Freeeze during boot? Need Help

wrote in message
...
I am having trouble with a new system I have created.
It freezes during boot at the XP setup window pretty much the first
time I power up each morning. When I re-power up it boots to desktop
just fine. It's almost like it is having trouble cold-starting.

The system has three hard drives, one SATA, two IDE, plus a SATA DVD
burner.
It is a AMD Phenom 9550 Quad-Core 2.6GHz.
ASUS M3A78-CM MOBO.
3.25GB (Supposed to be 4GB) DDR2 RAM.
400W PSU.
XP SP2.

Can someone suggest where I might start looking to determine wherein
the problem lies? Or should I leave the machine on overnight? I have
always been afraid to do that.

Duke


unplug the ide drives then start up. If all is well, plug them in one at a
time.

I am having trouble with a new system I have created.
It freezes during boot at the XP setup window pretty much the first
time I power up each morning. When I re-power up it boots to desktop
just fine. It's almost like it is having trouble cold-starting.

The system has three hard drives, one SATA, two IDE, plus a SATA DVD
burner.
It is a AMD Phenom 9550 Quad-Core 2.6GHz.
ASUS M3A78-CM MOBO.
3.25GB (Supposed to be 4GB) DDR2 RAM.
400W PSU.
XP SP2.

Can someone suggest where I might start looking to determine wherein
the problem lies? Or should I leave the machine on overnight? I have
always been afraid to do that.

Duke

On Tue, 24 Mar 2009 10:04:06 -0000, "Tom E" wrote:


unplug the ide drives then start up. If all is well, plug them in one at a
time.


Will do.

Thing is, it may take a while to do this. This AM, it did it once
again, but I powered off for two hours, then powered up - it worked
fine. So it appears the problem is sporadic, and may only happen
after being powered off for several hours (ie overnight). And if I
experiment with unplugging and plugging drives, it can take a few days
to achieve any conclusions.

OTOH, I thought of doing this myself, and so I agree with you. Right
now I am thinking that it may take a week of experimenting with hard
drive eliminations, including the SATA drive.

BTW, I should have mentioned that all three drives are bootable, and
I use the usual boot.ini mods to control this. Therefore, I should be
able to boot up from just any one or two hard drives connected as a
test.

Should be fun - CYA next week?

Duke

On Tue, 24 Mar 2009 07:29:03 -0500, wrote:

On Tue, 24 Mar 2009 10:04:06 -0000, "Tom E" wrote:


unplug the ide drives then start up. If all is well, plug them in one at a
time.


Will do.

Thing is, it may take a while to do this. This AM, it did it once
again, but I powered off for two hours, then powered up - it worked
fine. So it appears the problem is sporadic, and may only happen
after being powered off for several hours (ie overnight). And if I
experiment with unplugging and plugging drives, it can take a few days
to achieve any conclusions.

OTOH, I thought of doing this myself, and so I agree with you. Right
now I am thinking that it may take a week of experimenting with hard
drive eliminations, including the SATA drive.

BTW, I should have mentioned that all three drives are bootable, and
I use the usual boot.ini mods to control this. Therefore, I should be
able to boot up from just any one or two hard drives connected as a
test.

Should be fun - CYA next week?

Duke

Instead of just time, it might be temperature related,
changing function of electrical contacts, breaks in a
circuit board traces or solder joints, or capacitors.

Removing devices could pinpoint a device, or could mask the
problem by lowering load on the PSU. Does it always stop
booting at the same point? If so, I suspect video card, if
not, PSU seems more likely. You have not listed the
particulars of your system, that is often helpful.

On Tue, 24 Mar 2009 05:39:22 -0500, jw wrote:

It freezes during boot at the XP setup window pretty much the first
time I power up each morning. When I re-power up it boots to desktop
just fine. It's almost like it is having trouble cold-starting.

Had exactly the same problem 2 years ago. Checked drives and memory. Unplugged
and re-plugged most connections to PSU. Problem persisted.

So since then when switching on cold, I leave it at the BIOS password prompt
for 5 minutes, then boot.

