Weird behaviour while booting

[zkitz]

Hello, im having some kind of a problem with my PC, its pretty weird and i cant figure out what the hell its wrong with it.
About a month ago, i was not getting any video when i turned on my PC, but it didnt happen every time, i would keep reestarting it until it would start and i was good to go, it was kinda frustraiting but at least the PC worked untill once when it didnt start anymore, I had a Pci-e Nvidia Geforce 6600 video card which i repleaced for a 4mb matrox pci card since the geforce aparently burned.

Since I repleaced the video card the computer allways gives me video, but before it does it takes about 10 seconds since i press the start button till it acsually starts up and shows me the mobo start screen. in this 10 seconds all the CD/DVD drives make weird noises as if something is moving inside (like traing to start or something) and their lights keep flashing, I tried disconecting them but it still takes about 10 seconds to give me any video.

Today it froozed for some reason (opening a pdf file) and when i tried to restart it, it would freeze in the mobo splash screen, i tried several times with out any sucsess, but after some time i tried again (I disconected the DVD drive and one HDD) and it booted, later i plugged the HDD since its a serial ATA hot swap one, and im currently using the PC perfectly but there is obviouslly something REALLY bad happening.

If anyone has any idea of what could be the problem id be gratefull hearing your advice, I believe it could be the power supply but im not sure, could it be because its sort of dying?... I had it for little over an year but i have the PC on almost all the time, sometimes even for weeks, the power suplly is a 500 Watts Vitsuba one.

My PC specs:

AMD Athlon64 3000+ (winchester core - socket 939)
MSI K8N-Neo4 Platinium edition (Nforce 4 ultra chipset)
512 DDR Kingston (2 x 256)
4mb pci Matrox video-card
Hitachi HDD (serial ata) (Win XP installed here)
WD HDD (serial ata)
i also have a wirelles PCI card installed (encore)

I hope someone could help me out.

Sorry for my english, Im from Argentina and I speak spanish.

Thanks in advance.

[Chaky]

Looks to me that the problem is related to the motherboard.
That can lead to couple of possibilities:

- dying CPU - most vournable and probbable.

- toasted chipset - rare but possible - no cure, either get your warranty (if valid) or get a new motherboard

- (hopefully) badly corrupted bios - can render your pci-e slot useless, thus making pci-e vga look like it's burned + rendering system unbootable. Caused by depleated cmos battery (Lithium type). Usualy you get a message or beeps when this happends.

Things you should do regardless of above:

- get in bios settings (if possible) and (not sure for your specific bios and mobo) disable a splash-screen (or logo, whatever it is named) so you can see some info while it is booting.
Bios is programed to hold booting if it encounters a malfunction (for ex. disconnected keyboard) and a splash screen obscures those error messages. Post if anything appears.

Couple of questions:
Is it v1.0 or v3.0 (v1.0 has pci-ex4 slot and dual LAN unlike v3.0)
Did you recently flash bios and to what version?
Any beeps (and how many short/long ones)?
Did you try GeForce again?

[zkitz]

thanks for answering so quick, for the charcteristics you discribe its V3.0
I did not flash the bios ever, and regarding to the beeps, when the geforce card was on and the computer did not show any video, after abpout 20 seconds it was on it would start beeping, a lot, like short ones fiorst and then it would go crazy for like 30 seconds, after that no sound, and no video abnd nothing just dead.
I did try the Geforce again and the same thing as before happens, no video, beeps atc atc.

regarding to the splash screen I did by pass it but today when the pc would frpoze i could not do that, i will try disabling it and see if anythings show, but i can not garantee same thing will happen.

[Chaky]

Those beeps are bios signal that a (most probbably) video card is not working (sorry), and the same signal you would recive if you try to boot it without one. To be positive about it you will have to try your burned vga on other machine.

You can also try some stuff regarding bios:

- set startup holding on no errors
- disable quick POST
- disable all that you can disable (USB, LAN, FD Controller, IDE Controller, cashe...) and try booting. If sucessfull try enabling one by one to pin-point the problem.

If all that fails try pluggiong out all (memory included) but vga card and see if bios beeps for memory not present. Then plug in memory and try again. If it stops there try to get new memory (kingston has 5 year warranty, I think)

If all that fails..... NEW MOBO.

[zkitz]

Thanks a lot for the answer, but i think i didnt express my self correctly, the computer is working at the moment, I have replaced the Video card and it boots now, even to windows, im acsually posting from this computer right now.

