New install - BIOS issues?

**Chase_UK** · 04-06-2005, 05:15 PM

Hi guys,

I've just installed a system in my car:

EPIA MII 12000
Opus 150W
512MB RAM
40GB 3.5" HDD (Came in a new PC a few months back but was immediately removed and replaced with a lager model so it's pretty much brand new)
700IDT non-motorised screen

Anyway, I'm having some issues with booting after the system has powered down (either shutdown or hibernate). What's happening is that the mobo isn't 'seeing' the HDD (and therefore not booting), but if I enter the BIOS settings, exit and then reboot, it sees it and boots fine.

I've been doing a little bit of testing with different BIOS settings, but have not come to any firm conclusions about the circumstances which cause a failed boot.

It's also taking 30+ seconds to POST regardless of which BIOS settings are used. I've also had the HDD in another machine as slave and performed a disk check - no errors were found, and I've also tried it as master. In this case it started to boot into XP without any problems several times.

Any thoughts/ideas would be appreciated.

Cheers

**will1384** · 04-07-2005, 03:50 AM

What's happening is that the mobo isn't 'seeing' the HDD (and therefore not booting), but if I enter the BIOS settings, exit and then reboot, it sees it and boots fine.

you know I had the same problems yesterday - I found out that
the power cable to the harddisk stops working if I wiggle it

but if I enter the BIOS settings, exit and then reboot, it sees it and boots fine.

mine would do that - but then the computer would crash driving down
the road and come up to the bios screen , saying no operating system
found - I would have to reboot and re-detect the hard disk and it would
work fine - and do it again later at a random time - it was driving me crazy

I was going to start replacing hardware and Thought ,check
the easy stuff first

check the motherboard battery if it has one
check to see if there is a bios upgrade on the internet
try the bios defalut setings
try another harddisk on the problem motherboard
check the IDE and power cables

Good Luck

**Chase_UK** · 04-07-2005, 02:43 PM

OK guys, some results from testing.

Looked at what was taking the time.

Mem check around 4-5 secs,
IDE detection 18-20 secs,
then nothing for around 45 secs (!)
Total around 75-80 secs !!

Kept going into BIOS at this point, but let it carry on for a couple of times as well, and it took a further 20 secs to display 'Updating ESCD...Success' and then sat at 'Verifying DMI pool data' for around 50 seconds. At which point I'd get a 'DISK BOOT FAILURE' message.

Best case was posting in around 45 and a successful boot into XP.

Having buggered about for an hour, I decided to swap the HDD out for a DVD drive. Reset BIOS to Fail Safe and it POSTed in about 10 secs and attempted to boot from the DVD.

Went back into BIOS and loaded the optimised settings, removed all the other boot devices and unnecessary options and rebooted. Got it to post in around 6 seconds.

I then swapped the DVD drive out for another HD I've using to try out Longhorn, and rebooted. Again it posted in around 6-7 seconds. Woohoo.

So after all that, it looks as though there may be an issue with my original hard drive. It's still confusing me because this drive is fine in another machine...

BTW - IDE cable was replaced an both IDE channels were tested, but there were no differences. Strange.

Thanks for the tips anyway. I'll hopefully post some install pics up soon

**DarquePervert** · 04-07-2005, 04:01 PM

Originally Posted by Chase_UK

OK guys, some results from testing.

Looked at what was taking the time.

Mem check around 4-5 secs,
IDE detection 18-20 secs,
then nothing for around 45 secs (!)
Total around 75-80 secs !!

Kept going into BIOS at this point, but let it carry on for a couple of times as well, and it took a further 20 secs to display 'Updating ESCD...Success' and then sat at 'Verifying DMI pool data' for around 50 seconds. At which point I'd get a 'DISK BOOT FAILURE' message.

Best case was posting in around 45 and a successful boot into XP.

Having buggered about for an hour, I decided to swap the HDD out for a DVD drive. Reset BIOS to Fail Safe and it POSTed in about 10 secs and attempted to boot from the DVD.

Went back into BIOS and loaded the optimised settings, removed all the other boot devices and unnecessary options and rebooted. Got it to post in around 6 seconds.

I then swapped the DVD drive out for another HD I've using to try out Longhorn, and rebooted. Again it posted in around 6-7 seconds. Woohoo.

So after all that, it looks as though there may be an issue with my original hard drive. It's still confusing me because this drive is fine in another machine...

BTW - IDE cable was replaced an both IDE channels were tested, but there were no differences. Strange.

Thanks for the tips anyway. I'll hopefully post some install pics up soon

I had a client's computer that was taking forever to star to boot into Win2000. Turns out they had USB booting enabled and their USB printer had memory slots, wo it was scanning all those drives for a bootable device.
Just something you might want to check.