Cold boot problems, dying PSU or something else?

[SmiGDig]

Hey guys:

A few months back I started having a problem cold booting my system, booting when it has been off for an extended period of time, i.e. overnight.

It will boot and not make a beep to show that everything initialized properly, so I hit the reset button and that goes all well. Then it will crash during booting multiple times or start making a siren noise from the system speaker, which I have to press the rest or shut it down. I have to restart it almost instantaneously, ready to press the button to turn it on as it crashes, and once it gets into window it might boot, or give a blue screen, and crash, which most likely it could take up to 4 times to boot windows successfully.

I did install a new stick of ram, I have 3 x 512mb on my nForce 2. The thign I see is that I have an old Antec PP-412x, I believe that is the model, with adjustable power settings by turning two nobs inside. It is great for my overclocked system and worked in my old and new one for about 4 years now.

I don't know why it has a hard time starting like this, any ideas?

Thanks,
Adam

[dodo]

Did this just happen after you added that last stick of RAM? If so, try removing it and see what happens. You could try unplugging components to the minimum to see if the PS is being overloaded. Also, what motherboard do you have?

~dodo

[SmiGDig]

I have an NF7-S 2.0.

I didn't start when I added the 3rd stick of ram, but it might have shortly after.

I'll try taking it out and let you all know what happened.

[airbornflght]

Try and run memtest, let it run for an hour or so and see if you get any errors, if not, let it run overnight. after that, we can scratch memory off of the possibly deffective list. let us know.

[SmiGDig]

when i installed the stick i ran it for a few 24 hour periods. no problems.

I'm running it again to see if any problems have developed since then. over the hour there have been no problems.

i'll let you guys know how the 24 hours go.

it seems as the problem is only during bootup, however, sometimes explorer does not respond and possibly that could be the psu stuttering, or problems with my memory setup? idk.

[walterhemming]

I have exactly the same problem. I've tried to uninstall all possible hardware. Tried with different RAM's etc., but no solution. Ram test are fine and when the Windows finally boots, everything works very well.

My solution is that every time I start the computer, I press del to go to post, and wait there for 6 minutes.

Odd problem. I've had it for a 1,5 years already ;) Anyways, I'm going for a new computer (notebook) in a month so I'm not going to bother with this one anymore.

My power sourge should be good. When I boot Linux, everything works fine (Yes, I've tried to re-instal different versions of Windows XP)

I've got Athlon xp 2500+ barton
2x512MB 333 ddr
A7V600 se

[entropy]

Come to think of it, I had this issue awhile back, too. If I remember right, it had to do with the "RAM check" thing. When you start up, just in the BIOS screen, do you see a little counter that flies through your RAM and counts/checks it? If you do, there's a way to stop it before it finishes. It might say, I don't remember. Spacebar? Enter? Anything? Give it a try, if you can. Also, I thought it was strange as hell, but overclocking the balls off my processor for awhile seemed to fix it (now I've got issues because of that, but that's another story ;) )

[SmiGDig]

Yes, going into the BIOS helps to boot, I know that. It'ss stil annoying so idk why it does it.

As for doing the BIOS self check, I have mine turned off. I might have to try if turning it on might give it that time it needs to boot up.

[profdlp]

It looks like the basics have been pretty well covered. :-/

See if your BIOS has a setting like "Initial Delay For IDE" (or something like that). If so, try setting it to two or three seconds.

You might also turn off the "Warn (or stop) if CPU Fan Failure" (again, it could be phrased somewhat differently). Sometimes you get a false panic attack on the part of the computer when you first turn it on. It sees that the CPU fan isn't spinning very fast (duh, because it was clear off) and freaks out on you. That might explain the "alarm" sound.

Another thing to try would be to temporarily disconnect all of your extra drives (hard drives, cdrom, DVD) and see if that makes a difference. (Unhook both the power and the data cables.) If that makes the problem go away it is likely a case that your PSU isn't quite up to handling the initial power draw when everything is trying to spin up at the same time.

Finally, run the test from the HD manufacturer to ensure that your drive isn't having troubles of its own.

Good luck. :wave:

[SmiGDig]

Hey guys:

PROBLEM SOLVED

After taking everyone's points into consideration I decided to try entropy's tip on the BIOS Self Check.

I selected to turn on the "Self Test on Boot/Post" option, something named like that, and ever since I have had no problems booting. It takes a minute or two longer as it tests all the core system components and runs through thr ram counter, but there is no frustration of quick resets and crashing, and now I don't have to baby it to get it started.

Thanks for all your help.

Adam