Can't bootup computer unless you reset it???

[EquaLiZr]

Been having this problem lately where ill turn the machine on but nothing will happen. screen will stay black and the HDD light stays on.

now, the only way i can get the computer on is to leave it on for about 20 seconds then hit the reset switch for it to boot up and go into windows.

the system is not overclocked at the moment and nothing new has been added to the system eithor.

MSI KT3 ultra2 (latest bios), mobile 2500+, 2x512meg pc3200 shikaram, maxtor 160gig hard drive, lite-on cd burner, floppy, 56k modem, SBlive 5.1, network card, Enermax 431W power supply, ATI Radeon 9700pro, some 19" monitor from 3 yrs ago.

the system will also boot up fine if it has been on for a while already.

any help is appreciated with this problem and hopefully can get it fixed

 

[Tigerbiten]

Sounds like your HDD is not spinning up to speed before the PCI bus scan finnishes from a cold boot.
From a hot boot the disk is already spinning so no problem.

Either....
Your PSU may be starting to die.
Check all your voltage with a multimeter.
Are any low.

Or....
Your disk drive may be dieing.
Go to Maxtor's home page and download a drive checker.

Or...
Your setting in the bios are out slightly.
There may be a setting which alters the pci bus scan time.
If so make it longer.

One thing to try is turn off quick boot.
By takeing longer to scan the memory it will give the drive more time to spin up.

Luck.......

 

[AndyB]

If it is the hard drive not spinning up quickly enough there is usually a setting in the bios refering to "Pre-Spin delay". This setting allows you to specify a time (usually in seconds) that the machine will wait before trying to access the hard drive. This then gives the drive longer to spin up.

Another possibility is that since you say it works fine on a re-set after about 20 seconds or longer , it could be a case of the famous "chip creep". Could be one of the devices that you have attached needs to "warm up" a bit before it will allow the machine to continue posting correctly. You might want to consider stripping the unit and then rebuilding a card at a time...

Just my two pence worth...

Good luck with it...