[RESOLVED] Reboots or locks up on bootup

[Sorry_I_Win]

Okay, some one please help me. I have posted this on 3 different forums now... all to no avail.

Here is what is going on: About 1 in every 10-15 boots, the machine will either restart as soon as the desktop wallpaper is shown or it'll lockup and a row of small green bars will apear across the top of the screen. This too happens as soon as the wallpaper is shown (but before the startup sound is played). The mouse doesn't freeze, but you have to restart. Usually the next time it'll boot up just fine.

I have had the exact same thing happen variuos times before on completely different systems. Here are the specs for the machine I am building now.

AMD Duron 800 retail box (legit)
Fic AZ11 mobo
PC133 Memory (tried 3 different brands and capacities)
Maxtor 45GB 5400rpm HDD
250W Sparkle power supply (tried others.. not the prob)
Inno3d GeForce2 MX 32MB AGP 4X (settin at 2X doesn't help)

Please help me! TIA

John

[SavagePenguin]

It sounds like a problem with a program that's loading when Windows starts.

Click START, then RUN, and type: MSCONFIG

From there, click the "Startup" tab. Uncheck anything you don't need to start up when Windows starts. Chances are something in here is flipping out your computer.

If it's no there you can clear the shortcuts out of the Startup folder: C:\Windows\Start Menu\Programs\Startup

[Sorry_I_Win]

sorry already thought of that... nothing but systray, explorer, and NAV loading on bootup. I guess it could be Norton AV... I'll try disabling and see if that helps.

Also just tried disabling DMA for the hard drive. No help there. I just tried another video card... and as i'm writing this it spontaneously rebooted on startup.

AHHHH!

[Sorry_I_Win]

Well... I uninstalled Norton Anti-Virus, but that isn't the problem. I still get the little green bars at the top of the screen. Hasn't anyone else had this problem before? It seems like this same thing happens on just about any machine that i build.

[cyberhh]

What OS? Sounds like it could be video drivers, try removing them.

Does the machine start ok in safe mode?

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Death is lighter than a feather - duty heavier than a mountian.

[Sorry_I_Win]

Windows 98 SE
i have the reference nVidia drivers installed. That's not the problem. I've even tried other video cards with other drivers. One time it happened before the new card was detected (desktop was in 16-color mode... ie. no video driver installed yet)

Not sure if it would occur in safe mode or not. As it is now it only happens once every 20-30 boots, so it is hard to diagnose. You think it's fixed, then all the sudden its back again. Thanx for the suggestion tho.

I just deleted the *.pwl file and have it set to windows login. Before I had a blank password to bypass the login box. So far I THINK that may have fixed it. We'll see tho.

Any other suggestions people?

[archangel]

Could you have some stupid register reminder programs trying to run? I have seen reminder programs cause all kinds of problems. They only run every so often and it's uaually right a startup.

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www.el-mono.com

[Nighthand]

I run an Athlon 800 in an Abit KA7 board and an Athlon 1gig in an Abit Kt7 RAID board. Both of them do the same thing, though my RAID board does not do it as often. I have used different video cards, hard drives, motherboards, memory and CPUs. Only thing I can think of is it has something to do with load speeds. I have had happen on 95, 98, and ME. Have not tried it with NT, though I am working on loading 2000 onto the 800 now (have not finished getting updated drivers yet). It would make sense. When AMD came out with their K6 chips, Win95 had a hard time dealing with chips over 350Mhz. Rebooting usually clears it up for me.

[Sorry_I_Win]

Yes.. as far as i can tell, the problem is caused because the machine is booting to fast for windows. It reaches the desktop in about 35-40 seconds. So far having the login box there to slow it down has helped. Also it doesn't ever seem to happen on a cold boot. Only happens on a warm boot (restart) as far as I can tell.

[Darren Wilson]

It is the drivers causing this problem as I have pointed this out in several other topics as one of the bugs in the drivers. Disabling AGP 4X in the BIOS does help a little as does using the standard drivers supplied with the Video Card. Also Direct X 8 or 8a doesn't help either.

This is probably the main reason why I won't use Nvidia cards and stick to ATI.


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Darren Wilson
Webmaster
The Carpers Lodge.net
The Webs Number One Resource for Today's Carp Angler.

FLAMERS

[dumb blonde]

CHANGE YOUR VIDEO DRIVERS SHOULD BE YOUR PROBLEM .

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what will go wrong today???? never mind going back to bed

[Sorry_I_Win]

Sorry, but video drivers are not the answer. I am using nVidia's latest reference drivers. And also the problem remains if I change to a completely different card and driver.

It seems that the problem would never ocur on a cold boot. It only happened on reboots, so I tried to slow down to boot process some. Before I had the windows login disabled, so I now have the login box prompt for a windows password. Problem solved.

It seems as tho the computer was booting too fast for Windows (it only takes about 30-40 seconds from the time u start the machine until u reach the desktop)

Also, disabling quick boot in BIOS helps. And if the BIOS supports HDD spin-up delay, turning that on will help slow the boot procedure.

It's been about 24 hours and no problems. I'll keep you guys posted. Thanx for the suggestions.

[Darren Wilson]

Sorry 'I-win' but I will argue that one.

One of my friends has the same problem since he changed from a Voodoo5 to a Hercules Prophet II GTS card and his housemates machine does the same with a Else GeForce II GTS card. This problem only seems to occur using Win9x/ME not under 2000 and mainly if you use reference drivers, as the ME supplied drivers don't do this as often.

We tried changing cards in the above mentioned machines and as soon as we did, 100% start-up. The cards we tried ranged from SIS 6326's up to a Radeon. As soon as we put a Nvidia based card in , we got the 'green line syndrome' unless we used ME and the default ME drivers ( maybe 1 in 50 restarts).

At first we thought it could be a heat related problem untill we added a bigger fan to the GeForce cards and the problem still was there but the temp was dropped by 5 defrees.
If the drivers were uninstalled in 98 and you used the standard VGA driver, the problem never happened, which points to a driver problem to me.

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Darren Wilson
Webmaster
The Carpers Lodge.net
The Webs Number One Resource for Today's Carp Angler.

FLAMERS

[This message has been edited by Darren Wilson (edited February 24, 2001).]

[Sorry_I_Win]

I agree that it only occurs on Windows 9x & ME systems. I have seen it on both, but never on a win nt based machine. The problem lies in how the win9X kernel initializes the display at bootup. It apparently needs more time than the machine is giving it.

While the problem could be in the drivers themselves, I have tried every driver that is compatable with my video card, and no matter what you use, it will not fix the problem. The problem will even occur when using the standard SVGA driver from Windows (although is does seem to occur less likely)

I also agree that it seems to be an nVidia issue for the most part, but I did have it happen once with a SiS chipset card (by the way this was on an entirely diff machine, intel celeron 366, 64MB, 8.4GB), so it is not entirely nVidia's fault. Also, I have seen it happen quite often using Diamond SpeedStar A90 AGP cards, which are based on an S3 chipset.

[This message has been edited by Sorry_I_Win (edited February 24, 2001).]

[3fingersalute]

Windows is booting too fast????


Now that's a new one!!

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Is it because light travels faster than sound that some people appear bright until they speak?