the BIOS to auto-detect the drive each time you boot unless to auto-detect from within setup and save the changes. After that, you are actually better off changing the drive identification from "Auto" to the settings stored in the CMOS. It's a bit quicker because the BIOS doesn't have to detect the drive on each boot, it just uses the saved settings.

Alt255@Vorpalcom.Intranets.com

"If you can get people to ask the wrong questions, they'll never find the right answers."[tt]
Thomas Pynchon[/tt]

Perhaps the reverse is also true....
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