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. OS is
Mythbuntu (the MythTV version of Ubuntu) 10.04.

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!


¯ ®
¯ Barry_Martin_3@ ®
¯ @MSN.COM ®
¯ ®


... Useless Invention: Steel-belted radial rubber bands.
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³ I did a power boot yesterday at 4:30 p.m. and the thing is still trying to
³ complete the boot process! (It's now 5:05 a.m., so 13 hours.) I can
³ hear hard drive activity and the HD LED does flash and/or stays on
³ periodically.
ÀÄ[BM=>All]

Not sure I know enough about mo-boards to answer, but I don't think the
problem is the BIOS. Sounds like a problem with the mo-board or maybe even
a memory chip to me. A loose or malfunctioning memory chip can cause all
sorts of strange things.

Could also be the HD or HD controller. Someone gave me a machine recently
that is actually fine, so long as I put a different HD in it. If I leave
the HD in it that came with it, it flickers the HD LED and clicks around a
lot, but never boots or even produces an error.

Mike

##MMR 2.61á. !link BM 11-19-10 05:12
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# 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.
##[BM=>All]

Not sure I know enough about mo-boards to answer, but I don't think the
problem is the BIOS. Sounds like a problem with the mo-board or maybe even
a memory chip to me. A loose or malfunctioning memory chip can cause all
sorts of strange things.

Could also be the HD or HD controller. Someone gave me a machine recently
that is actually fine, so long as I put a different HD in it. If I leave
the HD in it that came with it, it flickers the HD LED and clicks around a
lot, but never boots or even produces an error.

Mike

##MMR 2.61#. !link BM 11-19-10 05:12


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Hi Mike!

# 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.
Not sure I know enough about mo-boards to answer, but I don't
think the problem is the BIOS. Sounds like a problem with the
mo-board or maybe even a memory chip to me. A loose or
malfunctioning memory chip can cause all sorts of strange things.

OK -- I will check those. Pull and reseat probably better than to try
the 'jiggle test' -- would do that with the power off, of course.

Could also be the HD or HD controller. Someone gave me a machine
recently that is actually fine, so long as I put a different HD
in it. If I leave the HD in it that came with it, it flickers
the HD LED and clicks around a lot, but never boots or even
produces an error.

This one (my machine) used to work fine but perhaps with the cooler
weather (and the Computer Room being cooler) a boarderline connection
failed, so a reseat shoudl fix that problem also. In my case I'll check
the second hard drive as recently the computer booted in a reasonable
time, the Operating System is ont he first hard drive and that seems to
work. Getting an error about 'No UPnP found' (close but not the exact message). I'm thinking this is due to a separate problem but will try
the reseatings first.

¯ ®
¯ Barry_Martin_3@ ®
¯ @MSN.COM ®
¯ ®


... Mazel ton (Lots of luck.)
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