Slow PC start - even to Bios

SandLake

I have built myself a media server based on FreeNAS. It has been working very well for a few months but I discovered that I had made a mistake by using non-ECC ram. Some say it is not a big mistake but the more I looked into it I decided it was too much of a potential problem so I decided to rebuild it with another OS. Everything is backed up so there will be no data loss.
Unfortunately it has become unusable as it it is far too slow. For example when I do get into the Bios and I have positioned the cursor on the first boot device and popped up the list of options it takes 5-7 seconds to move down one option. It took me about 45 minutes to de-select all boot devices except a single USB Key.
I have removed all HD's, just the USB Key connected so I have a case, PSU (tried another backup PSU), motherboard, CPU and memory.
I can get to a boot screen so it is working but how do I find out the root of the problem?

TIA

Le_Kirk

Any POST beeps?

SandLake

Sorry - no speaker, trying to sort one out now

wongataa

Unplug everything not absolutely required to boot from the motherboard. Only use one stick of RAM if you have more than one. Use onboard graphics if you have it and remove the separate graphics card.

See if everything works ok. If it does try the other sticks of RAM on their own. It might be worthwile running Memtest to check the RAM for errors.

If everything is working OK at this stage plug one more device into the motherboard and try again.

Trying one thing at a time should hopefully narrow down what could be faulty. If you are still ahving issues at the first stage then the culprits would be a motherboard issue, a power supply issue, or a processor issue.

When you find a suspect faulty item replace it with another one and try again.

While doing this make sure all cables/peripherals are firmly plugged in etc.

SandLake

Thanks but I am only running with a motherboard, psu, processor and memory. Apart from removing each stick of ram singly I can't 'use' any less.

I have found a speaker (more like a buzzer) which has a motherboard header connector but I am not getting any beeps at all

bsod

never understood this build a media server idea, why go to all the trouble and expense of maintaining and powering a pc, when there are plenty of dedicated devices that do the job better and simpler. dnla and media playing is built into to most set top boxes and tv's nowadays and a typical laptop or pc has acres of hard disk space for music.

JJ_Egan

Slow BIOS start with the memory .
Can you / have you reset the CMOS set BIOS to default .

Bit left field but what about the battery ??

SandLake

bsod - that is a can of worms! The term 'server' is bandied about nowadays and I just said media server, that is just one of it's functions. I decided I was amassing too much data to leave it unprotected, sat down and thought about it (could maybe have thought a bit more - but) so decided to move to network storage with backups. NAS devices are the ways to go or so it seems but they are underpowered and overpriced. The solution was to build my own. I built a (media) server for £180 with an AMD A6-6420 processor, I had a 2Tb hard disk and bought another one so I could set up a RAID array - runs great, does all I need. I am now adding 2 3Tb disks to it and this is what happened - but I do have backups!

I will try an alternative battery to see what happens - Thanks

Nilrem

What motherboard are you using?
Does it actually support ECC, as not all motherboards do, especially if it's a cheaper consumer level one (such as the sort of thing often bought/sold to make a media server).

ECC ram is only really worth it in situations where an error will cause critical problems and needs to be caught there and then (so things like accounting servers or servers that have other big DB's etc).

For a home server such as a media server it's an almost total waste of money.

If the machine is slow to get to the bios then it's a hardware issue most likely, and could even be something like an attached USB device slowing the bios down during boot..

I would suggest getting a copy of the Ultimate boot disc, booting into that and running the memory diagnostics to rule out memory issues.

bsod

SandLake wrote: »

I decided I was amassing too much data

I use the what are the odds I'll ever find time to listen or look at it again test, save's a lot of electricity. pvr does most of the media work.

Fightsback

What's the motherboard make and model ?