My computer is reluctant to start

squeaky

The saga continues.

Last night I left the system box powered up with windows running and only switched off the monitor.

This morning when I powered up the monitor (obviously from cold) it started up straight away and showed me this page.

So it would seem to suggest that the failure during POST is more likely to be related to the system box. Erm... probably maybe. Unles the post checks of graphics on a normal start up show up some kind of problem that doesn't bother the monitor when it is switched on on its own without having the POST check done.

So I'm still stuck as to whether or not the POST check hangs because of a graphics problem, or hangs before it gets round to switching on the monitor and displaying the bios report.

Any ideas on how to pin this down please?

almillar

I was thinking about internal components for the initial hit of a power draw. You've mentioned you have 2 hard drives and a graphics card. If you've 2 DVD drives we're talking about needing a decent PSU. I'd defo want to know the wattage of a PSU in my computer.
Trying booting with just 1 stick of memory might help too. I've had RAM fail on me before...

squeaky

almillar wrote: »

I was thinking about internal components for the initial hit of a power draw. You've mentioned you have 2 hard drives and a graphics card. If you've 2 DVD drives we're talking about needing a decent PSU. I'd defo want to know the wattage of a PSU in my computer.
Trying booting with just 1 stick of memory might help too. I've had RAM fail on me before...

No graphics card it's an an board chip.

The POST checks drives in sequence not all at once. CD, DVD, Drive C, Drive D

I currently have no other loads on my computer such as printer/scanner/webcam. I'm stripped down to the very basics, and as I've said - everything on this computer is problem free, resource clash free, and with no compatibility issues.

I'm ONLY getting a problem during POST. Once the computer finally does get into a proper start, every test, check and monitoring I have been able to do has shown everything to be correct and stable.

Yesterday I logged onto the website for my motherboard and, despite windows reporting that all drivers were up to date and trouble free, I deliberately downloaded them and replaced the lot. Including the bios. No change to the hang.

This morning I unplugged and disconnected all the cables for each drive in turn, and the same for my monitor. There was no discernible change to the hang during post.

I went for a major trawl through all my bios options and found "Stop on error" was set to "All, but keyboard". I changed this to "No error" and I still get a hang. (I'm going to go back to that once I'm sure the system box is nice and warm and it's safe to do a restart and see what other options I can select that might let me skip past the problem.)

Honest guv - every check and test I can do after I've got a start sez that my computer and all its components are in perfect condition and, as the song goes, are in perfect harmony.

squeaky

Found a program called winaudit and it found an error log file.

Timeout (30000 milliseconds) waiting for the C18DBCBB89D818F7430DD7EBCF0DA372 service to connect. Event ID 7009

So I looked up the Event ID and found this...

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/217339

Hmm... anyway - I'll try the solution. Maybe. This doesn't seem like it relates to my problem. Um.

What do you guys think, please?

basmic

I'm still adament you have a hardware problem.

The best thing I can suggest is it try and locate an alternative PSU and try that. Easier said than done, I know!

chili2001

Have you tried a different monitor yet?

squeaky

basmic wrote: »

I'm still adament you have a hardware problem.

The best thing I can suggest is it try and locate an alternative PSU and try that. Easier said than done, I know!

So am I. I've just checking drivers etc to make darn sure that I'm not being misled.

squeaky

chili2001 wrote: »

Have you tried a different monitor yet?

Nope. The friend who is going to look one out for me hasn't come back to me yet.

chili2001

You were convinced earlier in the thread is was the monitor causing the problem. Surely it would be wiser to beg, steal or borrow one to rule that out first before trying out any other solutions? You may be doing more harm than good. Having said that, my money is still on a faulty PSU or RAM! you can get a cheap psu (or monitor for that matter) from ebuyer.com

squeaky

OK.... did a warm reboot and then ran winaudit again. Now have...

The device, \Device\CdRom1, has a bad block. Event ID 7

So I disconnected power and ribbon from the CDROM and now have...

The device, \Device\Ide\IdePort0, did not respond within the timeout period. Event ID 9

Which leads me here...

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/154690

And this includes the gem...

In almost all cases, these messages are being posted due to hardware problems with either the controller or, more likely, a device that is attached to the controller in question. The hardware problems can be associated with poor cabling, incorrect termination or transfer rate settings, lazy or slow device responses to relinquish the SCSI bus, a faulty device, or, in very rare cases, a poorly written device driver.

I had (well had, for the moment) the CDROM as the first item on that ribbon cable and the DVD as the second.

I'm going to have to do a cold start to see what happens. IF the darn thing starts clean then presumably I would need to make the DVD the first connection on the cable?

I'll stay here for a short while to see what you guys say and then switch off and let everything cool down - since the one constant through all this is that I get the hang in POST only when the system box is cold.