Boot up trouble

[Susan]

I have a system that won't always boot up to the HD. 1 out of about every 6 attempts are unsucessful. Boot failure...insert floppy

Other than this, the only other complaint is the BIOS boot-up time (too long). From the WAIT... signal it takes approx. 30sec. to start IDE detection. That's when it ends up booting. When it doesn't boot, the wait is 45sec.

The system otherwise acts completely normal. I'm not sure if it could be the BIOS or MB, or the hard drive.

Ran scandisk and all is okay. Windows has no problems either.

System is PCChips ver. M715 LX Chipset MB, AMI BIOS, and 6.4G Western Digital HD.

Thanks for any help. Susan

[Bleeding Edge]

You've probably done this already but I guess it's worth a mention.

Check the IDE cable for kinks or nicks of some sort. It would be very small since the problem is intermitent. Try reseating the cable at the drive and motherboard connectors. Better yet, if you have an older ribbon cable, known to be good, try using that or a new one. This will at least eliminate the cable.

There may be a boot-sector virus, so check for that.

The AMI Bios (WinBios) tends to take longer to boot then others. But I gather that you think its excessive.

Change the settings in the Bios to prevent Auto Detection of your Hard drive. Manually set the cylinders, tracks, heads, etc. This helps to keep the Bios from going thru the auto configuration of the drive -less time. Remove (or select none) for all other IDE connections that don't have devices attached, to prevent the Bios from taking time to search for things that aren't there.

Don't forget to set the LBA,PIO and Block for the drive.
I am assuming you don't have a network card installed. That will make Windows take longer to boot.

PS.
Has the Bios been updated? If not, you can try that, but before you do, try using the motherboard specific IDE drivers.
http://www.pcchips.com/product.html

[This message has been edited by Bleeding Edge (edited 03-17-99).]

[Susan]

Thanks for your reply BE. The first thing I did was to change the cable. All the lastest virus definitions are on the system too.

One thing I forgot to mention-I installed Sandra on it. When I try to get info on the system board, that portion of Sandra locks ups sometimes-it's the newest ver. (Maybe it's the board?)

I've also switched the CDROM and HD onto opposite IDE's with no effect. It's a real pain because it doesn't happen all the time, maybe once every 5-6 boots. I'll try your suggestion about setting the HD in BIOS, instead of AUTO.

All is well with WIN98 when it does boot, too. There's a network card in the sys, so it boots up a bit slow with WIN.

Thanks...

[Bleeding Edge]

Susan, what does Sandra do?

[Susan]

Sisoft Sandra is a nice utility that looks at the system and gives very thorough info on all components and software. It is very detailed. You can download a trial of it at:
www.sisoftware.demon.co.uk/sandra

Just so you know, I found out that there is a slight bug with the newest version when attempting to look at mainboard info-it locks up.

I did manage to fix my problem. I removed the jumper from the HD, and it's boots up nice and fast now, with out a problem.

Susan

[Bleeding Edge]

What?
With all the jumpers removed, the drive defaults itself as the Master. Prior, you had the jumper on the Master setting, correct? But now the system boots faster. This is interesting -very good!

Changing the IDE detection from Auto didn't help any then.

[Susan]

No, changing it from Auto did nothing.

And, yes - I had it set to master and then completely removed the jumper. Unbeleivable difference from the BIOS (actually the whole system the more I think about it-it's much faster). Posts in a quarter of the time, and no more problems! I remembered today about seeing some info somewhere about doing this.

[Bleeding Edge]

[greggx101]

Sorry to go off subject

But how do you get those smiley acid faces??

[Eli]

greggx101,

It's just a colon (or a semi-colon) and a bracket, without a space between.

[Susan]

You can go to Faq link to see how to make those, as well as links, etc...

[Paulo]

test

[greggx101]

Thanks.