Problems booting up

[Oggin Aviator]

This is part 2 of the snag I am having with my desktop at home. Part 1 last week covered potential spyware, overheating or duff memory etc. I have resolved this problem by cleaning out the dust, being able to run adaware and spybot without crashing and running memtest, which inferred that the memory was actually OK. I dont think it is the PSU as mentioned by a kind poster last week as I have been running processor intensive stuff with no crashes since the dust cleanout. My HJT log was cleared by Liam however the problem below has been happening before then.

So the second problem:

You turn the PC on, it starts to go through the boot up sequence. It appears to lose itself, it starts beeping (the noise coming from inside the case, not the sound card), it looks as if it is searching for bootup commands, it then goes through some sort of BIOS setup stuff, a RAID utility thing, then the MAC address gets displayed for about 20 seconds. Then it says system disk failure and goes no further. If I then power down, wait 5 seconds then power up again it boots up fine and loads Windows as normal :confused:

Just wondered if it could be my BIOS that needs a flash upgrade or something else?

cheers

Oggin

Athlon 3200+
1 Gig DDR 400 RAM
Lots of HDD memory in two drives setup as RAID 0 (I think)
Win XP Pro SP2
M'Board - ? <will post later>
BIOS - ? <will post later>

[HelenD]

If it is beeping during boot up there is a problem if there are more than one beeps. If there are no beeps then that is also a problem likely to be Motherboard or memory. 1 Beep is normal. If you have several beeps you will need to count them then look them up in a table appropriate to the motherboard chipset.

I am no expert in this area it is just that I recently read about beep codes when trying to work out what was wrong with a PC, (it turned out that the reset button had jammed partially in).
You will need an expert to interpret the beep code but as you have an intermittent problem i would suggest that either a component is on the way out or the unit is overheating.

[Oggin Aviator]

Helen

Thanks for the tip re beep codes. I'll check the paperwork later when I get home.

Anybody seen this problem before? Any further advice appreciated.

Oggin

[Toxteth O'Grady]

Sounds like your pc might be trying to do a network boot. Check the boot sequence in your bios.

Alternatively see what BootVis (http://www.majorgeeks.com/download.php?det=664) indicates.

:cool:

TOG