Mainboard K7S5A Pro Boot problems

[Alan M. Kaplan]

I recently moved 3 HDs and a CD to an upgraded setup. In the old setup I was running windows XP Home and everything was operating as is shoud. In the new setup, my HDs are all properly recognized as is the memory. On initial attempt to boot I get a message that indicates that my CMOS is not set up right. The following specific errors are noted:

"CMOS Battery Low"
"CMOS Memory Size wrong"

If I go into the CMOS I see nothing wrong, but I have no idea as to the proper settings for that memory chip.

Whether I go into the CMOS I set it to boot on 1st HD (0); 2nd CD (Windows XP Home)

Regardless of how I procede I end up at the Safe Screen (The screen you get when you tap F8). Regardless of what I option select, (Safe Mode, Normal, etc) it goes back to the beginning and ends up in the same place (The Safe screen). If I tap F5 as it starts up, I get to the screen that has "Windows XP Home" as the operating system. however, clicking that takes me right back to the shutdown and startup again.

I saw on here where sombody else had the same problem, but i did not see the fix if anyone offered one.

I know that I want to get a new CMOS battery, but I can't see why it is saying my memory is the wrong size. And I don't knw where to go in the CMOS to check it out or fix it.

Any and all help will be very much appreciated. As is apparent, although this is the 3rd or 4th system I have put together, I am very much a neophyte.

My upgraded computer consists of:
1. Mainboard K7S5A PRO.
2. An Althon 266 MHz FSB 384K (It says it is running at 1800+)
3. A 512 MB PC2100 DDR DIMM (It says it has 524,000+K )

I intend to replace the CMOS

 

[Alan M. Kaplan]

The last line of that post reads, "I intend to replace the CMOS". It was supposed to say, "I intend to replace the CMOS battery". Sorry 'bout that1

 

[devlish96]

alright,...i read the post twice,..and its still not clear to me.

just a few questions

what was you old set up?
what components did you upgrade?

any mobo change would always require HD reformatting

 

[Alexander]

First thing you should do is clear the CMOS. Your motherboard documentation should provide information on how to do that. It would be a good idea to replace the CMOS battery as well.

That will completely reset the BIOS to factory defaults and you should be able to go from there, but before you proceed, double check ALL of the jumper settings and make sure that they are set properly for the hardware that you are using..

You may end up having to do a fresh OS install as well..

Hope this helps,
Alexander

 

[Alan M. Kaplan]

alright,...i read the post twice,..and its still not clear to me.

just a few questions

what was you old set up?
what components did you upgrade?

any mobo change would always require HD reformatting

The old unit is not at this location, so I will answer from memory.
It was an:
1. MIS Motherboard
2. 700 MHz AMD CPU
3. 384 MB of memory
4. Nvidia video card
5. 56K Modem
6. Monitor
7. Mouse
8. Keyboard
9. 40 GB HD (0)(with XP Home)
10. 40 GB HD (1)
11. 2.5 GB HD (2)
12. 52X CD
13. floppy

Items 4 through 13 were moved to the new unit.
Items 1 through 3 (The motherboard, CPU and Memory were relaced.)

 

[devlish96]

i presume you did a clean install of XP, right?

try removing the 2.5 HD. and see if it'll boot

 

[Alan M. Kaplan]

First thing you should do is clear the CMOS. Your motherboard documentation should provide information on how to do that. It would be a good idea to replace the CMOS battery as well.

That will completely reset the BIOS to factory defaults and you should be able to go from there, but before you proceed, double check ALL of the jumper settings and make sure that they are set properly for the hardware that you are using..

You may end up having to do a fresh OS install as well..

Hope this helps,
Alexander

I did clear the CMOS several times (there is a procedure wherein you disconnect the power and short out a couple of jumper pins. that reset the CMOS, but did not cure the problem) incidentally that is the only jumper on the board and I reset it to normal each time I cleared the CMOS

I will change out the battery.

I still have the error message "CMOS Memory Size Wrong"

Of course I want to avoid a reinstallation of Windows if possible. I certainly don't want to consider that until after I make the CMOS Memory size error go away. Also, I neglected to mention that I tried to boot off the Windows XP CD. I got a DOS Windows Setup Screen, but nothing appeared there and it just hung up.

 

[Alan M. Kaplan]

i presume you did a clean install of XP, right?

try removing the 2.5 HD. and see if it'll boot

The Clean install of XP was done on the other machine. There is no way short of floppy in A Drive to get a prompt of any sort. When I do tell it to enter Windows in the safe mode I see (as is normal) a bunch od files in the windows\System32 directory go flying by, indicating that it is at least reading C Drive.

I have Removed the Primary Slave but that does not help.
I have Swapped out the Primary Slave for the primary master. I did not expect it to boot, but it did read the HD and note that I was missing the NTLDR. Since this was not my boot drive, I expected that, but it did at least read the drive.

I'll try your suggestion with the 2.5 HD (As I recall, that is the secondary slave. The CD is the Secondary master. I'll remove both of them. I haven't done that yet.

The wrong memory size error message has to be fixed. Do you have a suggestion for that?

 

[Alexander]

Please don't take this the wrong way, but the next time you get a new MB, you might wanna spend a little more and get a better quality board. I was doing a web search for issues related to that board, and there's lots....

Alexander

 

[Apokalipse]

well every time you change the Mobo you need to reinstall XP, certain system and dll files are created specifically for YOUR computer and mobo when you first install it, and any change of your mobo and they've instantly become the "wrong" files