Bad Bios Checksum??

[Norm321]

I'm working on a System that had a power supply issue. It went bad and the owners of the system thought that the motherboard got overvolted and fried.
I hooked up another power supply to the system and put in a old drive with Win 95 on it because the owners took his/her hardrive out and bought another system. Now I got the system to boot but I'm getting a Bad Bios Checksum. Starting Bios Recovery... with a flashing cursor behind it. It stays at that point and does nothing. Any Ideas what to try??? Thanks for your help!!

[lmnobs]

Some Possible causes are Bad battery or bios problem either way pull the battery off the motherboard for a few minutes and maybe it will reset or if battery is dead you will need to replace it . And depending on your Motherboard it may have to be jumpered to reset or clear the bios ,that you will have to determine by finding the make and model of board and goiing to the manuf site if you have no documentation on it otherwise look in the manual or spec sheet if you are lucky enough to have it

[Norm321]

Thanks I'll try those things.

[Norm321]

Tried a new battery and also cleared the CMOS. No luck, still get the same message. Any other ideas on what to try? Thanks!!

[bigH2O]

As a last resort you can try flashing the bios with the latest rev for that board. The worst you can do is brick the board if the flash fubars, but it sounds like it's pretty much hosed already anyway, so it can't hurt to try.

[Norm321]

I found the proper bios on the HP site but there instructions talk about doing it in Windows. I don't have a floppy drive in the system but it has a CD drive. I don't have a Disk for the Motherboard either. Not sure how I can flash the bios. Any suggestions are greatly appreciated.
Thanks!!

[bigH2O]

HP has their bios' in "raw" form without the OS loader. Go back to their site, select the software & drivers download pages, plug in the model, and when it asks for your OS select the "OS Independant" option. This area will give you the flash in an exe format. From that point you need to boot the system to DOS to get the flash to run. If all you have is a CD drive and no access to a floppy drive at all, then you'll need to create a bootable CD.

[Zero Tolerance]

I would bet that its a doorstop.

Define your words...."I got the system to boot...." Do you actually get a C:/ ???

How can you boot to CD or floppy or anything for that matter if you dont get past POST???

When you figure it out.....let me know. ;)

[Norm321]

No I actually don't get to the C:\. I can here the drive spin up and then the message Bad Bios Checksum appears. In fact it even appears before the drive spins up. I just checked. Doesn't sound good does it. If the Proccessor or Memory was toast would I even get that far?? Would it be worth trying to put this Processor + Memory on another Motherboard?? Thanks for all the help everyone, I'm grateful for the input.

[Zero Tolerance]

Thats what I thought. If you dont get thru POST (Power On Self Test) and boot to a prompt....then your BIOS isnt working at all. Thus the error return code.

Without being at a prompt...or at least able to enter the BIOS to change boot order...there is no way you can reflash the BIOS.

Your only option is to send the mobo back to the manufacturer to have the BIOS reflashed or replaced. Or another option would be to buy another motherboard that will support the CPU and the rest of your hardware, which btw will most likely cost you the same price once you consider shipping to and from the mfgr and whatever they charge for a new BIOS chip.

Goodluck!

[Norm321]

Thanks ZT, I did find a bios recovery site called badflash.com which I might check into. Thanks for your help!!