Hang at boot

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Arachan

85 posts

Master Geek

#58534 13-Mar-2010 21:49

Hello,

My computer has this problem that when it boots sometimes it just freezes. It does this during the POST after it detects my HDDs. Does anyone have any ideas? My internal specs are:

Intel Pentium E2180 2.0 GHz
Asus P5KPL-VM
2x 1GB RAM
320W Thermaltake PSU
ATI Radeon HD2600 512MB
Western Digital 500GB
Western Digital 160GB

My first thought was that some internal connector wasn't connected properly so I unplugged everything and put it all back but the problem persists. I noticed that the heat sink on my onboard graphics was quite hot, which is strange since I disabled it in my BIOS.

The only way I have found to get around this problem is, stupidly enough, to turn the computer off and shake the case. Then when I turn it back on it boots fine. This is obviously not a very good solution and I was wondering if anyone knew what could be wrong or if they had had a similar problem.

Thanks,
Arachan.

Lee13

33 posts

Geek

#307032 14-Mar-2010 09:39

What O/S are you running ?

Two options: Run Chkdsk /r

pull 1 stick of ram see if it boots normal
let me know what happend
regards lee

xpd

Geek @ Coastguard NZ
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#307036 14-Mar-2010 09:47

Overheating or faulty HDD would be my guess. My system does funky things when its hot like not even getting to POST screen - the fans go nuts and thats it. Moved it back to the house where its cooler and boots everytime.

Remove your HDD's - does the POST run fine ?
If so then itll be a drive causing the hang... plug in one drive at a time and run something like Seatools or whatever WD's equivalent is and see what that says.....

Gavin / xpd / FastRaccoon / Geek of Coastguard New Zealand

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Arachan

85 posts

Master Geek

#307127 14-Mar-2010 17:48

Thanks for your replies.

I've got Ubuntu 9.10 on the 500Gb HDD and XP on the 160GB HDD.

I think overheating could easily be the problem, as it usually happens at night and my room at night is VERY hot. My CPU usually runs at least 10C hotter than usual at night. I haven't checked the HDD temperature but I can tonight. Would it be the HDD overheating? Or something else?

I'm not sure how accurate any testing will be because this only happens about once in every three boots, and not consistantly.

I've checked both HDDs with the Ubuntu Disk Utility and that said they were fine.

Next time I reboot and it happens I'll take out RAM, HDDs and see what happens.

Thanks,
Arachan.

farcus

1554 posts

Uber Geek

#307179 14-Mar-2010 19:49

does it stall when booting both XP and Ubuntu?

I had a problem with booting Opensuse when it detected my external USB drive and used to hang for an awfully long time.Turned out it was scanning the entire hard drive every time I booted because it was formated as fat32.

Reformatting the disk to ext4 fixed the problem right away.

Of course this is not that easy for you if you want to maintain the XP partition / disk.

Lee13

33 posts

Geek

#307191 14-Mar-2010 20:24

a good question that about hanging while booting ubuntu

running temps for drives should be 38-42 deg

are the drive's sata or ata or ide type connection your bios may need resetting

Arachan

85 posts

Master Geek

#307209 14-Mar-2010 21:40

Hello,

At the point where it freezes I haven't got to GRUB yet so I haven't chosen an OS. I don't have any fat32 partitions, I only have ext3, ext4 and NTFS.

It happened again when I last tried to boot and I took out one HDD, it went fine. Turned off, put the HDD back, it booted fine again. I put both back in and it was fine too. This seems to me that maybe one or both drives are overheating and if I wait a minute it boots fine again.

Both HDD are currently running at 43C which I think is about average. This is above Lee's average but not by much. Both drives are SATA by the way.

If the drives are overheating, how can I prevent this? They're just on the drive shelf in my case, and the case always has one side open.

Thanks,
Arachan.

xpd

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#307251 15-Mar-2010 07:41

Depending on your case, just slap a fan of any size next to them to blow air over them. Or you can buy HDD cooler units........

Gavin / xpd / FastRaccoon / Geek of Coastguard New Zealand

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