• Super-slow BIOS

    From BARRY MARTIN@454:3/105 to ALL on Friday, November 19, 2010 05:12:00
    Hi Folks!

    Any sugestions on what to check for to correct a BIOS that takes
    literally minutes to do anything? (Or is it the BIOS?) IIRC it's an
    American Megatrends on an Asus M4A78T-E motherboard, should be around a
    3.00 GHz clock. Used to boot fast/normally but noticed the past few
    months it seemed sluggish and lately it is taking forever.

    The computer has been locking up for no good reason the past week. Fans
    seem to be OK. Yesterday went into the configuration and it literally
    took a minute to switch the cursor from one field to another. I did
    notice it said it had a 3« FDD which it does not so turned that off --
    no change.

    I did a power boot yesterday at 4:30 p.m. and the thing is still trying to complete the boot process! (It's now 5:05 a.m., so 13 hours.) I can
    hear hard drive activity and the HD LED does flash and/or stays on periodically.

    The video is turned off -- the monitor gives me a 'No Signal' message
    and goes into energy saving mode. Obviously the video card works at
    some point as I am able to see the initial boot. Tapping the Num Lock
    key turns off the indicator; currently it is an immediate response but
    during the BIOS bootstrap portion is is a delayed reaction -- seconds to
    a minute or so. Currently toggling Shift Lock does nothing (that LED
    does not go on) though at Bootstrap it did, sluggishly.

    TIA!


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  • From GEOFFREY WILSON@454:3/105 to BARRY MARTIN on Sunday, November 21, 2010 13:47:00
    A year or so ago my grandson's machine got infected with a virus and
    would not boot. he had an LCD monitor which displayed nothing after the initial screen. Eventually I connected a CRT monitor, and could see
    what was going on in VGA mode. I took out the CMOS battery and waited
    a day or t wo for the BIOS to go back to default mode. I let it
    continue to boot from the hard drive it did go into Windows, but the
    BIOS got messed up again. I was able to boot to DOS from a floppy,
    howvere. I never did learn exactly what the virus was. There was
    nothing of importance in the hard drive anyway, so I reformatted it to
    be able to start over.

    The video is turned off -- the monitor gives me a 'No Signal' message
    and goes into energy saving mode. Obviously the video card works at
    some point as I am able to see the initial boot. Tapping the Num Lock BM>key turns off the indicator; currently it is an immediate response but BM>during the BIOS bootstrap portion is is a delayed reaction -- seconds to BM>a minute or so. Currently toggling Shift Lock does nothing (that LED BM>does not go on) though at Bootstrap it did, sluggishly.


    st_buffer * OLX 2.2 * Geoff in State College, Pennsylvania. glw4-at-psu.edu
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  • From BARRY MARTIN@454:3/105 to GEOFFREY WILSON on Monday, November 22, 2010 07:30:00
    Hi Geoff!

    The video is turned off -- the monitor gives me a 'No Signal' message
    and goes into energy saving mode. Obviously the video card works at
    some point as I am able to see the initial boot. Tapping the Num Lock
    key turns off the indicator; currently it is an immediate response but
    during the BIOS bootstrap portion is is a delayed reaction -- seconds to
    a minute or so. Currently toggling Shift Lock does nothing (that LED
    does not go on) though at Bootstrap it did, sluggishly.
    A year or so ago my grandson's machine got infected with a virus
    and would not boot. he had an LCD monitor which displayed
    nothing after the initial screen. Eventually I connected a CRT
    monitor, and could see what was going on in VGA mode. I took
    out the CMOS battery and waited a day or t wo for the BIOS to go
    back to default mode. I let it continue to boot from the hard
    drive it did go into Windows, but the BIOS got messed up again.
    I was able to boot to DOS from a floppy, howvere. I never did
    learn exactly what the virus was. There was nothing of
    importance in the hard drive anyway, so I reformatted it to be
    able to start over.

    I knew I was saving those CRTs for something!! On the initial test
    didn't see anything differen: CRT's LED blinks to indicate power-saving
    mode. HDD LED is blinknig to indicate some sort of activity so not
    wanting to reboot quite yet, plus won't have time to much in the way of repairing the computer today anyway. (I'm sort of hoping it's doing
    some sort of repair/recovery routine and "will snap out of it".

    Will do a follow-up.




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  • From KY MOFFET@454:3/105 to BARRY MARTIN on Wednesday, April 20, 2011 22:27:00
    Barry Martin spake unto All <=-

    The computer has been locking up for no good reason the past week.
    Fans seem to be OK. Yesterday went into the configuration and it literally took a minute to switch the cursor from one field to
    another. I did notice it said it had a 3« FDD which it does not so turned that off -- no change.

    I did a power boot yesterday at 4:30 p.m. and the thing is still
    trying to complete the boot process! (It's now 5:05 a.m., so 13
    hours.) I can hear hard drive activity and the HD LED does flash
    and/or stays on periodically.

    Virus. The intermittent activity is probably an attempt to load a mini-internet-server of some sort. It may well be running all sorts
    of crap, even tho you can't see it.




    ... This virus requires Microsoft Windows 95
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  • From BARRY MARTIN@454:3/105 to KY MOFFET on Thursday, April 21, 2011 08:35:00
    Hi Ky!

    Where have you been? Been ages!!

    The computer has been locking up for no good reason the past week.
    Fans seem to be OK. Yesterday went into the configuration and it literally took a minute to switch the cursor from one field to
    another. I did notice it said it had a 3« FDD which it does not so turned that off -- no change.
    I did a power boot yesterday at 4:30 p.m. and the thing is still
    trying to complete the boot process! (It's now 5:05 a.m., so 13
    hours.) I can hear hard drive activity and the HD LED does flash
    and/or stays on periodically.
    Virus. The intermittent activity is probably an attempt to load a mini-internet-server of some sort. It may well be running all
    sorts of crap, even tho you can't see it.

    Sort of hate to admit it but my post is so old I forgot what computer I
    was talking about -- I must have fixed the problem as all of the
    computers on-line are running properly. ...Couldn't have been this XP
    as would have been a little hard to write a message if it was still
    booting. The other ones are running Mythbuntu for the PVR - personal
    video recorder - function.


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