BIOS showing up only half text!!

[mystvearn]

My friends pc has something wrong. At first could not enter windows xp-I told to ground the pc. Then it was ok for a while. Then it says pc has just recorvered from serious error. Then everytime enter windows, the pc keeps restarting. Even on safe mode. I told to reinstall xp. go through bios-make the cdrom firts boot device-cause the cd does not read when restarting the pc. When entering BIOS-she found out the text are only half readable. Could not see the other half.
After saying this, I think its not XP which is giving the problem, its something else. Anyone know what it is and how to fix it?I have not seen the pc for myself-she told me the pc's condition. Now I think its hardware failure. Not software. Help.

She just told me that some message ask to stop something.
0x0000008E and much more letters in brackets. Now what?

[rave]

the bios must be corrupt then.
try to see if the XP hard disk boots on another computer.whats the mobo brand?

[corosus]

have you tried resetting the bios?
it should be done with resetting a jumper for a few seconds, or by removing the bios batery for a few seconds.
but like rave said, we need more info, the brand and if possible the type of motherboard wopuld be nice

[SeaTech30]

Hello I seem to have a similar problem as this. Instead of making a new thread I decided to look for one that was similar and this was the first that I found. I recently bought new CPU/RAM/mobo. AMD Athlon XP 3200+ "Barton", 400MHz FSB, 512K Cache/ASUS "A7V880" VIA KT880 Socket A/PDP SYSTEMS Memory Dual Channel Kit 184-Pin 1GB (512MBx2) DDR PC-3200, Model PDC1G3200LLK. I put everything together. I used the HDs and drive from my old PC. a WD800JD SATA as with the OS partition on it and WD600BB. I connected everything right. When I booted up the PC everything went fine until i got to the windows it gave me that "safe mode.. network boot....." menu I just chose normal boot. But immidiately after I selected this the PC just rebooted. When it got to the menu again I tried safe mode and the same thing happened. When the list was appearing it reached a xbus.. I forget the exact name i'll have to wait till i get home to check again but when it reaches this one is when it reboots. I tried messing around in the BIOS but I only made things worse when i set the DRAM to 400MHz and selected Dual Channel. After this if i tried going back into the BIOS it would freeze up. I am going to try and reset the BIOS today. I doubt that it's the CPU or the RAM causing the problem otherwise it would not have reached so far into the boot process right? Anyways hopefully someone knows or has experienced this b4.

[ric449]

This sounds like a BIOS corruption. Try updating the BIOS, this would replace the corrupted one.

[SeaTech30]

Hi again. I attempted to update the BIOS to the lastest one. Everything went fine. I restarted. Since i had deleted the OS partition from my HD I start off with the Windows CD in the drive. It booted up loaded the drivers at beginning and when I look back it I see one of those blue screens. This had happened b4 the BIOS upgrade as well this time i got a different msg though: IRQL_NOT_OR_EQUAL. I can provide the hex numbers given if that's any help. I'm not too experienced with IRQ however as a precaution i had remover _all_ PCI cards b4 I did this. Only thing pluged in is the SATA drive, DVD drive, Ram, video card, floppy drive. I restarted the PC to try again however after 3 attempts the windows intallation would freeze up again at the very beginning when it prompts to press Fx key to install any RAID drivers. I left it there for about 1 min to make sure it wasn't just lagging. Also back when I had the windows OS partition the filename that it would restart on was "xmaxbus.sys". I decided to power down the PSU right now and retry the install. I know the install CD works because I just installed windows with it on an old comp to test the CD. Another place the installation likes to freeze at is when it says "Setup is starting Windows" I believe this is right b4 it asks what partition would you like to use and such. Well it froze again.... Hopefully someone has had this similar problem.. tomorrow i'll try removing the HSF and adding some more thermal compound since when i'm in the BIOS the CPU read about 50 C while the board is 34 C. The BIOS also still freezes.

I just went back into the BIOS and managed to get to the hardware monitor and the CPU is at 62 C!! I turned up my HSF to the highest and it brought it down to 60. I'm using Artic Silver 5 premium thermal compound btw. I think the CPU must be overheat which is why the hang happens? Hopefully someone has seen this happen b4 and can tell me what's wrong. Thanks in advance.

[ric449]

Maybe you should start your own thread.