Hello !
Just for the sake of information, I have a curious problem with my PC. Up to a month ago, I had Win98SE installed on my PC. I also happen to have a front-panel USB hub since September 2001 (yep, it's been a while), because I hate bending over my PC between the desk and the wall, tipping the PC over and trying to find a USB port in the half-light.
Finally, I have a disk bay installed, to be able to swap HDDs without opening the whole PC case. The bay has a switch in front, to cut power to the disk and allow the handle to be lifted to remove the disk holder from the bay. Obviously, not something to do when the PC is running ;-) !
Since a few months ago (about the time I bought a new Seagate 60Gb disk), I have to go through an interesting ritual to get my PC to boot properly. it goes like this :
1) Turn on the PC. BIOS cannot find HDD. Get a "BOOT FAILURE. PRESS KEY TO REBOOT" message. Notice that only two out of four USB ports have a lit LED.
2) Shut down PC. Switch off power to HDD on bay front panel.
3) Turn on PC. Get error message again. Normal, the HDD is not there this time. All four LEDs are lit on USB panel.
4) Turn off PC. Switch power on for HDD bay.
4.5) This happens sometimes : Turn on PC. HDD not found, error message. Turn off PC, extract HDD from bay, slam it back in (okay, gently slam it back in).
5) Turn PC on. Boot works, BIOS finds disk, disk boots, all LEDs are lit on USB panel, all is fine for about five-ten minutes.
6) After ten minutes max, disk freezes.
7) Reboot.
At this point, either the disk gets back to work, or I have to power down completely and do a cold boot for everything to finally work for a normal work period.
Now, three weeks ago I installed XP Professional and, to my surprise, things are much better. The startup process has been reduced to :
1) Boot PC. Disk found, only 2 LEDs lit on USB panel, XP boot screen comes up and everything works fine, except I have only two useable USB ports.
2) Tell XP to reboot system
3) Boot works, all USB LEDs are available, I can work.
So, basically I have a double-boot sequence instead of a quadruple (or more) boot sequence thanks to XP.
But why, oh why, do I have to systematically reboot in the first place ?
It seems obvious that the USB front panel hub is at least partially responsible, but it is hooked directly on a floppy power plug from the PCs power unit, so what has that got to do with messing up the BIOS startup so badly that it doesn't even find the disk the first time ?
It is not the harddisk, since I've downloaded Seagate Tools and ran every test on the disk to check. Once the PC is in working order, of course. At that point, all tests succeed nicely and the diagnostic tool cheerfully tells me that my disk is fine.
I don't see that the motherboard is entirely at fault, since a new OS seems to handle things better (wierd !!).
Any ideas ?
Pascal.
Just for the sake of information, I have a curious problem with my PC. Up to a month ago, I had Win98SE installed on my PC. I also happen to have a front-panel USB hub since September 2001 (yep, it's been a while), because I hate bending over my PC between the desk and the wall, tipping the PC over and trying to find a USB port in the half-light.
Finally, I have a disk bay installed, to be able to swap HDDs without opening the whole PC case. The bay has a switch in front, to cut power to the disk and allow the handle to be lifted to remove the disk holder from the bay. Obviously, not something to do when the PC is running ;-) !
Since a few months ago (about the time I bought a new Seagate 60Gb disk), I have to go through an interesting ritual to get my PC to boot properly. it goes like this :
1) Turn on the PC. BIOS cannot find HDD. Get a "BOOT FAILURE. PRESS KEY TO REBOOT" message. Notice that only two out of four USB ports have a lit LED.
2) Shut down PC. Switch off power to HDD on bay front panel.
3) Turn on PC. Get error message again. Normal, the HDD is not there this time. All four LEDs are lit on USB panel.
4) Turn off PC. Switch power on for HDD bay.
4.5) This happens sometimes : Turn on PC. HDD not found, error message. Turn off PC, extract HDD from bay, slam it back in (okay, gently slam it back in).
5) Turn PC on. Boot works, BIOS finds disk, disk boots, all LEDs are lit on USB panel, all is fine for about five-ten minutes.
6) After ten minutes max, disk freezes.
7) Reboot.
At this point, either the disk gets back to work, or I have to power down completely and do a cold boot for everything to finally work for a normal work period.
Now, three weeks ago I installed XP Professional and, to my surprise, things are much better. The startup process has been reduced to :
1) Boot PC. Disk found, only 2 LEDs lit on USB panel, XP boot screen comes up and everything works fine, except I have only two useable USB ports.
2) Tell XP to reboot system
3) Boot works, all USB LEDs are available, I can work.
So, basically I have a double-boot sequence instead of a quadruple (or more) boot sequence thanks to XP.
But why, oh why, do I have to systematically reboot in the first place ?
It seems obvious that the USB front panel hub is at least partially responsible, but it is hooked directly on a floppy power plug from the PCs power unit, so what has that got to do with messing up the BIOS startup so badly that it doesn't even find the disk the first time ?
It is not the harddisk, since I've downloaded Seagate Tools and ran every test on the disk to check. Once the PC is in working order, of course. At that point, all tests succeed nicely and the diagnostic tool cheerfully tells me that my disk is fine.
I don't see that the motherboard is entirely at fault, since a new OS seems to handle things better (wierd !!).
Any ideas ?
Pascal.
