Re: Cold Boot Problem XP pro

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From: Sleepless in Seattle (jonah_at_guest.com)
Date: 01/28/05 

Date: Sat, 29 Jan 2005 11:42:56 +1300

Hard drive faults can be temperature dependant. I have a machine with a
Samsung hard drive that is left in the on/standby state permanently. If I
turn the machine off and allow the drive to cool to room temperature
(generally above 20C/68F) then the hard drive which passes all diagnostics
can not be recognised for 5 minutes or so until it has time to warm up.

>From the clicking noise that you describe I would say the fault is
definitely a hard drive fault. 

-- 
Jonah
"JK" <jkhpub@rogers.com> wrote in message 
news:o6GdnT_Ubc7NJ2fcRVn-pg@rogers.com...
>I have spent the last two or three weeks trying to solve a difficult pc 
>problem and thought I would share my experience in the hope that it would 
>help some others.  While googling for answers to my problem I saw many 
>posts from people who were just as frustrated as I was with similar 
>problems.
>
> Three weeks ago I turned on my pc for the first time that day.  The 
> machine was cold.  The boot process started normally and then just died at 
> the XP boot up window, the one where the little blue progress bar moves 
> across the screen.  I tried to restart using Ctl Alt Del but the machine 
> was locked up solid.  I noticed during the boot process that one of the 
> hard drives made a clicking sound.  I hit the reset button and the machine 
> booted up normally with no problems and no hard drive clicking.  Since 
> that day, when the machine is turned on for the first time in the morning, 
> the same thing happens: the first boot dies at the same spot with the hard 
> drive clicking, and then a reset results in a perfectly normal boot with 
> no hard drive clicking.  If I reset the machine any time during the day 
> while it's on, it boots without any problems.  If I turn if off for a few 
> hours and let it cool down, and then turn it on, the first boot fails as 
> above.
>
> That clicking sound bothered me because I know that it can be a sign that 
> a hard drive is failing.  So I downloaded the Western Digital diagnostic 
> tools and ran several full tests including a scan of the media on all of 
> my drives.  I have 3 drives, 2 80 gig drives on IDE port 0 and 1 200 gig 
> SATA drive.  All of the drives passed their tests.  Two of the drives, 
> including my C: drive are relatively new.
>
> To eliminate the possibility that there could be a software problem I 
> tried booting into safe mode on the first boot of the day and the same 
> thing happened.  The boot process died at the same spot, and a reset 
> resulted in a normal bootup.  The last driver to load was mup.sys during 
> the failed boot. I did a repair install of windows xp but that did not fix 
> the problem.  The event viewer for system events showed that everything 
> was fine.  No errors reported.  Boot logs showed no error.  It looks like 
> the problem occurs before any logging starts.
>
> I decided that I had a hardware problem.  The first thing that came to 
> mind was that I had a failing power supply, however, my PSU is a 
> relatively new Antec Pure Power power supply rated at 550 watts.  So I 
> don't think that is the problem.  Motherboard Monitor did not indicate any 
> power problem at all.
>
> To eliminate the possibility that it was the SATA controller, I disabled 
> the SATA controller on the mobo and disconnected the power from the SATA 
> hard drive.  That didn't fix the problem.  I replaced the IDE cable for my 
> 2 80 gig hard drives and that didn't fix the problem either.
>
> Since all of the hard drives and cables checked out that left the 
> motherboard as the culprit, an A7N8X deluxe version 1.04 with an Athlon 
> 2800+ cpu.  On two occasions, rather than just letting the machine go 
> through the boot process first thing in the morning, I went into the bios 
> to the hardware monitor and waited until the cpu temperature stabilized. 
> I then saved and exited the bios and let the machine boot.  Sure enough, 
> no problem.  The PC completed its first boot of the day normally, no 
> clicking hard drives.  No reset is required when the pc has a chance to 
> warm up.
>
> I have concluded that there is some component on my motherboard, probably 
> related to the IDE controller (because of the clicking hard drive(s), 
> which is in the process of failing.  If I let the motherboard warm up a 
> bit this component starts to work and all is well.
>
> I spent more than two weeks trying to sort out this problem and at times 
> it was very frustrating.  I thought I had it solved several times, only to 
> have the machine lockup the following morning.  I still have the problem, 
> but think I know what it is now.  So do I replace the motherboard with the 
> same model, take the opportunity to upgrade to an Athlon 64 machine, or 
> just buy an IDE controller.  Decisions decisions.
>
> I hope sharing my experience helps some other people who have had similar 
> problems.
>
> JK
>
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