My computer is reluctant to start

chili2001

squeaky wrote: »

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?

Make sure you change the master/slave jumpers on the drives if you are going to do that

squeaky

chili2001 wrote: »

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

Not me guv, honest

We have votes for the monitor, and for the power supply.

My own first take on it was a Hard Drive since POST checks the CD first, then the DVD and then checks both the Hard Drives. It's there where the system hangs and the drive access LED on the front of the box stays on and everything stops. This hang means that the monitor doesn't lift from standy and display the usual bios report. I'm thinking that this is because the POST hangs before it gets that far. At least one reader thinks it's hanging because the monitor is at fault.

Then, as you say there's a PSU possibility - but honest - I'm currently stripped to the bone. Even less now with the CD disconnected.

As for wattage - input voltage is listed on the PSU as 230 and current consumption as 4A which makes it close to 1KW by calculation. 920W to be precise.

Right now all I've got connected is the DVD, Drives C and D, monitor, keyboard, mouse, and the connector for my router (which has its own power supply).

That's it. Full stop. All power monitoring software I have says that all the low voltage outputs from the PSU are correct and stable and no usage I've been able to put on the machine (such as doing a search on a drive to make it work hard while I watch the power) have produced anything other than very minor fluctuations. As in, a tenth of a volt or so.

I haven't done the registry edit thing yet. Nor will I for the moment. I need to see if I get a cold start with the CDROM disconnected.

squeaky

chili2001 wrote: »

Make sure you change the master/slave jumpers on the drives if you are going to do that

Yep. That's if I actually need to do it.

squeaky

OK,,, time to let it all cool down. I may be gone some time...

almillar

920W??!! Either I've fallen behind a lot with PC power supplies or sonething's wrong! My PSU is 600W. I'm looking for what the PSU says on its casing that it's rated at, what it it meant to supply. If it's, say 350w or less, it'll cause trouble. Stripping your system will reduce the symptoms, but if the PSU is faulty you can't expect a stable system no matter what's connected. But it seems that your system IS stable outside the POST, so let's move on.
Sounds like you may have isolated the problem to the CDROM. My only other suggestions if that turns out to be wrong would be the IDE cable to it, and giving the BIOS chip on the motherboard a little knock in case there is a bad contact, or taking it out and putting it back in if possible, but that's a last resort...

squeaky

MY PSU does NOT anywhere state its wattage. Only states voltage and current consumption/output.

I've just done a cold restart and still get the hang. So it can't be the CDROM.

I've checked ALL the chips on the mother board and broken/remade every single connector inside the system box and all the cables that connect externally.

There's no new items added to the system error log.

I just looked back at that error report. Remember this?

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

That, I take it, is Drive C rather than the CDROM which came up in a report dated yesterday?

Right from the first post I said that I didn't think I could hear drive C operating during the POST check. It's much quieter in operation than my Drive D which is easy to hear, so I never been completely sure that it is fault.
But add my hearing (failure) to the drive access LED staying on during post, and IdePort0 being listed in the error log...

..is that it? A dodgy start up for drive C?

Thing is... the hang didn't clear when I completely disconnected each hard drive in turn the other day. I'd have expected to see something on the order of "Boot sector failure - please place a boot disk..."

Confusing innit?

spakkker

Disconnect all drives from the mo/board and try.
If you get nothing try and borrow a neighbours monitor for 10 minutes.
Do you hear the m/board beep when it posts?
I'd guess monitor is slow to warm up/faulty.
Have you looked on freecycle or stuff for sale or gumtree for a monitor?

squeaky

spakkker wrote: »

Disconnect all drives from the mo/board and try.

I'll hve to do this a little later - I need time to allow the sytem box to cool after switching off.

If you get nothing try and borrow a neighbours monitor for 10 minutes

I'm waiting for a friend to turn up with a spare. But honest, I don't think it's the monitor - normally on my POST it's the LAST thing to run... so any hang will mean for sure that I don't get to see the POST report. Plus, I've previously left the monitor powered up - on standby - and only turned the sytem box power off. So the monitor should stay reasonably "warm"; and yet I still get a hang on a cold start when I power up the system box.

