Hi, Building my socket 603 Xeon board and on power up it beeps at me! nuuuuuuuuuuu............ Error is as follows (copypasta from all mighty google): seven short "Virtual Mode Exception error" What the hell is that and how can I fix it? Should I just reseat the CPUs/swap sockets? Board is a Gigabyte 8ipdxr CPU Dual Xeon socket 603 2.4ghz 4x 512mb DDR RAM Currently no drives attached
Would this be due to insufficient power? The board has a 8 pin and 4 pin plug for power whereas the psu only has the 4 pin. can't see anything in the manual to suggest i HAVE to use both though. PSU is only a 320W but the online PSU Calc reccomends at least 211 watt for the current setup
Uh-oh. If i remove the memory and test like that it beeps 6 times. "Six beeps means that there has been an 8042 Gate A20 test error. This beep code is usually caused by an expansion card that has failed or the motherboard that is no longer working." no expansion cards. I bought a dead board :X Might buy a single xeon to test in case these cpus are toast However with no cpu and no memory I get no beeps at all :?
With no cpu and memory, nothing works! I'd try it with only the cpu and memory installed. No expansion cards, hdd or optical drive. See what happens then.
Ummm I'm sure I said nothing else was plugged in. No drives, no cards, just psu, cpu and ram Any combination of 1 or 2 cpus and memory gets 7 beeps on boot.
who is the manufacturer, and what is the model number of the board? If the error is really a Virtual Mode Exception error, that means the BIOS had problems putting the CPU into protected mode. If the 6 beeps is accurate, then it means the BIOS was not able to to enable the gate on the 20th address line which is a historic IBM PC thing that has been kept around for reverse compatibility. I find both of these errors hard to believe, I want to check them against a book I have at work. There are a couple reasons these beep code may not be accurate. The first is that the board manufacturer may have a license to the BIOS source and changed the beep codes on their own. Or the info Google lead you to is for a different BIOS version and it has been changed. In both cases, you will need to check the manual for the main board.
The board is a gigabyte 8ipdxr. The only manual I can find on the gigabyte website doesn't list post error codes. Odd thing is when I boot it the cpu fans don't spin! Maybe I do need to connect both the 8 pin and 4 pin aux power sockets. EDIT: Can anyone confirm if my power supply may be insufficient and therefore causing the problem? I don't want to rip the 500w out of this rig just to test it!
Yes, you need to connect all your power connections. If I remember correctly, those Xeons use the Netburst architecture which was never known for being stingy with power. the lack of at least one 12 volt rail could be causing the CPUs to fault badly which is what the 7 beep error would indicate.
Ah. Have a 8pin adapter coming very soon so should help. I just couldn't see in the manual that you had to use both 8 and 4 pin (they do the same job) so thought I'd get away with it. Adapter goes from 2x molex to 1x 8pin. Will use molex's off different lines from the PSU just to help out. I'm using my 400w server grade older atx jobby PSU. Adapter was shipped from the States on Saturday so should be here soonish. Yes the Xeons are Prestonia Netbursts. Claimed TDP is 65w but there are 2 of them.. Thanks Splynncryth
If the power layout is like later Intel boards, then the 4 pin should supply power to the chipset and the 8 pin powers the CPU. The need for the number of rails just cuts down on a single point of failure and reduces stress on any one rail. As long as a single rail can source the total combined current from separate rails, you should be OK. You might test with just 1 CPU after you get your adapter though. It is still possible that there is a CPU or board probelm.
