STUCK ON "CHECKING NVRAM..."

[italia10588]

OK. You've all probably read a ton of these specific complaints, seeing that I googlesearched my problem to this website and found numerous links about it.

I am working on an AMD Duron 1100ghz processor with an unspecified motherboard, for a friend of mine. The motherboard has 2 slots for SDRAM strips and 2 slots for DDR strips. The unit needed a new powersupply and a new processor fan. I popped in the new supply and booted it up and it worked just fine. That was the first time I booted it up, untampered, with the only new thing being the NEW POWER SUPPLY. So I shut it back down and I popped out the old fan and greased up the new one, clipped it on, and I was ready to go. Before I started it up again with the new fan, I was feeling a little generous so I decided to give my friend another stick of 256 SDRAM. I put it in the SDRAM slot, next to the other stick of 256 SDRAM, in the SDRAM slot, that she had in it, and made sure all cables were secure and all strips were secure and EVERYTHING was taken care of. So I turned on the PC and go to boot it up again and I see the VERY first screen you see when booting up a computer and where it should be checking the memory its stuck on "Checking NVRAM....". I dont get the "....Update OK" either.

Tried:
switching both sticks of SDRAM
restoring original stick in original slot
using several DDR sticks
switching jumpers
rubbing off sticks
blowing off ports
resecuring cables

Now, I'm not cpu illiterate so please dont give me "did you make sure such and such was plugged in" because YES I went through ALL the 'bells and whistles' and still nada. Also please make your reponses understandable and through, no engrish. Thank you.

****NOTE****
the motherboard has an onboard sound and video card, so unplugging these is not an option. I have pretty much conferred that it is a direct problem with me putting another stick of memory in. I know none of my memory sticks are bad because I tried them ALL (DDR and SDRAM) in my own computer.

ALSO the bios is AMIBIOS and I am seeing that this is a more common problem with THAT specific bios... so... with that in mind im hoping its somewhat common and not unanswerable. Also, understand I cannot do ANYTHING at this screen. That means no setup, no CMOS, no bootdisc, nothing. The help I need is beyond those sugestions. So please!!!! any ideas that are good would be MUCH appreciated. Thank you!

[MitaDC]

have u tried clearing the CMOS? I read what u have tried but to clarify: You have tried taking out the new stick and putting in the old stick in it's original slot?

[italia10588]

Yes I tried to clear the cmos, but because the motherboard is unspecified I had to guess at which jumper was the right one. Also yes I put the original stick in the original slot.. still nothing

[MitaDC]

ok, if you take the CMOS battery out of it place on the mobo for about 30sec it will clear the CMOS. Go ahead and try that

[JLK03F150]

You can pull the battery if you are unsure about the jumper.

Doh! I'm a slow typer.

[italia10588]

True but I dont want to risk wiping out the BIOS either.. again.. the problem being the unspecified motherboard. If I knew what I was dealing with I could do this easily, but nowhere on the damn board does it say any type of name brand or anything.

[MitaDC]

if you pull the battery, it isn't going to wipe the bios, just reset it to factory default

[JLK03F150]

Is there a bios string at the bottom of the page that hangs? Sometimes you can ID the mobo from that string.

The jumper will do the same thing as pulling the battery, btw. Hopefully everything will auto-detect once the cmos is cleared.

[italia10588]

Yeah those are some good ideas..kinda funny what you DONT think about when ur confused.. but fricken mingya, I just booted it up again and now it works fine with the original stick in the original slot. I hate computers hahaha I must have cleared the CMOS when i was messing with jumpers. No idea. Thanks everyone for the great ideas though. Getting intellectual responses besides "did you make sure the moniter was plugged in" is rather refreshing hahaha.

[Peter M]

It isn't stuck AT "Updating NVRAM", it's stuck doing what it tries to do NEXT. Typically, that's detecting the IDE harddisks. Even more typically, this happens when you knocked an IDE cable partially off when working on the machine's innards.