Reluctant starter...

[OldGeek]

About 6 mo ago, upon startup, my rig just kind of sat there for about 10 minutes. This was during the first power-up of the day or had been turned off for at least 2+ hours (haven't timed...should make detailed notes except this just doesn't make sense. Was ready to relegate this anomaly to the gods and live with it...except...my machine has been totally upgraded in the last month, well almost. The ONLY...want to stress that... parts from the prior build were the monitor, hard disk drives, DVD and floppy drives, the case and the surge protector. During the time of "dormancy" the green power light on the display winks every 3 or 4 seconds, the HDD light flickers and the is a small activity through memory. I have the Corsair Pro series with das blinkin' lights. I run SMART against the drives and they could not be healthier. I don't recall this coming on with SP3 of XP Pro, not saying it didn't. Also, when it finally comes up, it is at the signon screen. It has already booted and gone into Windows. I'm lost on this one. Have built rigs since late '80s and this one has me baffled. Any thoughts, solutions, opinions and burning of incense is appreciated. I recently re-installed the operating system...no effect.

Thanks in advance.

[moshpit]

Re: Reluctant starter...

That sounds like Windows is set to put the computer to sleep when you click "shut down". I would follow that path of research. Try to see if any of your Windows settings are set that way in Power Management.

Everything you describe is a perfect description of a sleeping computer. Green power light that flashes every so often, HDD LED occasional flickers, and lastly, but most damning of all, memory activity. your PC is going to sleep, not shutting down properly. But the part that really clinches it as a sleep issue, boot up. If you never see a POST screen or Windows boot splash, and the first thing you DO see is a login screen, that's a PC waking up from sleep mode.

[OldGeek]

Re: Reluctant starter...

Thank you for your insight. As is sometimes the case, I don't describe some of the salient points right off the bat until reminded. In this case, there is no evidence that the system has any life when turned off. The monitor light doesn't blink, the memory doesn't blink... To paraphrase (and my apologies) John Cleese....this is a dead machine....when turned off. Have assured that all power settings are set to be on 100% of the time, i.e. the disk drives don't shut down after 20 minutes of inactivity, the display does not shut down or go to screensaver mode when the system is on but not active.

No this only happens when the system has been off for an extended period of time, say overnight or all day. In other words, the system has cooled off. Since the ONLY carry-overs from my old rig are the disk drives and memory, there is where I think there is a problem. Perhaps the HDD that is used for booting fails until it warms up or the same with the memory. New memory was installed into the system a few minutes ago (thanks UPS). I'm betting it is my boot disk has gone flaky. Have a WD diagnostic tool to run maybe all night and see what happens. Anyone heard of such a thing?

[moshpit]

Re: Reluctant starter...

Thank you for your insight. As is sometimes the case, I don't describe some of the salient points right off the bat until reminded. In this case, there is no evidence that the system has any life when turned off. The monitor light doesn't blink, the memory doesn't blink... To paraphrase (and my apologies) John Cleese....this is a dead machine....when turned off. Have assured that all power settings are set to be on 100% of the time, i.e. the disk drives don't shut down after 20 minutes of inactivity, the display does not shut down or go to screensaver mode when the system is on but not active.

No this only happens when the system has been off for an extended period of time, say overnight or all day. In other words, the system has cooled off. Since the ONLY carry-overs from my old rig are the disk drives and memory, there is where I think there is a problem. Perhaps the HDD that is used for booting fails until it warms up or the same with the memory. New memory was installed into the system a few minutes ago (thanks UPS). I'm betting it is my boot disk has gone flaky. Have a WD diagnostic tool to run maybe all night and see what happens. Anyone heard of such a thing?

Yep. Sure have seen similar. Dying hard drives can do all kinds of crazy things that seem like other failing components. I've seen hard drives render a machine completely unable to POST, to hard drives making a machine freeze during post, to hard drives running absolutely fine until you get the OS loaded and then locking things up. Hard drives are fickle creatures.

I know you said it was a WD drive, so hit it with it's utility and see if it's healthy or not. After that, if WD's tool says it's okay, hit it with Seatools from Seagate. We use it on non-Seagate drives all the time and it works well. After a DOS booted run of that, you KNOW without question whether your drive is okay or not.

[OldGeek]

Re: Reluctant starter...

Continuing the saga. There was no difference in the boot pattern this morning...sooo I'm going straight for the WD drives. 250GB 16MB cache 7,200rpm and I believe the AAKS model but don't take that to the bank. Thanks for the info. A flaky HDD even in the OLD mainframe world was a pain. No of course they use NAS with bunches of 15,000RPM drives stuck together to emulate the old 3390 mod 3 drives (2GB each...how we have evolved) what once took a room now takes the size of a large refridgerator. On to the disk tests. Again thanks.

[OldGeek]

Re: Reluctant starter...

Yet more saga. Have run the hard drives through the wringer and they are as healthy as can be. Now have to believe it is my monitor that is sick. I watch the machine and I can see it post and access the USB ports...just as a normal boot. Now that I have dual boot, it is already at the log on for the default opsys when the monitor finally comes to life. I've had the monitor for 2 years and expected a bit more longevity from the ViewSonic. Anyone else have a similar issue with their monitor?