System Hangs on Boot

[Atrye]

I have a weird problem...

When I turn on one of my computers, the boot screen pops up as always, and lists the CPU (2 CPUs, because of HT). But instead of rocketing through the IDE masters and slaves and stuff and going to the Windows screen like usual, it just hangs there showing the CPU for about 5 minutes.

After 5 minutes, if I pressed "Del" to enter the bios, it goes into the bios and everything seems normal. If I did not press "Del", the other items rush across the screen (like usual) and the Windows loading screen appears (as usual).

However, after the bar goes past several times (as usual), the screen goes black and the system hangs for another 3-4 minutes. After that, Windows loads and everything seems to run like normal.

Does anyone have any clue what the heck is going on?

 

[Tigerbiten]

Sounds like its hanging on the drive detection.

A quick test is to disconnect all your drives, optical as well as hard drives, and see if it then hangs or does it then race to the end of the boot screen.
If it doesn't hang then reattach your drives one at a time and see if its a certain drive thats doing it or is it any drive on a certain channel/slot.

Luck.........

 

[ImLazZzy]

tell us a little about the specs of your comp might shed a light too

ED: nvm that saw them in sig... well agree with the post above

 

[bonkrowave]

Me thinks its a Hard drive problem matey, e'arrrrgh

I have encountered the stall on HD problem when I have the jumpers set wrong, or the Hard Drives on the wrong IDE channels.

I'm not too sure what else it would be.

You could always try clearing your CMOS to the defaults. I'm not sure how tech savvy you are so bare with my explanation. If you go into your BIOS, hit delete on boot up just go to load defaults. If you cannot get in to the BIOS, then you can try and locate your CMOS jumper and clear it. If you do not know where the CMOS jumper is just pop out the CMOS battery. It looks like a big silver watch battery, just pop it out wait a couple minutes then put it back in.

 

[HvyMtl]

hmm
this could be (frustratingly) a bunch of things -
double check your hard drive/memory - make sure they are properly seated/connected
double check your bios settings, switch them to boot hard drive first and see if that fixorz it (bad cd drive?)
run a hard drive check (as it could be going bad)
run a memory test
double check power supply output and cabling.
(I have had a bad pata cable make this happen...)
Does it do this during use? (after boot)

 

[Atrye]

tell us a little about the specs of your comp might shed a light too

ED: nvm that saw them in sig... well agree with the post above

It's not the system in my sig.

The specs are:

Asus P4S800 Mobo
Intel P4 3.0E
Samsung 120GB IDE HDD
Two optical drives
Sound card
AGP video card.

Also, this system has been running flawlessly for about 6 months. And this problem seemingly randomly occured on a reboot.

----

Me thinks its a Hard drive problem matey, e'arrrrgh

I have encountered the stall on HD problem when I have the jumpers set wrong, or the Hard Drives on the wrong IDE channels.

I'm not too sure what else it would be.

You could always try clearing your CMOS to the defaults. I'm not sure how tech savvy you are so bare with my explanation. If you go into your BIOS, hit delete on boot up just go to load defaults. If you cannot get in to the BIOS, then you can try and locate your CMOS jumper and clear it. If you do not know where the CMOS jumper is just pop out the CMOS battery. It looks like a big silver watch battery, just pop it out wait a couple minutes then put it back in.

I tried resetting CMOS to it's defaults to no avail. I also tried disabling hyperthreading.

I will check my jumpers and try disconnecting drives next.

Thanks for the help guys. Stay tuned... I should have some time to do it tonight.