hey guys & gals,

i'd appreciate any help i can get. here is the thing... this is the 3rd hackintosh i'm building. the 1st 2 had it's issue but eventually worked out. this one though has caused me the most headache. here are the specs...

-asus p5k-vm mobo (from what i understand a great mobo from the forums here)
-quad core intel 6600 2.4ghz
-4 gigs of crucial 800 RAM
-xfx xxx 256mb 8600gt
-rosewill 550w psu
-500gb sata wd hard drive
-lite on sata dvd drive
-lian li cube case
-usb keyboard and mouse

so i put everything together and i had a near perfect install (i had to patch the audio) with the kalway 10.5.2 disc. i am using the kabyl kernel (since i've had great success with it on the other 2 hacks). i booted up installed some software, everything seemed to go super smooth. almost too smooth. i had dinner plans so i turned off the hack and unplugged it to close up the case. i come home from dinner and hook it back up to install more software and fine tune it BUT.. it doenst turn on??? i open the case back up and i look and the green light on the mobo is lite to reperesent it being on. i was baffled i pressed power again and it started for about a half a second. the fans ramped up and the dvd drive blinked but it stopped and powered down. seconds later it did the same thing by it self. ramped up for about a half a second and powers down. nothing shows on the monitor and it's not on long enough for me to even hit any keys to do anything. i was unplugging and replugging stuff in back and forth. no luck until i decided to reset the cmos with the jumper and temporarly removing the battery on the mobo. after i did that i put everthing back in it's place and the hack booted to a screen that said "checksum error, enter setup options" i go back on the bios and redo the config and it boot back into a perfectly working OSX 10.5.2.

bottom line: i've read many post on random forums that people think it's a bad board. i called asus and they had such high call volume they said they'd call back in 2 hours. it's been 3 days. i dont know what to do. i've read that people have swapped out the mobo battery with no luck. it seems to me that once the hack is unpluged and there is NO power hitting the board it can't seem to retain it's settings and hold a charge... resulting in the repeted half second ghost boot. i am lost and i am not sure what to do, i am pretty sure it's the asus mobo but if ANYONE has any other ideas, i'd appreciate it.

i guess i can do this once and just never power off the hack but not ever powering of your computer just seems a bit much

many thanks ahead of time..
~r.kedvale

help anyone...

The problem is because the hardware is not working properly, I'm pretty sure. Either the motherboard (more likely) or HDD. I had similar problems with Asus P5E-VM DO, after visiting a service centre substituted it by P5K-VM (P5E-VM DO was out of stock) - and everything is fine now.

thanks for the reply.. your exp makes me feel much better. yeah i doubt it's the HDD too. when i reset the cmos everything boots fine and the hack actually runs really stable. i ran a bunch of stress tests on it and i left it on all night, i even put it to sleep and no issues. it scored a 180 on xbench and a 4890 on geekbench (32-bit). from what i understand very respectable scores.

if anyone else has had similar issues or any kind of suggestions i's still love to hear them. i'm knew to this community so any info is great for future ref.

thanks again!
~r.kedvale

hey guys and gals,

i get my replacement asus p5k-vm tomorrow. (newegg rocks!) hopefully that will solve my cmos battery memory issues. (i read that it's a bad bios chip on the mobo)

*side note*
tonight just for kicks i got my hands on a new cr2032 for my current broke mobo. i'll replace the battery on the board to see if this helps my issues. (even though i've read many post online that say this will not solve my problems, i have my fingers crossed that it does with a stroke of hackintosh luck.)

if anyone has an suggestions or have expercieced similar issues please don't hesitate to post or send me a PM.

wish me luck!
~r.kedvale

so for the 1st time since the last incident (the 1st post i made), I've had the hackintosh plugged in fearing that if i didn't have a current blip of power running to the board the cmos and battery would not remember my setting and not power on correctly.

last night i got a new 500w PSU for the hack and a cmos battery:c2032. in my mind i assumed that when i unplugged the power of the hack from the wall to install the new power supply that i'd do the same thing it did in my 1st post. (not start correctly and in turn i'd have to flash the cmos and so on.) after unplugging the hack and installing the PSU i decided to hold off on changing out the cmos battery just to see if i plugged it back into the wall if it's start. i plugged it back into the wall and i pressed the power button. it flickered on and off. less than a half second in i was thinking; looks like i have to swap the battery like i thought i would. then ALL OF A SUDDEN i hear the fans rev and i see the HD light blink before you know it the hackintosh was passed the bios screen (remembering all the previous bios setting) and logged into OSX. i was floored, i totally didn't expect it. after jumping for joy i was still confused at how this happened esp since it was totally not booting before.

my conclusion:
i am assuming since i had the hack plugged in for the past few days the old cmos lith-ion battery managed to suck up some power and retain a charge for the bios settings to stay intact. if the hack is plugged into the wall and you turn it on with the power button it's really responsive. one press boom light goes on and the machine boots fine. since the successful boot i have unplugged it for about 15min-20min a few times and every time i plug it back into the wall from the unpowered state... when you press the power button it stalls for about half second to a second but manages to boot fine right after.

i guess i got lucky, now a have an extra asus p5k-vm and a spare cmos battery. guess another hackintosh is in my future.

thanks for reading!
~r.kedvale

I'm having the same fun and games with my Motherboard.

I'd had the odd cold boot issue before and returned faulty memory, which it wouldn't post inserted. Everything appeared to work okay for a while on new memory when again it wouldn't post. Power out, unplug everything, swap around memory and it eventually came back on. The board was later returned as the NIC started playing up and wouldn't work in Gigabit mode. 4 weeks later and Aria PC had shipped me the fixed board.

A few weeks later and the machine is dead. I leave the machine on 24x7, so unless it rebooted after an update (running XP), it's now dropping off when online. Could be an autoupdate coupled with a reboot / cold boot problem, but who knows.

I can't reset bios without dismounting the CPU cooler as I don't have access.

Thinking of replacing with a new board and need to find the best OSX compatible board with onboard graphics or cheap dedicated card instead.

PS - Writing this on my Advent Netbook (4211) / MSI Wind - 10.5.3 + Dell 1490 wifi.
PPS - Sorry for the XP cross post, but thought I would add my 2 cents to the motherboard part of the debate.