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Serious boot up issues...

B

BSEagle1

Senior member
Alright, here's the deal.

Over the past several months, one of our machines (a first-generation FragBox, the first SFF system from Falcon Northwest) has been spiraling downward in terms of condition. It locks up quite frequently, sometimes up to 6 times per day. Getting it to boot to the desktop is a miracle and almost always requires several resets and powerdowns.

The system is currently hanging at "Verifying DMI Data Pool...". A short string of 3 strange symbols is at the bottom of the screen. These sorts of things happen to it now and then; it'll hang in bootup at a screen containing a series of very odd symbols and characters I've never seen before, not even the kind generated by alt-numpad ASCII. It also occasionally hangs at this screen: http://www.avalorien.org/members/_misc/booterror.jpg which I am incapable of deciphering.

I've tested the RAM, that's not it...there's no viruses that Norton is picking up on, so I doubt that's it. I have reformatted this machine twice now in the past year and it just keeps getting worse...none of our others are nearly this problematic. Could a bug have wormed its way into the BIOS perhaps?

Any help appreciated.
--Eag
 
Process of elimination:

- Since this is happening during POST, it isn't likely to be a virus except MAYBE an MBR virus if it's happening right AFTER POST. Easy enough to find out: disconnect the hard drive and see if the error persists.

- It could be a BIOS virus, but they're EXTREMELY rare. More likely the BIOS or CMOS is corrupt. Have you tried resetting the CMOS? Try flashing the BIOS.

- You said you knew the memory was good, but did you test it overnight? I recommend running MEMTEST all night for a proper memory check.

- Could be heat related. If this is an old rig, maybe the pad on the CPU heat sink has crumbled away. Check it and put some new heat sink compound on it. Leave the cover off and see if it helps.

- Could be that a capacitor is giving up the ghost (a large number of mobo failures are due to aging capacitors) and there's nothing you can do.

Hope this helps...


 
Now why didn't I think of that?
Running DFT first, I'll try Memtest as Penguin suggested if DFT doesn't find anything.
 
Well, memtest shows everything as fine. I talked to a friend of mine and we both suspect a BIOS issue...so, going to research who made this motherboard and try to reflash it.
 

A computer that's VERY cranky about booting and then shows stability issues afterwards is often a sign of a bad power supply.

stability issues without overly problematic boots is often something else: CPU, memory etc.

Filter for 1001's (I believe - getting rusty in my old age) in your system event logs. These will show you the stop codes you're getting. Post them here. If you are not getting any Stop codes, but just the "unexpected system shutdown" be sure your computer is correctly configured to capture at least a mini or kernel memory dump (pagefile on C:, recovery options etc..)

 
Hmm...not seeing any 1001's in the system log, Smilin...however, there are:
Errors-
5's/9's Associated with "IdeChnDr"
And 15's associated with the CDROM (actually a DVD Drive)

Warnings-
51's associated with the harddrive

All of these are in a rather alarming quantity. I also set the system to log a full memory dump.

I'm no expert at deciphering this sort of thing, but I'm assuming this indicates trouble with the IDE drives? Either way, I just found my version of Drive Fitness is out of date...going to update it and run it again to see if the newer version finds anything. I'll also keep an eye on the system log to see which errors, if any, are coinciding with the lock ups.
 
51s (Delayed write failures I believe) are very serious. It means the OS has been unable to complete a write even after multiple attempts.

The only way you won't see Stop codes in your event log is: 1) You're not properly configured to capture a memory dump, or 2) The bugcheck was actually in one of the systems used to write a dump.

Given the 51s, #2 above is more likely. Events related to a CDRom are not that uncommon. Normally you can ignore them but if your CDRom and IDE drive are on the same controller it may be an indication of a controller problem. If you haven't seen any event ID 55s you probably will soon.

When this thing fails to boot, where is it failing at? Is it always the same place?

Be sure your backups are in good shape right now. Once you are sure, run a chkdsk /R on the problem drive then run SFC /Scannow.
 
Sorry for the delayed response, pretty busy lately.

It usually hangs at "Verifying DMI Pool Data". It is almost always there when it hangs. I'll do the chkdsk ASAP.
 
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