So every thing works (something not very well obviouslly), I have taken my Video Card to a computer shop for them to try it up and they confirmed me that it does not, there for I can assume its burned. But even tho the video card was the non-booting problem, after i replaced i still get something weird out of my computer, which is what ive described in my first post, the first 10 seconds before acsually showing any video all the CD/DVD drives make wierd noises and their lights keep flashing (this is normally done only one, the beeps, not the noise which should not happen) and after that the PC boots normally

But i believe this weird behavior at start up is showing that there is a deeper problem and im afraid this problem was the cause for my video card getting burned, therefor im afraid something else will get damage.

I may also point out that before the video card got burned I did not have any wait times till video would show up(could be my present card) AND i did not had any noises or repetidlly lights flashing in CD drives (which i dont think is related in anyway to my present video card) but it was hanging up pretty often and sometimes it didnt boot, this been a couple of days before the previous vga got burned.

I hope this information is usefull.

[Chaky]

If that is the way things go enter BIOS settings and:

- ENABLE quick POST
- Manually select HD's
- DISABLE unoccupied IDE channels

That should speed up POST for you.

[zkitz]

Did it but same thing still happens, before the computer shows any video, about 10 / 15 seconds since I press the power on buttom, I get absolutlly no video.

And even thro the computer is on and fans are spinning, it does not start before those 15 seconds.
While in this first 15 seconds the computer mekes repeatedly noises in the CD/DVD drives and their lights keep flashing. If i remove the CD/DVD drives, i dont get the noises anymore, but i still have to wait the 15 seconds.

AFTER the 15 seconds i get the beep that you get when the PC powers on, and everything is allright from there on, but whats extremlly weird is that it takes 15 seconds to give the OK to start beep and the drives make this weird noises over and over.

I wish you can help me out here bacause im getting pretty desperate, I want to buy my new vga, but i wont do so untill i know whats happening with my machine, I dont want it getting burend again, also i dont want anything on my PC getting burned anymore.

I trully aprecciate your help.

[Chaky]

I almos forgot, go into th bios settings and CHANGE THE PRIMARY DISPLAY TO PCI (I bet it's still set to PCI-E).

You say that drives make "funny noises". Hmmm....

Try unplugging the drives and see if that speeds up the POST to a normal level.

If it does, try plugging in 1 HD only and repeat procedure. (If you have RAID array go with both HD's to prevent corruption)

You can also repeat the experiment with optical drive only.

This way you should be somewhat wiser of where the problem lies.
Faulty optical drive can make POST very long.

[zkitz]

Chaky, I have tried everything you said, unplugging the drvies and the HDDs, I also changed the grapchics to be in PCI slot as you said. But same thing still happens.

I left conected only the mobo, cpu and memory, and the 15 seconds waiting to POST time is still happening.

One thing I noticed is in the backpanel, the mobo came with a bracket with some lights on it which turn on in diferent colours depending on the present state of the motherboard, based on the lights configuration that I can see in this bracket, most of those 15 seconds before POST are spend in a stated discribed as the Memory Detection Test. It says in the manual that the PC would hang while in this step if the memory module is dameged or not installed properlly.

Id like to point out that even after this step is over I still get the testing memory on the POST which allways comes as OK, but i wanted to point out that they are two different memory tests.

There for, I tried different memory configurations, I've tried one module at a time and in diferent sockets with no luck what so ever. Same thing happens every single time.

So im begining to wonder where the problem may reside? I have touched it all, every thing in the BIOS and i dont think its a BIOS configuration issue, so.... do you have any more ideas?

[Chaky]

That second memory detection you described is a procedure that every motherboard does on POST. If it is causing delay, it is either memory (that doesn't necessarly have to fail the POST memory test) or the mobo itself.

What you can do without leaving home, is download this program that tests the memory in all ways possible and if it says that your memory is bad....it's bad.

Windows/dos installation:

http://www.memtest86.com/memt32.zip

Or bootable CD image (to burn on CD):

http://www.memtest86.com/memtest86-3.2.iso.zip

It's freeware.

Bare in mind that it is time consuming process.

[zkitz]

Chaky, I ran the memory test you recommended, it was time consumming indeed, took well over a day. But it did not find any errors.

I still have to deal with the delay after turning on the computer untill it acssually starts, same 15 seconds, im very much just giving up, since i cant find whats causing the problem, anyway thanks a lot for your help and if you have any more ideas i'll be glad hearing about them.