Windows XP 2 minute black screen at boot

I

icehole

[H]ard|Gawd
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Jun 9, 2004
Messages
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I bought a new case recently and moved all my stuff into it last weekend. Ever since then I have had a black screen after the bios info screen that lasts a couple of minutes. Check NVRAM runs quickly and then the black screen.

I though CHKDSK was running but I checked all of my 5 drives and none are showing a dirty bit. Ran a full scan on all 5 drives and no problems or bad sectors.

I downloaded and ran BootVis and it says “Warning: Write caching disabled”

I checked device manager and my 2 Nvidia 430/410 SATA controllers, both my IDE controllers and all 5 hard drives show write caching enabled.

I have an MSI P6N SLI Platinum which has a D-Bracket for debugging hardware problem. I watched and it ran through all hardware tests OK and the 2 minute hangup begins when all 4 lights show green which indicates “Operating System Booting”

I did a restore of an Acronis backup that was pre-problem and still get the 2 minute black screen.

I have XP Home SP2. All updates current. WTF could be causing Windows to delay the operating system boot for a full 2 minutes?
 
icehole said:
I bought a new case recently and moved all my stuff into it last weekend. Ever since then I have had a black screen after the bios info screen that lasts a couple of minutes. Check NVRAM runs quickly and then the black screen.

I though CHKDSK was running but I checked all of my 5 drives and none are showing a dirty bit. Ran a full scan on all 5 drives and no problems or bad sectors.

I downloaded and ran BootVis and it says “Warning: Write caching disabled”

I checked device manager and my 2 Nvidia 430/410 SATA controllers, both my IDE controllers and all 5 hard drives show write caching enabled.

I have an MSI P6N SLI Platinum which has a D-Bracket for debugging hardware problem. I watched and it ran through all hardware tests OK and the 2 minute hangup begins when all 4 lights show green which indicates “Operating System Booting”

I did a restore of an Acronis backup that was pre-problem and still get the 2 minute black screen.

I have XP Home SP2. All updates current. WTF could be causing Windows to delay the operating system boot for a full 2 minutes?
Click to expand...

Try taking out any usb keys if you have any in there. I had one that went bad and caused this
 
jratzo said:
Try taking out any usb keys if you have any in there. I had one that went bad and caused this
Click to expand...

The only thing different in this case is 2 USB connectors and a firewire connection plugged into the mainboard. I will try unplugging those next time I boot.

All the other USB devices are the same and are plugged into the exact same plugs as before.
 
icehole said:
All the other USB devices are the same and are plugged into the exact same plugs as before.
Click to expand...
Thats what I had also and a USB key went bad and i didnt know about it because I didn't use it for a while. I would take everything off besides keyboard and mouse and see how booting goes.

Just my 2 sense
 
It was worth a try but didn't work. I unplugged the case ports from the motherboard and everything else USB except my mouse and still get the black screen for 2 minutes.

Plugged everything back in and all is showing green in Device Manager.

Any other suggestions?
 
maven said:
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/314503
Click to expand...

I read through that a few days ago and it's not applicable to my situation. They are talking about a black screen and no boot.

My MBR and partition tables were rewritten when Acronis did the restore yesterday. NTDLR and boot.ini are fine since the system does eventually boot.

As far as resetting the bios, what good would that do since the problem is when the system goes to “Booting operating system”? This happens after checking nvram meaning it has already done all the bios checks hasn’t it?
 
Since you installed components in new case, you might check the IDE master slave configuration of your DVD/CD-ROM, etc.
 
maven said:
Since you installed components in new case, you might check the IDE master slave configuration of your DVD/CD-ROM, etc.
Click to expand...

OK, I unplugged IDE1 which has a DVD-RW as master, IDE2 which has a hard drive as master, PCI modem and PCI IDE raid card and the problem went away.

I guess now I get to plug up one at a time and restart until I find out what the problem is.

I had all the same stuff plugged into the same sockets in the old case. Can't understand it.:confused:
 
I've seen a problem like this on some epox boards. In my case, it was the IDE controller waiting WAY to long before it determined that there was not an IDE device attached to the IDE controller.

I had to go into device manager and open the properties of the IDE controllers. For each channel that didn't have a device attached to it I had to set it to none instead of auto.

I suppose you could do this in the BIOS too, but I took care of it in the driver.
 
Demon10000 said:
I've seen a problem like this on some epox boards. In my case, it was the IDE controller waiting WAY to long before it determined that there was not an IDE device attached to the IDE controller.

I had to go into device manager and open the properties of the IDE controllers. For each channel that didn't have a device attached to it I had to set it to none instead of auto.

I suppose you could do this in the BIOS too, but I took care of it in the driver.
Click to expand...

It was the PCI Raid card. Plugged in a spare and it solved the problem.

Funny thing is it worked fine before I switched cases. Even had it plugged into the same PCI slot.
 
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