Google Groups no longer supports new Usenet posts or subscriptions. Historical content remains viewable.
Dismiss
An old Win problem
0 views
Skip to first unread message
Dave Symes
Nov 23, 2012, 4:11:32 AM11/23/12
to
G'day folks.
Posting here in the vague hope someone might have some thoughts that go
beyond where I've been.
I have a Win XP-SP3 machine that, from a cold start fails the first time,
but the second attempt boots okay.
However, if the machine has been running, then closed down, then booted
again within half an hour or so, it will boot through to Windows okay.
Windows XP itself now(1) works perfectly okay once booted.
Left for a few hours, or overnight, requires the second attempt.
The machine is just over 4 years old (From Novatech) and had been giving
some other problems, the multiple (Many) starts being one of them.
(1) The other problems pointed to harddrive getting uppity, so that has
been replaced with a new one, the OS Backed/Restored from the original
disk using Acronis.
While I was at it I replaced the CMOS battery.
All the old problems have now gone, including many attempts to get a boot,
but I'm left with this single annoyance that from a Cold, cold boot it
requires two goes to get a start.
The detail is this:
Machine is off overnight, or even for a few hours, upon pressing the power
button the following happens.
Machine starts into life, Hd light flashes and we go through the BIOS
splash screen, then the WinXP splash screen runs (The one with the
horizontal running blue dots).
When it gets to the end of that sequence, the screen blacks out as per
normal, the harddrive light (Front of the computer) goes out (Shouldn't)
and the screen remains black (Forever) until some while later, I press the
power button to end the session.
Short Pause...
Press the power button again and the process starts... After that because
the machine didn't start the previous time, the startup dialogue screen is
presented.
Start windows normally...
After that the machine boots full and is okay.
Thereafter, during the session it can be rebooted (if software action
requires it) without incident.
Thereafter the machine can be shut down and left for a short while and
will boot up correctly.
It's only if the machine is left for a longer period that the bootup
problem happens.
I've also done a "fixmbr" just in case...
There are only two things left in my mind, aged solder joints or power
supply getting old and not having enough grunt to power a cold machine,
both symptoms of cold machine problems... But I don't want to think about
that yet...
The machine has one hard drive and two CD/DVD drives, and for the period
of testing all external equipment (USB etc) has been disconnected, even
though the external USB stuff is wall-wart powered anyway.
This is my main Win machine, so before I have to go to the trouble of
excising all my business and personal data, passwords, account details
etc, from the machine and taking it to a repair shop, does anyone have any
useful thoughts?
Thanks
Dave
--
Dave Triffid
Posting here in the vague hope someone might have some thoughts that go
beyond where I've been.
I have a Win XP-SP3 machine that, from a cold start fails the first time,
but the second attempt boots okay.
However, if the machine has been running, then closed down, then booted
again within half an hour or so, it will boot through to Windows okay.
Windows XP itself now(1) works perfectly okay once booted.
Left for a few hours, or overnight, requires the second attempt.
The machine is just over 4 years old (From Novatech) and had been giving
some other problems, the multiple (Many) starts being one of them.
(1) The other problems pointed to harddrive getting uppity, so that has
been replaced with a new one, the OS Backed/Restored from the original
disk using Acronis.
While I was at it I replaced the CMOS battery.
All the old problems have now gone, including many attempts to get a boot,
but I'm left with this single annoyance that from a Cold, cold boot it
requires two goes to get a start.
The detail is this:
Machine is off overnight, or even for a few hours, upon pressing the power
button the following happens.
Machine starts into life, Hd light flashes and we go through the BIOS
splash screen, then the WinXP splash screen runs (The one with the
horizontal running blue dots).
When it gets to the end of that sequence, the screen blacks out as per
normal, the harddrive light (Front of the computer) goes out (Shouldn't)
and the screen remains black (Forever) until some while later, I press the
power button to end the session.
Short Pause...
Press the power button again and the process starts... After that because
the machine didn't start the previous time, the startup dialogue screen is
presented.
Start windows normally...
After that the machine boots full and is okay.
Thereafter, during the session it can be rebooted (if software action
requires it) without incident.
Thereafter the machine can be shut down and left for a short while and
will boot up correctly.
It's only if the machine is left for a longer period that the bootup
problem happens.
I've also done a "fixmbr" just in case...
