Bizarre cold boot problem

[Guest]

I have had a Windows ME system running stablely for some time and have now
changed to Windows XP home edition. This is a clean install on newly formated
harddisks, service pack 2 and all required updates are installed.

When my machine is shutdown it won't boot from cold without the power cable
being removed and re-inserted. When cold booting normally I can hear the
drive heads un-parking and the cds start up but the graphics card never
initialises. The lights on my usb hub flicker briefly and then do so again
repeatedly every so often as if the machine is in some sort of loop.

Since the hardware is the same as with the previous ME installation I can
only assume that it is an XP shutdown or APCI issue.

Any thoughts would be appreciated as I can't work out what to do.

Thanks,
Paul

 

[Malke]

I have had a Windows ME system running stablely for some time and have
now changed to Windows XP home edition. This is a clean install on
newly formated harddisks, service pack 2 and all required updates are
installed.

When my machine is shutdown it won't boot from cold without the power
cable being removed and re-inserted. When cold booting normally I can
hear the drive heads un-parking and the cds start up but the graphics
card never initialises. The lights on my usb hub flicker briefly and
then do so again repeatedly every so often as if the machine is in
some sort of loop.

Since the hardware is the same as with the previous ME installation I
can only assume that it is an XP shutdown or APCI issue.

On the contrary, I wouldn't assume that this has anything to do with the
operating system since the problems occur before the os is even loaded.
It actually sounds like a classic case of your power supply dying. Swap
it out for a known-working one and see if that solves your problems.

Malke

 

[melvin cotterill]

Hello Paul;
Prior to installing XP did you run a check to see if your hardware was
compatible with XP? I am by no means an expert, however, I had a similar
problem and had to obtain new hardware because XP did not have the driver
to run my "ancient PCI card". I forget which one it was but I think it was
my Adaptec SCSI controller I/O card.
Hope this helps.
Melvin

 

[Galen Somerville]

If Paul was running Me chances are it's an older Motherboard.

Now that's a piece of hardware that can give you no end of headaches.

Galen

 

[Trent©]

I have had a Windows ME system running stablely for some time and have now
changed to Windows XP home edition. This is a clean install on newly formated
harddisks, service pack 2 and all required updates are installed.

When my machine is shutdown it won't boot from cold without the power cable
being removed and re-inserted. When cold booting normally I can hear the
drive heads un-parking and the cds start up but the graphics card never
initialises. The lights on my usb hub flicker briefly and then do so again
repeatedly every so often as if the machine is in some sort of loop.

Since the hardware is the same as with the previous ME installation I can
only assume that it is an XP shutdown or APCI issue.

Any thoughts would be appreciated as I can't work out what to do.

Thanks,
Paul

Since you did an install from format, did you install the chipset
drivers again?


Have a nice one...

Trent

Budweiser: Helping ugly people have sex since 1876!

 

[Guest]

Thanks for the thoughts.

I don't believe that the psu is to blame, it worked previously and, if the
power cord is removed and replaced it boots first time. It's a 550w unit and
not overloaded.

It may well be a hardware issue but all drivers are installed and there are
no warnings in device manager, I may try reinstalling the chipset drivers
though.

Thanks again,
Paul

 

[lew]

Thanks for the thoughts.

I don't believe that the psu is to blame, it worked previously and, if the
power cord is removed and replaced it boots first time. It's a 550w unit and
not overloaded.

It may well be a hardware issue but all drivers are installed and there are
no warnings in device manager, I may try reinstalling the chipset drivers
though.

Thanks again,
Paul

If you have a lcd monitor, you might try setting your motherboard's bios
power management to use DPMS instead of ACPI. When I got my lcd monitor,
sometimes the system won't even boot, had to do a hard reset when it was
cold. I do have a old scsi pci card, tekram 390f, but it is now only
connected to a cdrom & dvdrom (not getting rid of it yet).

With my mb's bios power management set to dpms, it now boots up very quickly
than anytime in the past. The mb is also "old", i.e. 2000.