No recurrence of problem since then...

--
/\/\aurice
Linux Mandriva 2.6.27.19-desktop-1mnb (i686) 2009.0 32-bit
KDE 3.5.10 Virtualbox 2.1.4
(Replace "nomail.afraid" by "bcs" to reply by email)

wrote:

I am having trouble with a new system I have created.
It freezes during boot at the XP setup window pretty much the first
time I power up each morning. When I re-power up it boots to desktop
just fine. It's almost like it is having trouble cold-starting.

The system has three hard drives, one SATA, two IDE, plus a SATA DVD
burner.
It is a AMD Phenom 9550 Quad-Core 2.6GHz.
ASUS M3A78-CM MOBO.
3.25GB (Supposed to be 4GB) DDR2 RAM.
400W PSU.

i would suggest changing your power supply for 600W. hard drives take power

when you power up and go into bios what is the temp reading
what happens if you run just one hard drive.
XP SP2.

Can someone suggest where I might start looking to determine wherein
the problem lies? Or should I leave the machine on overnight? I have
always been afraid to do that.

Duke

On Fri, 27 Mar 2009 10:08:59 +0000, darklight
wrote:

wrote:

I am having trouble with a new system I have created.
It freezes during boot at the XP setup window pretty much the first
time I power up each morning. When I re-power up it boots to desktop
just fine. It's almost like it is having trouble cold-starting.

The system has three hard drives, one SATA, two IDE, plus a SATA DVD
burner.
It is a AMD Phenom 9550 Quad-Core 2.6GHz.
ASUS M3A78-CM MOBO.
3.25GB (Supposed to be 4GB) DDR2 RAM.
400W PSU.

i would suggest changing your power supply for 600W. hard drives take power

when you power up and go into bios what is the temp reading
what happens if you run just one hard drive.


While a marginal quality 400W PSU could cause this problem,
it most definitely does not need more than a 400W, decent
quality/properly functioning PSU. That it uses onboard
video alone offsets having a couple extra hard drives and
then some.

kony wrote:

On Fri, 27 Mar 2009 10:08:59 +0000, darklight
wrote:

wrote:

I am having trouble with a new system I have created.
It freezes during boot at the XP setup window pretty much the first
time I power up each morning. When I re-power up it boots to desktop
just fine. It's almost like it is having trouble cold-starting.

The system has three hard drives, one SATA, two IDE, plus a SATA DVD
burner.
It is a AMD Phenom 9550 Quad-Core 2.6GHz.
ASUS M3A78-CM MOBO.
3.25GB (Supposed to be 4GB) DDR2 RAM.
400W PSU.

i would suggest changing your power supply for 600W. hard drives take
power

when you power up and go into bios what is the temp reading
what happens if you run just one hard drive.


While a marginal quality 400W PSU could cause this problem,
it most definitely does not need more than a 400W, decent
quality/properly functioning PSU. That it uses onboard
video alone offsets having a couple extra hard drives and
then some.

so what your saying! what i was taught is incorrect?

On Fri, 27 Mar 2009 10:08:59 +0000, darklight
wrote:

wrote:

It is a AMD Phenom 9550 Quad-Core 2.6GHz.
ASUS M3A78-CM MOBO.
3.25GB (Supposed to be 4GB) DDR2 RAM.
400W PSU.

i would suggest changing your power supply for 600W. hard drives take power
when you power up and go into bios what is the temp reading
what happens if you run just one hard drive.
XP SP2.

Well - now I have it running with only the SATA hard drive. When I
powered up this AM, it stopped immediately with no raster whatsoever.
Then when I immediately powered up a second time, it completed the
boot okay. Almost like the 450W PSU can't handle the initial power
requirements?

Duke

On Fri, 27 Mar 2009 14:49:01 -0400, kony wrote:

While a marginal quality 400W PSU could cause this problem,
it most definitely does not need more than a 400W, decent
quality/properly functioning PSU. That it uses onboard
video alone offsets having a couple extra hard drives and
then some.


Well then, I guess I won't dash onto the web to buy a higher-wattage
PSU.

Duke