Boot problems may be hardware related

Hello,

Lately I have had trouble getting past the Windows splash screen on both cold and warm boots. I believed the problem was keyboard related for a while. Plugging in a PS2 keyboard and unplugging my USB keyboard seemed to work for a while. At the splash screen, sometimes the Num Lock key flashes off and on and I know I'm in, but other times, there's no recognition of the keyboard and so I'm stuck at the splash logo screen. I often have to reboot several times, sometimes plugging in the USB and PS2 sometimes one or the other and sometimes a PS2 mouse. Sometimes I have to wait a half hour after unplugging the computer.

Should I be thinking about voltage issues, power supply issues, motherboard issues, or do you think this is strictly a software issue.

thanks,

Mark:confused

 

Tell us a bit about your computer please. What make and model and how old is it? Did you install any new hardware or software just before you began having this problem?

If your computer is rather old your CMOS/motherboard battery may be dying. Have you noticed any problems with the Windows clock/calendar needing to be adjusted or reset?

 

can you boot into safe mode

 

EEzak,

Thanks for the reply and I'll be glad to.

I'm running an AMD Athlon XP 2800+ on an MSI mother board with 1GB of RAM, 450 Watt Power supply, two 89GB hard drives in a mirrored array and a 160GB hard drive for backup and data. OS is XP Pro.

I checked Add/Remove Programs in the CP and I don't see anything I've installed recently, except for the odd update here or there. I also have no new hardware, although when the trouble started, my USB hub started to lose a couple of ports so I changed that out for a new one.

I have not noticed any problems with the clock needing to be reset, although it is certainly true that that battery is pretty old. I built this machine myself about 4 years ago, and have not upgraded it much since then.

Thanks again for taking the time to help.

Mark

 

I can boot into safe mode, and I started there by doing a selective startup. I thought I had it narrowed down to something in the Startup menu, like I thought it might be the Palm Hot Sync Manager, but just as soon as I think i have it nailed then it won't boot again.

I am currently booted into real mode, and frankly I hate shutting down so I'm leaving it up and running a lot. I get away with the occasional restart but it's hit or miss. I eventually get it to boot back up by sheer persistence.

I am asking because, I am going to get a new iMac, my first, and the PC in question is going to get an overhaul to be used as production machine #2. But I'm wondering if Motherboard or power supply problems would indicate that I should really start from scratch with a new board and processor, RAM, power supply, etc. I'm going to be using this mainly as a file server and to run Vista Business for reference. (I provide help desk support for PC users).

Thanks folks,

Mark

 

Can you boot reliably, time after time, into safe mode? Or is that shaky also?

4 years isn't really all that long, typically, for your CMOS battery (I think 5 to 7 years of use is quite common before failure) to keep working reliably, but it only costs a couple of bucks to replace so that might be worth a try. I'm not optimistic that's your problem though, as you'd likely be noticing your time and date needing to be reset as the CMOS battery not only allows the BIOS to keep it's important boot up data intact, but also provides the power for your motherboard's hardware clock/calendar (which is where Windows gets that info from for it's software clock and calendar).

Do you have any diagnostic software you can run to check the status of your mirrored array and make sure there's nothing that's going haywire there? Have you had this mirrored array for a long time also? What about the two hard drives in your array? Do they have SMART features (used to predict failure of the drives) and are they turned on in your BIOS?

What sort of production will this machine be the backup or supplement machine for? On the one hand, if we can isolate the cause of your problem you can probably just replace that item. But even if this machine is only going to be used once in awhile for the production work you mention, if it's for business use and downtime means money (and maybe dissatisfied customers and lost business) a four year old machine is not a real reliable backup. If some of the hardware in it is much newer it may be better to salvage that and use it to build a new system.

 

If I may throw my two cents here. If you're dead set on running Vista, you may as well just replace that whole machine. To run Vista on that machine would be like running xp on 350mhz PIII with 128mbs of ram........

 

This is pretty early in the boot sequence. What do you mean?
Does the pc shut down or hang?

If it shuts down / restarts go for an thorough internal clean and reseat all modules and connectors.
This is a good idea anyway.

If it hangs then I would go for a system restore as far back as you can, since you haven't loaded new stuff lately.
Then do a thorough software cleanup (CCleaner ?)
Also include check disk and a defrag.
Then get the manufacturers hard drive test program and check your hard drives.

 

Hey everyone,

First of all, thanks very much to all of you for your input. Your time is greatly appreciated.

To Studiot, may I say that it just hangs at the splash screen if it doesn't recognize the keyboard. If the keyboard lights flash during this period then I'm in. It's more reliable booting into Safe Mode but not 100% guaranteed.

I think lcsmith39 is right, no Vista on this machine. I'll run it in VM Fusion on the iMac.

In answer to Eezak, this will be a backup machine mostly, a file server if you will where I can continue to view XP when i need to for reference, experiment with beta software, etc. I will install BootitNG so I can play with Linux occasionally, etc.

I think the plan of attack at this point is to get the iMac up and running and transfer all my data to the generous 1/2 T drive I got for it. I'm also going to back it up somewhere else as well.

Then I'm going to break the array and run Spinrite on both the 80GB drives and set them aside. Theoretically, you can disconnect one drive at a time, run Spinrite on each and then reconnect but I had a bad experience doing that once. Fortunately I had backed up. But when I reconnected the two drives, there was an extensive chkdsk procedure and then the drives showed up as empty, but the array was very healthy.

I have ordered a new 1/2T SATA drive and I have a 160GB ATA/100 drive which I will use as the main drive for this machine. I'll wipe that clean, run Spinrite and then install XP and see where I stand. If I still have problems booting then I'll know to look deeper into the hardware issues. If not, I'll guess it was a software issue, or hardware issues with one or both of the drives in the mirror. In answer to someone's question, I have a software RAID BIOS and the utility is pretty sparse; make an array, break an array, like that. Anyway, no more RAID arrays for a while. :wave

Thanks again for all your help.

Best regards,

Mark

 

Spinrite is good but does your version cope with the latest drives?

 

Well, I have the latest version. I wasn't aware that it had any limitations concerning any drives, except in certain cases, SATA drives. Are you aware of other issues?

Thanks,

Luciano