And it's the DRIVE LED that appears to hang during POST and I don't see how that would happen if the monitor was at fault?

Do you hear the m/board beep when it posts?
I'd guess monitor is slow to warm up/faulty.
Have you looked on freecycle or stuff for sale or gumtree for a monitor?

I hear a beep at the time I finally manage to get a start. Never during a hang.

I'm not going to ask on Freecycle for a monitor until I'm sure I need one. I want to pin this down so that I know what and why - rather than start filling my house up with assorted computer bits that I've "guessed" might be the problem. If the monitor didn't work, the next suggestion would be to get a video card to side step the on board chipset, and then I already have a suggestion to try another PSU... and if none of those fix it - then what? Fault finding by substitution works, I know, but I don't have a shed load of bits, nor the space for them.

As you've seen from the system error logs, the only entries I have - which admittedly are not capturing every start hang error - are referring to drives. I'll certainly swap out the monitor when I have a loaner available - but in the meantime I'd like to follow up on the errors I know that the system is managing to detect.

Disconnecting various bits to try and generate a different error and/or get an erronious start but no hang is what we seem to be working through now.

So drive disconnects in full from the motherboard will be my next cold start test.

spakkker

Hi , the fact that you don't hear a beep unless it starts and not when it hangs seems to indicate that it isn't posting properly - which is a mo/board problem.
The fact it seems to be intermittant or temp. related does make it harder to I.D. and may point to a dry joint on m/b.

squeaky

spakkker wrote: »

Hi , the fact that you don't hear a beep unless it starts and not when it hangs seems to indicate that it isn't posting properly - which is a mo/board problem.
The fact it seems to be intermittant or temp. related does make it harder to I.D. and may point to a dry joint on m/b.

Yep, I finally got there myself. The final checks I've just done certainly point that way.

COLD START TESTS:-

• With a borrowed monitor. Still hangs with all the same observable (non)events

• With CD and DVD ribbon cable disconnected from the mother board and power cables removed. Still hangs with all the same observable (non)events

• With CD and DVD AND Hard Drive ribbon cable disconnected from the mother board and power cables removed. Still hangs with all the same observable (non)events

• With Hard Drive ribbon cable and power disconnected, AND with CD and DVD reconnected AND with a bootable disc in the DVD (windows setup)... Still hangs with all the same observable (non)events

• With the obvious exceptions that I don't see the lights on given drives as they've been disconnected - but get them back when reconnected.

As far as I can see - that pretty much eliminates all the hardware involved in POST checks, and I've overwritten all the drivers that are relevant, and I've removed ALL extraneous components such as printer/scanner/webcam and so on and have the machine stripped down to the bare essentials.

No matter what else I remove from the system in terms of monitor or drives or cabling - I cannot generate a different fault or apparent procedure in the POST phase of start up after power on when the system box is physically cool. None of the changes I've made in the bios (and in system tools) pertaining to action on error have made any difference either.

The system error report shows no new errors after those quoted above which were generated yesterday and this morning.

I also noticed that I was flexing the mother board when disconnecting and reconnecting the ribbon cables - and that might go a long way to explaining why it took me more than twenty attempts to get a start this time when I've usually managed to get one between five and ten.

So possibly a dodgy pin connection or maybe a dry joint somewhere on the motherboard - which does appear to be temperature related since, to date, after all this time, I have had no failures on a software restart - once I've finally managed to get the thing running, that is.

It's beginning to look like my next option is to strip out the motherboard and use my mark one eyeball in the hopes of spotting a poor joint. Unless you guys know different? Jeeze but I hope someone does!

Edit:- Thinks... I pressed each chip firmly into its socket to ensure correct seating - but my first easy option, I suppose, would be to lift each one out in turn and then reseat it. Just that one step further. Hm...