incomplete boot

[George]

I am having trouble getting my machine to boot.
I have worked on this problem off and on for several months.
I have changed the mother board, changed the video card,
changed the hard drive, and unplugged every device except the
video card. Below is the video output that I get when
I power up. The boot just stops after Pnp Init-Completed.

Below are the messages when I power on. There is just one
beep, indicating a normal boot I think. I would apprectiate
any suggestions that people might offer.

George

______________________________________________

Award Modular BIOS v4.51PG, An Energy Star Ally
Copyright (C) 1984-98, Award Software, Inc
ASUS P5A ACPI BIOS Revision 1007.A
AMD-K6/500 Processor
Memory test: 262144K OK
Award Plug and Play BIOS Extension v1.0A
Initialize Plug and Play Cards...
PnP Init-Completed_

 

[johns]

Will it boot in Safe Mode? If not, you probably have a
bad mobo. ASUS is notorious for that. I've never had
an ASUS mobo go longer than about 1 year without
starting that sudden reboot problem, or finally just
won't boot at all. I think the problem is cheap electrolytic
capacitors on the mobo .. esp the psupply filters.
If it will boot in Safe Mode, then you have a driver
or incompatible program problem. DVD players are
good for that, but as old as your system is, I doubt
you have a dvd player. Also, you may have bad
spots on your hard drive, and getting corrupt data
reads. If you can run chkdsk in safe mode, you
could see that. If you reinstall, and delete the partition
and reformate it, that is also a good way to check
the drive. I see that a lot in 40 gig drives .. or older.

johns

 

[George]

Will it boot in Safe Mode? If not, you probably have a
bad mobo. ASUS is notorious for that. I've never had
an ASUS mobo go longer than about 1 year without
starting that sudden reboot problem, or finally just
won't boot at all. I think the problem is cheap electrolytic
capacitors on the mobo .. esp the psupply filters.
If it will boot in Safe Mode, then you have a driver
or incompatible program problem. DVD players are
good for that, but as old as your system is, I doubt
you have a dvd player. Also, you may have bad
spots on your hard drive, and getting corrupt data
reads. If you can run chkdsk in safe mode, you
could see that. If you reinstall, and delete the partition
and reformate it, that is also a good way to check
the drive. I see that a lot in 40 gig drives .. or older.

johns

It will not boot into safe mode. The boot stalls even before
it looks for the disks. I have tried booting with the disk
connected or not connected. I have tried different disks,
tied booting off the CDROM and off the floppy, nothing.
It stalls after initializing the plug and play devices. My os
is Linux but the boot does not get to the stage of trying to load
an os.

George

 

[johns]

I'm thinking ASUS rebooter. Pretty old system.
Some really nice new toys out there now

johns

 

[Paul]

Will it boot in Safe Mode? If not, you probably have a
bad mobo. ASUS is notorious for that. I've never had
an ASUS mobo go longer than about 1 year without
starting that sudden reboot problem, or finally just
won't boot at all. I think the problem is cheap electrolytic
capacitors on the mobo .. esp the psupply filters.
If it will boot in Safe Mode, then you have a driver
or incompatible program problem. DVD players are
good for that, but as old as your system is, I doubt
you have a dvd player. Also, you may have bad
spots on your hard drive, and getting corrupt data
reads. If you can run chkdsk in safe mode, you
could see that. If you reinstall, and delete the partition
and reformate it, that is also a good way to check
the drive. I see that a lot in 40 gig drives .. or older.

johns

If you go to Homey's repair site, he does not list Asus
as a major source of capacitor repairs.

http://www.motherboardrepair.com/

You should inspect the capacitors on any motherboard, where
there are problems that point to the capacitors as a potential
source of the problem. But don't expect it to be that common
on the Asus boards.

Paul

 

[Paul]

It will not boot into safe mode. The boot stalls even before
it looks for the disks. I have tried booting with the disk
connected or not connected. I have tried different disks,
tied booting off the CDROM and off the floppy, nothing.
It stalls after initializing the plug and play devices. My os
is Linux but the boot does not get to the stage of trying to load
an os.

George

Can you reduce the amount of RAM in the machine ? Back in that
era, there was some deal about cachable memory. And there
are differences between the processors, as to whether they
rely on the tag RAM on board or not.

(Supported CPUs versus motherboard "Rev" revision printed on board)
http://support.asus.com.tw/cpusuppo....aspx?type=1&name=P5A&SLanguage=en-us&cache=1

I note the guy with the K6-3 here, didn't have a problem.
The "noapic" option is a good thing to try, as would be
disabling ACPI if that were possible. But I don't see a
BIOS option for that.

http://www.fedoraforum.org/forum/showthread.php?t=12754

There are some old FAQ pages still over here:
http://rma.asus.de/support/faq/faq003_p5cpu_supp3.htm

Paul

 

[George]

Can you reduce the amount of RAM in the machine ? Back in that
era, there was some deal about cachable memory. And there
are differences between the processors, as to whether they
rely on the tag RAM on board or not.

(Supported CPUs versus motherboard "Rev" revision printed on board)
http://support.asus.com.tw/cpusuppo....aspx?type=1&name=P5A&SLanguage=en-us&cache=1

I note the guy with the K6-3 here, didn't have a problem.
The "noapic" option is a good thing to try, as would be
disabling ACPI if that were possible. But I don't see a
BIOS option for that.

http://www.fedoraforum.org/forum/showthread.php?t=12754

There are some old FAQ pages still over here:
http://rma.asus.de/support/faq/faq003_p5cpu_supp3.htm

Paul

hmm, I will look over the sites you mention and see
what is there. Yes, I thought of reducing the amount of
RAM but I have just one 256M board for it. I will look around
for a cheap stick of 128M and see what happens when I plug that
in. This one is a real head shaker for me.

George