There are only two things left in my mind, aged solder joints or power
supply getting old and not having enough grunt to power a cold machine,
both symptoms of cold machine problems... But I don't want to think about
that yet...
The machine has one hard drive and two CD/DVD drives, and for the period
of testing all external equipment (USB etc) has been disconnected, even
though the external USB stuff is wall-wart powered anyway.
This is my main Win machine, so before I have to go to the trouble of
excising all my business and personal data, passwords, account details
etc, from the machine and taking it to a repair shop, does anyone have any
useful thoughts?
Thanks
Dave
--
Dave Triffid
Dave Symes
Nov 23, 2012, 5:00:27 AM11/23/12
to
On 23 Nov, da...@triffid.co.uk wrote:
> I have a Win XP-SP3 machine that, from a cold start fails the first time,
> but the second attempt boots okay.
[Snippy]
> I have a Win XP-SP3 machine that, from a cold start fails the first time,
> but the second attempt boots okay.
When the posting came back to me I realised I'd missed a bit.
XP was the last time I was supplied with a proper System install disk, so
I've also done a Repair/Install... Obviously after putting the Restore on
the new HD.
Dave
--
Dave Triffid
Stuart
Nov 23, 2012, 5:19:56 AM11/23/12
to
In article <52f30d8...@triffid.co.uk>,
They're not too expensive and easy to replace.
--
Stuart Winsor
Only plain text for emails
http://www.asciiribbon.org
Dave Symes <da...@triffid.co.uk> wrote:
> There are only two things left in my mind, aged solder joints or power
> supply getting old and not having enough grunt to power a cold machine,
Power supply is the first thing that comes to my mind.
> There are only two things left in my mind, aged solder joints or power
> supply getting old and not having enough grunt to power a cold machine,
They're not too expensive and easy to replace.
--
Stuart Winsor
Only plain text for emails
http://www.asciiribbon.org
Alan Wrigley
Nov 23, 2012, 5:49:59 AM11/23/12
to
Stuart <Spa...@argonet.co.uk> wrote:
> In article <52f30d8...@triffid.co.uk>,
> Dave Symes <da...@triffid.co.uk> wrote:
> > There are only two things left in my mind, aged solder joints or power
> > supply getting old and not having enough grunt to power a cold machine,
>
> Power supply is the first thing that comes to my mind.
Seconded. I had similar trouble a few years ago. Not only was starting up
> In article <52f30d8...@triffid.co.uk>,
> Dave Symes <da...@triffid.co.uk> wrote:
> > There are only two things left in my mind, aged solder joints or power
> > supply getting old and not having enough grunt to power a cold machine,
>
> Power supply is the first thing that comes to my mind.
unreliable, but hard drives were failing after a fairly short life.
Eventually I replaced the cheap PSU with a decent branded one (not
expensive) with gold-plated contacts and since then I have had neither a
failed start nor a failed drive for several years.
Alan
--
RISC OS - you know it makes cents
Dave Symes
Nov 23, 2012, 6:02:57 AM11/23/12
to
In article
<gemini.mdxsrb004b...@keepyourfilthyspamtoyourself.co.uk>,
Thanks Gents!
Dave
--
Dave Triffid
<gemini.mdxsrb004b...@keepyourfilthyspamtoyourself.co.uk>,
Dave
--
Dave Triffid
Alan Dawes
Nov 23, 2012, 6:06:19 AM11/23/12
to
In article <52f313cd...@argonet.co.uk>,
I ignored similar "warnings" and when the power supply finally fried
itself I had 3 drives with burned out heads to replace as well as the PSU
(the motherboard and DVD drives werestill OK!). As the main drive and the
2 backups were on the same machine that resulted in a £400 bill for
recovery of the data!
The second time I only had one non-startup, stupidly I turned it on again
as I needed to backup recent data and with no further warning the second
PSU burned out. Luckily, this time, the only damage was to the on board
graphics which I solved with a cheap graphics card and a new PSU.
I took the first PSU apart and from the bulging capacitors, it was almost
certainly capacitor plague - it seems from the late 1990s, to increase
profits, the manufacturers had changed the electrolyte to a cheaper one
which caused the problem. Supposedly that should not happen with
capacitors manufactured in the last few years but one has no way of
knowing what happens in the far Eastern factories. As long as the part
lasts until the product it is in is out of warranty who cares? !!
