ECS K7S5A Boot Problems

[vassil3427]

Hi,
About a month ago I put together a nice inexpensive computer system for a friend of mine. It worked fine for about the first week, then...it started randomly rebooting, i wasnt sure what the problem was and I didnt have time to look at it, but this last week it's went from bad to worse, the pc would freeze when windows started to load, I tried to boot in safe mode but it still froze. And then it wouldnt boot at all, nothing, the power supply was running and the cpu fan was running but nothing was happening. So I unplugged it a few times and kept trying to boot it up until it finally started to boot, well it had the lil message "Bad Chesksum" or whatever, so i figured perhaps its the CMOS battery is dead or something, so i bought a new one. No such luck, now it freezes when its detecting the drives, and it wont let me enter the BIOS it totally freezes. And sometimes the screen even pops up with tons of colorful boxs and lots of odd letters and numbers. So i think the mobo's AMI bios chip is messed up, which means I'll have to return it. But what do you guys think the problem is?

Specs of Problem System:
Processor::AMD Duron 950Mhz.
MOBO:ECS K7S5A
HDD:20GB Western Digital 5400rpm
RAm:256mb PC133
Power Supply: Cheap generic 300w

 

[SuperCheetah]

Sounds to me like you've got yourself a PSU problem. Either that or something isn't seated properly. I would recheck EVERYTHING and make sure nothing is running hot. Try switching out PSU's and see what happens.

See this thread, seems this guy is having similar problems:

https://www.techspot.com/vb/showthread.php?s=&threadid=1399

Hope you can resolve your problem soon!

 

[Rick]

I have two suggestions for you...

Your memory is a very likely cause of this. Try to swap it out with memory that you know works, test each memory module one by one. I've heard of problems with your board (especially DDR) not properly supporting "cheap" memory, this could be another cause rather than a bad memory module. This is also a good reason to buy quality memory, if you haven't.

The second is clearing your CMOS using the CMOS clear jumper. Look for it in your motherboard manual and then use the jumper. This will restore your BIOS settings to a workable state, perhaps.

As for the PSU, I don't think that is the cause. I've seen people run a lot more with a lot less and still not have any problems. I realize underpowered PSU problems are unique to each compuer, but as long as your PSU is working properly, it should be more than enough under all situations... Especailly if you have a low end video card and few "extra" components (fans, add in cards, periperhal devices, etc..)

 

[vegasgmc]

I just went throught the same thing on 2 other computers. It was the motherboard. I was reading some reviews of ECS and several places comented that they had great boards but some time had quality control problems. You should also try swapping out the PS, memory and clearing the CMOS. The checksum error also makes me wonder if the CMOS chip is faulty or you might have gotten a spike from the power supply that damaged it. Hope this helped.

 

[vassil3427]

Well after fooling around a little while I figured out it was the cheap powersupply, i swapped it with mine and it ran fine. So i guess I'll buy a new one, Thanks for all your help

 

[Rick]

Great!