BIOS ROM checksum error

[copiman]

I have an HP Pavilion a1720n with Vista on it. Its old I know. I want to use it to get some hands on experience.

When I boot I get a Bios ROM checksum error. It then displays; Detecting IDE ATAPI device, then Found CDROM, try to boot from it....fail

If I have a dvd with an iso on it in the CDROM it will indicate pass, you can here the dvd drive fire up but then displays: No physical memory is available at the location required for the windows boot manager.

I have tried different memory sticks, removed the battery as well as used the jumpers to reset CMOS.

It looks like to me that the BIOS is wacked, although I'm not sure. If so, is there a way to get the bios back on the board? I am stuck at the errors, cannot get past them. Cannot get to bios, startup, or anything. Don't need the PC, just want the hands on which would help me tremendously.

 

[johnb35]

Usually that means you just need to go into the bios and setup defaults along with setting correct day and time. If for some reason you actually can't get into the bios then the motherrboard is bad. Possible bad hard drive is attached or other bad hardware. Remove everything but 1 stick of ram, keyboard, mouse and monitor and see what happens.

 

[copiman]

Usually that means you just need to go into the bios and setup defaults along with setting correct day and time. If for some reason you actually can't get into the bios then the motherboard is bad. Possible bad hard drive is attached or other bad hardware. Remove everything but 1 stick of ram, keyboard, mouse and monitor and see what happens.

Thanks John. I actually used memory I had that I know is good and that did not help. I disconnected everything as well as tried another hard drive and that did not work. My friend told me it was the mobo, but I wanted to see for myself and maybe learn something, which I did.

On a side note: If you cant get into the bios or boot the PC, then is it safe to say you can't flash/load the bios? I've never had any experience with bios issues nor flashed or loaded bios. Not even sure how to.

Thanks again John. Your always helpful and I appreciate it.

 

[johnb35]

On a side note: If you cant get into the bios or boot the PC, then is it safe to say you can't flash/load the bios?
Thanks again John. Your always helpful and I appreciate it.

That would be correct. And you are welcome.

 

[beers]

If you have a removable BIOS and a spare board to test you can force flash the binary to another ROM chip and see if that helps. You'd need to flash the test board's BIOS to the one you're swapping to too without powering it off.

Kind of a 'high risk of failure if you don't know what you're doing' approach but might work if you really need to get it going. I've had to do things like flash a P8P67 Deluxe BIOS on a Crosshair V board in a similar fashion before and then swap the ROMs on a live system.