solo-pc-tech
06-28-2001, 08:47 AM
Tyan S1854 Trinity 400 motherboard, Rev "E"
one of my clients turned her computer on one morning and got
"BIOS ROM Checksum error
Insert system disk and hit enter."
Unable to run BIOS setup. Can boot to a floppy, but hard drive is not seen.
Norton Antivirus 2001 had 06/24/2001 virus defs. Auto-protect and email protection enabled.
Here is what I have tried:
Cleared CMOS, made no difference.
Held down “Insert” key on boot up
Replaced CMOS battery
Unplugged the mouse, PS/2
Tried to flash bios to 1854v107 using flashv73.exe, got error msg, “Award BIOS not new”
Replaced SDRAM,
Removed all SDRAM, got normal beep for no RAM
Removed all PCI cards,
Removed graphics card, got 1 long, 2 short beeps as normal
Removed keyboard, got “keyboard error” as normal
Used different graphics card, a PCI one
Removed all LED cables except PWR SW
Removed IDE cables,
Replaced floppy drive,
Replaced floppy cable,
Replaced power supply
Tried a different CPU
Last experiment: took the bare board, inserted one 128MB DIMM, an AGP graphics card, attached a floppy drive, keyboard, and a power supply. Carefully removed the BIOS chip, pins were not corroded, replaced it, made no difference.
This board ran perfectly for 13 months. And her system worked perfectly with the new ABIT board. This client used a surge protector, turned her system off whenever it wasn't being used, AND turned off the power at the surge protector.
I gave the client a replacement board. I just want to know how this happened. This board does not have flash protection. Is there a virus that can do this, but leaves no trace of itself behind? I scanned her hard drive on my Windows 2000 test system. No trace of a virus.
one of my clients turned her computer on one morning and got
"BIOS ROM Checksum error
Insert system disk and hit enter."
Unable to run BIOS setup. Can boot to a floppy, but hard drive is not seen.
Norton Antivirus 2001 had 06/24/2001 virus defs. Auto-protect and email protection enabled.
Here is what I have tried:
Cleared CMOS, made no difference.
Held down “Insert” key on boot up
Replaced CMOS battery
Unplugged the mouse, PS/2
Tried to flash bios to 1854v107 using flashv73.exe, got error msg, “Award BIOS not new”
Replaced SDRAM,
Removed all SDRAM, got normal beep for no RAM
Removed all PCI cards,
Removed graphics card, got 1 long, 2 short beeps as normal
Removed keyboard, got “keyboard error” as normal
Used different graphics card, a PCI one
Removed all LED cables except PWR SW
Removed IDE cables,
Replaced floppy drive,
Replaced floppy cable,
Replaced power supply
Tried a different CPU
Last experiment: took the bare board, inserted one 128MB DIMM, an AGP graphics card, attached a floppy drive, keyboard, and a power supply. Carefully removed the BIOS chip, pins were not corroded, replaced it, made no difference.
This board ran perfectly for 13 months. And her system worked perfectly with the new ABIT board. This client used a surge protector, turned her system off whenever it wasn't being used, AND turned off the power at the surge protector.
I gave the client a replacement board. I just want to know how this happened. This board does not have flash protection. Is there a virus that can do this, but leaves no trace of itself behind? I scanned her hard drive on my Windows 2000 test system. No trace of a virus.