Alan
--
alan....@argonet.co.uk
alan....@riscos.org
Using an Acorn RiscPC
Stuart <Spa...@argonet.co.uk> wrote:
> In article <52f30d8...@triffid.co.uk>,
> Dave Symes <da...@triffid.co.uk> wrote:
> > There are only two things left in my mind, aged solder joints or power
> > supply getting old and not having enough grunt to power a cold machine,
> Power supply is the first thing that comes to my mind.
> They're not too expensive and easy to replace.
Seconded.
> In article <52f30d8...@triffid.co.uk>,
> Dave Symes <da...@triffid.co.uk> wrote:
> > There are only two things left in my mind, aged solder joints or power
> > supply getting old and not having enough grunt to power a cold machine,
> Power supply is the first thing that comes to my mind.
> They're not too expensive and easy to replace.
I ignored similar "warnings" and when the power supply finally fried
itself I had 3 drives with burned out heads to replace as well as the PSU
(the motherboard and DVD drives werestill OK!). As the main drive and the
2 backups were on the same machine that resulted in a £400 bill for
recovery of the data!
The second time I only had one non-startup, stupidly I turned it on again
as I needed to backup recent data and with no further warning the second
PSU burned out. Luckily, this time, the only damage was to the on board
graphics which I solved with a cheap graphics card and a new PSU.
I took the first PSU apart and from the bulging capacitors, it was almost
certainly capacitor plague - it seems from the late 1990s, to increase
profits, the manufacturers had changed the electrolyte to a cheaper one
which caused the problem. Supposedly that should not happen with
capacitors manufactured in the last few years but one has no way of
knowing what happens in the far Eastern factories. As long as the part
lasts until the product it is in is out of warranty who cares? !!
Alan
--
alan....@argonet.co.uk
alan....@riscos.org
Using an Acorn RiscPC
T M Smith
Nov 23, 2012, 3:30:46 PM11/23/12
to
In message <52f30d8...@triffid.co.uk>
When I watched the boot sequence more carefully I saw the messsage
'invalid boot file' or similar. After that message it would shut down
with various error messages from various files or with no errors at
all.
I found that for some reason it was trying to boot from a non-existent
drive.
Altered in Cmos and everything OK.
I have no idea how the CMOS had been changed!!
[snip]
>
> While I was at it I replaced the CMOS battery.
> All the old problems have now gone, including many attempts to get a boot,
> but I'm left with this single annoyance that from a Cold, cold boot it
> requires two goes to get a start.
CMOS OK?
It took me several weeks to sort out, in part my inertia because
eventually it could always be booted OK
Malcolm Smith
> ful thoughts?
> Thanks
> Dave
--
T M Smith
Using an Iyonix and RISC OS 5.16 in the North Riding of Yorkshire
Dave Symes <da...@triffid.co.uk> wrote:
> G'day folks.
> Posting here in the vague hope someone might have some thoughts that go
> beyond where I've been.
> I have a Win XP-SP3 machine that, from a cold start fails the first time,
> but the second attempt boots okay.
> However, if the machine has been running, then closed down, then booted
> again within half an hour or so, it will boot through to Windows okay.
> Windows XP itself now(1) works perfectly okay once booted.
> Left for a few hours, or overnight, requires the second attempt.
I have had similar problems with my XP machine.
> G'day folks.
> Posting here in the vague hope someone might have some thoughts that go
> beyond where I've been.
> I have a Win XP-SP3 machine that, from a cold start fails the first time,
> but the second attempt boots okay.
> However, if the machine has been running, then closed down, then booted
> again within half an hour or so, it will boot through to Windows okay.
> Windows XP itself now(1) works perfectly okay once booted.
> Left for a few hours, or overnight, requires the second attempt.
When I watched the boot sequence more carefully I saw the messsage
'invalid boot file' or similar. After that message it would shut down
with various error messages from various files or with no errors at
all.
I found that for some reason it was trying to boot from a non-existent
drive.
Altered in Cmos and everything OK.
I have no idea how the CMOS had been changed!!
[snip]
>
> While I was at it I replaced the CMOS battery.
> All the old problems have now gone, including many attempts to get a boot,
> but I'm left with this single annoyance that from a Cold, cold boot it
> requires two goes to get a start.
It took me several weeks to sort out, in part my inertia because
eventually it could always be booted OK
Malcolm Smith
> ful thoughts?
> Thanks
> Dave
--
T M Smith
Using an Iyonix and RISC OS 5.16 in the North Riding of Yorkshire
0 new messages