Bad Axe 2 scare.

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fleggett

Gawd
Joined
Nov 30, 2004
Messages
546
Has anyone experienced this?

I'm using bios revision 2395. I was attempting to overclock last night when the system refused to POST. It kept beeping 3 times, which means no memory present. Except there was - two sticks of this:

http://www.newegg.com/product/product.asp?item=N82E16820145015

I removed one stick and the beeping continued. I tried the other stick and the beeping stopped, but there was no video.

I eventually resorted to the floppy disk recovery method, but even that gave me a scare. The manual states I should hear speaker beeps at certain points in the recovery process, but I heard none. I just tried rebooting the machine normally after the process *appeared* to've completed and, thank God, I was able to get into the BIOS and return things to default settings.

Which was curious in and of itself, though, as I expected all my BIOS settings to be returned to default values as a result of the recovery.

At this point, I'm EXTREMELY leery of trying any further overclocks. Did I just opt for some cheap ram or is the bootstrap problem introduced in 2395 causing me headaches? This is with an E6600 being cooled by a Tuniq (current CPU temp as I type this is 37 degrees celsius).
 
Yep, is what I have read elsewhere. If system doesnt post due to overclock reset the cmos
 
But how do you reset the CMOS? There is no CMOS jumper.

Something I forgot to mention in my original post - I also removed the battery. Kept it out for about a minute. That still didn't help matters.

I'm leaning towards reflashing to 2333. The bootstrap issue that exists with 2395 seems to be biting a lot of people in the butt.
 
The "reset CMOS" jumper is the same one you used to initiate the bios recovery, as seen
here:

http://developer.intel.com/design/motherbd/bx2/bx2_confg.htm

What you want to do is use the "configure" mode. It loads a "safe" copy of the BIOS at defaults so you to make changes to the original.
Bascially what you do is:

  • PC off, move the Jumper from 1-2 to 2-3
  • Boot into "Safe" bios, make your changes ( Note every time you boot into the safe bios, it resets your memory to SPD timing and vdimm. If you are overclocking, make sure you check your memory EVERY TIME you boot into this mode)
  • Save the settings, screen should tell you to remove the jumper and reboot, do so.

You shouldn't need to do the floppy recovery method for failed overclocks. That is mainly for fixing a bad bios flash.

As for the 3 long beeps, you probibly just have your memory OC too high.
 
Yep, whenever you get a boot failure and have to go into recovery mode you must re-adjust the memory settings everytime. The speed, timings, and voltage. It is annoying but the board rocks for 975X and is well worth the time.
 
Hmmm. In rereading my original post I discovered I wasn't clear as to what I did. In short, I did move the jumper to the configure mode position (pins 2 & 3 shorted), which I thought would boot me into some sort of "safe bios" mode. However, it didn't. The beeping persisted until I resorted to the floppy disk method, and even then I had to resort to using one particular stick of memory.

In short, the board wouldn't POST - period, no matter what mode I was in.

I'll try it again tonite. Is it possible my memory is marginal?
 
Its possible, sure but I wouldn't call it probable at this point

Try reseting the Vregs by unplugging the AC power cable for 5min or so. I know it sounds weird, but have seen a couple times I could not get the board to boot at all and this fixed it. Seems a couple of people on XS have seen the same thing.

Also, once you get into maintenance mode, try disabling the C1E, and "Intel Watchdog" if you haven't already. These were causing me some problems at one point in time.

I think that "watchdog" thing is new + buggy with the 2395. I'm guessing that is part of the problem people are having with 2395 bios. Once its disabled, I can get the board to clock just as high as the old 2333 bios. As always though YMMV.

Good luck.
 
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