The last two days, when I powered up my one machine, the boot-up
stopped dead. Then when I re-booted, it gave me a message
'during last boot-up your system hung for improper frequency
combination. Your system is now in safe mode'.
Then when I restarted in normal mode all was fine.
What gives?
Thanks
Jethro
The message doesn't mean what it seems to, usually, just
that it didn't post on prior attempt(s).
If the system fails to post at the correct speed it may drop
back to this failsafe mode where it tries to post at a lower
speed. It may or may not successfully post at the lower
speed, depending on what the problem is, and if a
progressive failure-in-progress, how badly it is degraded.
A buggy bios or user settings change might cause it but if
the system was otherwise working without changes to hardware
or bios, it would tend to implicate degradation of the board
or PSU.
Since it does end up working, a simple multimeter test of
the PSU might not reveal anything even if it is the PSU.
You might inspect the capacitors on the board and (after
unplugging from AC for a few minutes) in the PSU, but
otherwise there may not be a clear indication of fault
except by swapping known good parts into that system or the
suspect parts into another known working system.
Maybe it's just the battery, check that as well. You didn't
tell us anything about the hardware.
