Hi all...I hope someone can help.

System: "home brewed" w/ AMD proc on a MSI mobo. 512 DDR mem, HDD, DVD & CD. This machine was built by a friend. It's pretty much a "plain vanilla" machine.

As stated by my bud "One day it just stopped. No video, no POST display. blank screen but the fans & pwr supply are OK." I have a rivalry w/ this friend. He fancies himself a techie so when he said he couldn't fix it I knew I HAD TO. I've spent several hours and here's what I get

Because the system won't boot to the HD I'm using a "live CD" to enable a boot sequence. This works and has worked on this particular PC.

The "problem" (this is all my conjecture based upon observation) appears to be in either the CMOS or BIOS. Not knowing enuff about how BIOS loads I'm not SURE but here are the symptoms.

Upon Power On the idiot lite on the monitor stays amber ((no signal from PC) instead of changing to green which occurs during a "good" boot. Also no POST messages no nothing..PC appears frozen. The PC seems unable to find the AGP and there's no other video OUT except the AGP

I first clear the CMOS chip (remove battery) and then Power On the boot process works. That is I get a POST w/ display, I can access SETUP (wherein I set the video to AGP) and the system boots. However after shutting off and Power ON again the old symptoms return- no post, no video, etc.

ASSUMPTION: the POST sequence reads the CMOS for info on the video output (i.e which I/O) and if cleared searches for the H/W which it finds and successfully >>couts to. However somehow, at sometime the CMOS data is corrupted and at nxt boot the BIOS reads this corrupted data & sends the video display stream to neverland.

I'm confused and not sure of my next step. I don't know how to troubleshoot the CMOS. Should I reflash the bios? I could replace the battery but I've done this before and it NEVER helps. Besides removing the battery power is what clears the CMOS so it reasonable to assume the batt is OK.

THis one has me confused. I've spent way too much time and I should just recycle the parts into another system but I WANT to FIX this machine in order to have bragging rights over my buddy

ANY suggestions?

paulfr

Has the bios been flashed with the wrong flashing software? Remove all hardware from the pci slots except the video card. remove the connectors from the CD drive and floppy drive. Now boot the computer and see what happens. Do you get a single beep, and does the post screen display? Get into the bios and set it to default.

Sorry to tell you dude, but sounds like your mainboard is in the process of failing. Anytime you get random failure to boot the POST screen, that is extreme-basic hardware problems. The POST screen (which comes from the hardwired BIOS chip on the mainboard) should ALWAYS appear on power-up, regardless of whether your harddrive is working or not.

The only things that may interfere with viewing the POST screen if your mainboard is good:
>your monitor is failing, OR the video cable is bad;
>your video card is bad or failing;
>your memory is totally bad (doesn't sound like it in your case, but can be easily checked using Memtest);
>your power supply is failing/failed (doesn't sound like it in your case, but is easy to test).

In the Hardware And Multimedia forum on this site, at the top, is the pinned topic, "Homebuilding Techniques"; if you will review and follow the steps there for testing your equipment you may find some helpful suggestions. HERE is a link.

Let us know how it goes!