american megatrends says my mobo is bad

mattw · #1 07-03-2005, 08:07 AM

The last couple of days, my puter has been acting weird. Very slow to boot, clicks on buttons are laggy, when typing, the letters are slow to appear or the cursor disappears. I try to examine programs through control panel add/delete programs and the please wait while retrieving list never completes. When booting, I get a DOS type screen which I never got before stating my mobo is bad. Crap, this machine is only 1.5 years. Its a high end HP. I have tried various restore/fix it programs to no avail. Is it time for a new puter. Dang, guess what Im doing on the Fourth of July.

smoore · #2 07-03-2005, 08:38 AM

Before you trash it, try resetting the CMOS (bios information). It's usually a jumper on the motherboard. You will basically shunt two points together on the mobo itself. When inside your computer case, make sure you are touching bare metal with bare skin. Your manual will show you which jumper it is. You should be able to download a missing manual from the mobo manufacturer's site.

mattw · #3 07-03-2005, 08:53 AM

thanks smoore for the help. however i am not puter competant enough to try what you suggested. i see through this american megatrend DOS screen when booting, there are options to reset BIOS. i will try that.

tinhat · #4 07-03-2005, 01:45 PM

I agree with resetting the BIOS defaults and see what happens. It sounds like either a video cache has become disabled, your CPU cache has become disabled or possibly the sys clock has been set to a very low value.

Notice what the time is set to when you boot - is it correct or way off? There's a small battery in the computer that keeps the CMOS charged, maintaining BIOS settings when the computer is off. 1.5 years is awful soon for it to die but it's possible the battery needs to be replaced. If it's the problem that's probably how the BIOS settings got changed. The best indicator is that the time is always wrong when you boot up.

The battery is usually the same kind you'd put into a camera or calculator. If that's not happening you might want to call the ppl you bought it from and talk to them about it...

Mike

hopp · #5 07-03-2005, 07:02 PM

It would be helpful if you could tell us exactly what the error message is.

This may be similar to the problem you are having; I have seen a couple of computers loose their CPU clock settings on boot, and you will get a message saying something is wrong with your bios settings, hit Fx to change settings, or hit Fx to continue or something like that.

In my case the CPUs were 2Gig but on boot up the bios was saying they were something like 1.1Gig (seriously under clocked), which is prabably the default or lowest setting. Once I corrected those settings everything was fine.

You will need to know what the speed of your CPU is supposed to be and compare that with the CPU speed at boot up (can you see your CPU speed in the top left corner of your screen at boot up?).

I can't explain exactly how to change your settings because each motherboard and bios is a little different. In your bios you should be able to look through your menus and find an option for setting the CPU clock. You can try different settings (start with lower settings and work your way up) and reboot your computer and see if it lists the correct speed at boot up. If not, repeat the steps until you get the correct setting. If you change the settings and the computer won't boot at all, then you will need to clear the CMOS by jumping the CMOS reset pins on your motherboard (they will usually be close to the battery on your motherboard and may be labled).

You can use these links to download software that will help you identify your motherboard, and then you can google to see if you can find a manuel for it.
AMI Motherboard Identification Utility
Fresh Diagnose

mattw · #6 07-05-2005, 02:29 PM

thanks guys for all the help and responses. i have been out of the loop for a couple of days due to technical difficulties. since i am so computer incompitant(sp?), i decided to buy a new puter. i still have the old one to decide whether i want to mess with it to get it working again.

while purchasing a high end gateway(model 832, P4, gig of ram) i also got a samsung 213T monitor which supports 1600x1200. wow, 4 tables with no overlap gives me a woody. also got a video card that supports two monitors. have my old monitor connected. cant wait to get that 2nd 1600x1200.