Hey everyone,
I don't know if I've ever had to use the troubleshooting board here before (;)) but I'm running out of ideas for a problem I'm having.

Last week I was running a game when my computer shut off all the sudden. I went to boot it back up and it wouldn't start so I reset the BIOS. It booted up after this but I got a "checksum" error and hit F1 (I think) to continue. It gets into Windows and everything is fine and I relaunch the game and play for a few hours and everything is fine. The next day I go to turn it on and it won't boot so I reset the BIOS again. After that everything is fine so I go to reset it for a test and it won't boot. Reset the BIOS and it's fine yet again.

I checked some places on the net and they all seem to say problems like that are related to a dieing motherboard battery so last night I get a replacement and swap it in but I'm still having the same problems. Other solutions I've tried to no avail include:

- Testing each stick of my memory individually and in different slots
- Pulling out all non-essential hardware
- Minor things like kicking it and yelling at it

Anyways, if anyone has any more ideas let me know and hopefully I can put off getting a new system for another few months. I just need something that will get me back into Warcraft once again.

Thanks.

if kicking and yelling didnt work i would be done at that point.

lol

did u try to manually reset the bios or reset it in the bios. my buddys comptuer did that to him or something verry similar. he reset in the bios and it workd.
dont quote me but its werth a shot at this point am i rite

What's the motherboard?

Sounds like it might be one of the ones which has a "prevent bios update" set of jumpers and it's not allowing the bios to write config info to it.

If you feel slightly more brave you could upgrade (or downgrade even) the BIOS, it's usually quite painless. That's the ultimate reset.

UNLESS you own a KT4NeoPlat and use a raid configuration as the boot. Then it's difficult

Wow, that was a lot more replies in a short period than I was expecting! Thanks everyone, but I *may* have fixed it already... I reinstalled all that "non-essential hardware that could be causing the problem" and it seems to be working again.

If the problem does arise again though I may look into flashing it with another BIOS since I wouldn't have much to lose at this point.

Thanks again everyone!

bios battery could be kicking it, seen it a few times, try replacing it.

That was the first thing I tried. Check above.

sorry missed that part lol

Update on my situation:

The computer was working fine but I hadn't run a game until yesterday and it (Warcraft - I know I know! ) froze up within 5 seconds of getting into the game. Tried turning off some settings like AGP Fast Writes and VPU Recover and it crashes again very early into the game. I checked the Event Viewer and am getting this error that I researched and looks like it's caused by ATI Catalyst 7.5 and higher drviers but *shouldn't* cause a crash, according to ATI. Just for a test I removed the drivers and loaded the 7.3's on to see if it helps but no go. Reseat my Zalman heatsink on the GPU with fresh paste, no luck.

So I finally say screw it and remove the Catalyst drivers and put in my old GeForce4 Ti4200 that I had packed away and the system won't post now. Reset the BIOS, still no post... put the 9800Pro back in and still no post.

So I'm getting pretty fed up with the system and as much as I would like holding off upgrading (since I'm only playing WoW afterall and this system *should* run it fine) I may have to.

I'm gonna try a few more things tonight though:

1) Upping the AGP voltage a notch.
2) Swapping in a spare 9800Pro I have that I forgot about last night. The fan isn't working on it but I'll point a powerful fan right underneath it just to see if it can keep the game running any longer and if it does I can move my Zalman cooler over onto it.

Worse comes to worse and I'll spend some money to get a new system that will run the game just as well as my current system should.

Did you try to upgrade or reinstall the BIOS? i've done it mulitple times, and theres nothing to it.

Just tried that and did all the Forceware drivers the MSI Live Update could find and I get the same crash... looks like I'll be upgrading sooner than I wanted too.

Have you tried a different power supply? I've seen bad PS's do some weird shit you wouldn't think would be related. Just a thought.

It very well could be but I don't have a spare PSU with enough power to check it out. I figure by the time I take it to MB and pay to check it out and replace whatever part(s) are failing I'd already be spending more than enough to justify the modest upgrade I'm planning.

Recap from last night that I forgot to mention:

- Bumped the AGP to 1.55V which let me play WoW for 5 minutes before crashing, which is still around 5 times longer than previously.
- Pushed it to 1.6V to see if it just needed a bit more but it still only lasted about 5 minutes.
- Tried 1.65V for the hell of it and still only ~5 minutes.
- Put in the spare 9800Pro I have that has a broken HSF and put a powerful fan underneath it and it lasted around 3 minutes, at which point I realized my card probably isn't the issue.
- Did the driver/BIOS updates hoping that it was a corrupt BIOS like maverick_brent was alluding to, and no help.

So I'm at the point where I'm thinking it's either the PSU, Motherboard, or some sort of software/hardware conflict that doesn't seem to be fixed when using multiple versions of motherboard and videocard drivers.

did u try kicking and punching?
my next step would be to just get a can of gas and a match

I smacked it around a bit and threatened to replace it with a younger, sexier model to no avail... I do love that computer though. I put a lot of effort into putting it together, picking out components and was really happy with it for several years. I still think it looks bitchin' even though I'm more-or-less done with the "Super Flashy Case" phase now.