K7SEM 1.0 motherboard freezes when loading W2K

[ajonz]

I have a K7SEM 1.0 mobo and it freezes on me too. I have tried it with the 1.0 and the 1.2b revisions for the BIOS and I cannot boot W2K.

On powering up the PC, it boots and passes the POST. It also gets past the screen where I am allowed to press F8 to boot up in safe mode.

I then proceed to the splash screen where is hangs. Pressing F8 and selecting any of the options prior to the splash screen does not help me to get past the splash screen at which the blue progress bar is displayed before one is able to log in.

At the splash screen, there is no activity (blue dashed bar) reported on the progress bar, (it is blank). There also is no disk asctivity at this point.

I still cannot get any blue squares registered on the progress bar once the splash screen comes up but the blue shaded bar atop the progress bar continues to scroll across the screen. The keyboard remains non-responsive. The numlock light will not toggle when I press the button and caps and scroll lock do not respond either!

I ran a diagnostics utility to check out the hardware and it reports that all of the components on the board are fine.

I have used many disk utilities to diagnose any disk related problems, but they all report that I have no problems on my hard disk, nor the NTFS "bootable" file system. I have also disabled caching on my CPU and for video from my BIOS.

What could be the problem?

[TRICKPLAYER]

try loading failsafe defaults in bios

[Ferrit]

If I am correct and thats the one with the onboard nic go into the bios and shut off the onboard nic and try it

[Darren Wilson]

What CPU are you using? If it is the same board as the one I am thinking of, 133FSB Athlons XP upto 2000+ are not supported on it 100% and will cause all sorts of problems such as BIOS resets,etc. I had major problems with these a year or so ago doing the same, regardless of which BIOS revision was used. Just kept throwing it back to BIOS defaults and not powering up 3/10 attempts.

[ajonz]

try loading failsafe defaults in bios

I have tried this and it does not take me any further than using the default or optimized settings.

Over the weekend, I tried shutting down all ports and on-board features I would not be using such as video and CPU caching. I also disabled the CDROM drive.

This resulted in , (count 'em), one blue square on the progress bar.

I have no doubt that there are other things I could tweek to get further. Any suggestions?

[ajonz]

If I am correct and thats the one with the onboard nic go into the bios and shut off the onboard nic and try it

Thanks for the reply.

Yes, this board does have an on-board NIC. Diabling this service does not provide any apparent advantage or progress. I shall leave it off though, just in case.

[ajonz]

What CPU are you using? If it is the same board as the one I am thinking of, 133FSB Athlons XP upto 2000+ are not supported on it 100% and will cause all sorts of problems such as BIOS resets,etc. I had major problems with these a year or so ago doing the same, regardless of which BIOS revision was used. Just kept throwing it back to BIOS defaults and not powering up 3/10 attempts.

Hello Darren,

I am using an AMD 800 MHz CPU. I do not know if it is a 100 or 133 FSB. I tried tweeking the clock speed of the RAM to be slower than the designated 133, through the BIOS down to 100Mhz and I got even further on the progress bar - now 5 blue squares.

BTW ... what do you mean by "133FSB Athlons XP upto 2000+"?

I also am finally getting and error message... It's about possibly corrupt drivers. Since the machine is dual boot, (W2K and DOS), I reboot in DOS and relocated the "offending driver", (MUP.SYS) from the c:/winnt/system32/drivers directory to c:/winnt/system32/drivers/temp. On rebooting, I get the same response, with a report this time pointing to the ACPI.SYS driver.

Well, I relocated that one too and rebooted. The next message pointed to either the RAM being faulty or the hard disk and that I should run a "chkdsk /f". Well, I did a scandisk and no errors, hardware or otherwise was found.

I do not know what mup.sys and acpi.sys are for - but I am pretty sure that my installation is not at fault. Maybe it is the memory ...

I also have a few "buldging capacitors" on the board and a few earlier postings say that this is a problem for any mobo. Somehow, I don't buy this because I have no problems booting or running DOS. But at this stage, I am willing to trying anything - with this as a last option. Anyone ever replaced capacitors on a mobo before? Any pointers?

ajonz

[NooNoo]

Bulging capacitors are the problem. Fix those first before anything else.

ACPI.sys is the power management side if the bios is not fully acpi compliant you will have issues, but the capacitors could be causing these issues.

[ajonz]

Bulging capacitors are the problem. Fix those first before anything else.

ACPI.sys is the power management side if the bios is not fully acpi compliant you will have issues, but the capacitors could be causing these issues.

OK then,

What are the dos and don'ts. I do know how to use a soldering iron, but I want to be careful.

Do you know of a link you could point me to?

Are you familar with this board?

Thanks

[NooNoo]

First thing to do is get the replacement capacitors. A PM to Ruslan should get you the exact replacement type you need.

[amc1851]

What CPU are you using? If it is the same board as the one I am thinking of, 133FSB Athlons XP upto 2000+ are not supported on it 100% and will cause all sorts of problems such as BIOS resets,etc. I had major problems with these a year or so ago doing the same, regardless of which BIOS revision was used. Just kept throwing it back to BIOS defaults and not powering up 3/10 attempts.

I happen to have a K7SEM motherboard, with 256MBRam and just replaced the CPU with an Athlon XP 2200+, I also included a new video card ATI Radeon 9200, everything goes fine until I make a "click here" or press "Enter there", and then the computer freezes totally, even the clock stops running, the only way to fix this is by reseting.

Can you tell me if there is anything I can do to prevent this failure other than having to buy a more compatible motherboard?

Thanks!!!

[GrandDad]

I happen to have a K7SEM motherboard, with 256MBRam and just replaced the CPU with an Athlon XP 2200+, I also included a new video card ATI Radeon 9200, everything goes fine until I make a "click here" or press "Enter there", and then the computer freezes totally, even the clock stops running, the only way to fix this is by reseting.

Can you tell me if there is anything I can do to prevent this failure other than having to buy a more compatible motherboard?

Thanks!!!

Welcome to WD amc1851 .

What PSU and Watts rating you using ?

[NooNoo]

You have just upgraded the ram, I think you should test it. download memtest86 and run at least the first 7 tests.

What is the cpu temperature?

[amc1851]

You have just upgraded the ram, I think you should test it. download memtest86 and run at least the first 7 tests.

What is the cpu temperature?

It's 48-49C, I kept checking it and it remains stable, I also updated the bios to the latest one, k7SEM 1.2B wich is suposed to give support for the AMD ATHLON XP 2200+/2400+ CPUS. But it keeps freezing when in the midle of "counter-Strike".

I also uninstalled the drivers for the built-in Video card, wich is a SIS690, but the problem persists.

I'm using an ATI Radeon 9200 with 64MRam, I replaced it and turned back to the built-in video but still, the same problem.

PLEASE HELP!!!

[amc1851]

Welcome to WD amc1851 .

What PSU and Watts rating you using ?

I'm using a TigerPro with 300 Watts output.