Checksum Error with Slave Drive

[jdelmas]

I have rebuilt a system with a New Biostar M7VIW Mother Board and new AMD Athlon 1600+ processor. I am running Win XP Home. I have two harddrives installed. If I boot first thing, I get a checksum error. I get around it by unplugging the slave drive and rebooting - everything comes up fine.

Here's what I don't understand. If I reconnect the slave drive and do a soft reboot, everything works! I have gone into setup on reboot and the slave shows up as a slave. The jumper setting on the slave drive is correct. It is an IBM.

Any ideas on how to avoid the initial checksum error. This PC is for my 13 year old son and I can't see his disconnecting and reconnecting the slave drive every time. Not to mention that it can't be good for the connections.

This is my 1st post - sorry it's so long.

[DallasDon]

Is it a CMOS checksum error? You might try UNPLUGGING the power, wait a couple of minutes, and clear the cmos. Upon reboot, it should detect the hardware anew, and save the settings to CMOS.

Can't hurt, might help. Only Caveat is to be sure all power is off , and give the capacitors time to discharge. Refer to clearing the CMOS in the motherboard manual.

[jdelmas]

I'm just learning all this stuff. I had unplugged the unit for several days and got the same message on boot up. I guess iwas confused because I could work around the problem although I felt it was not a good solution. I'll try clearing the CMOS and see if that helps.

[Turnip12]

Might be that your cmos battery is dead, if so just go pick up another one for like 3 bucks and you're set. If you have another one to swap it out with check it and see if that's the problem.

[Turnip12]

Just went back and reread your post, my bet would be the battery. If you've got power going to your sys, you shouldn't get the checksum error because your system hasn't needed to pull any power from the battery, but if you cut power to your system, then it's going to look towards the batt, and give you the error. It'll only cost you a few bucks for a new battery, worth a try maybe.

[jdelmas]

I'll try the battery, but it's a brand new board. The battery shouldn't be dead yet!

[AzKidd69]

not necessarily.. I have seen brand new mobos come out of the box and have dead cmos batteries before....

[jdelmas]

The error is actually a BIOS ROM CHECKSUM ERROR It only haapens when I first boot up.

[amdkt7]

If the battery is good then next I would try downloading the latest bios for your mobo and flashing it.

Some mobo's can monitor the battery voltage by going into the bios setup and looking for the Vbatt (or something like that). Should be at least 2.8 volts I think. It a 3 volt battery.

You may have problems with the battery not making good contact with the socket, or maybe a bad flash chip on the mobo.

[Bovon]

You mention that the slave drive is an IBM...what is the master drive?...