Date: Mon, 01 Jan 2001 05:05:35 -0000
From: "Matthew Hanson" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Re: Off topic: BIOS boot problems
David,
Thanks for all the tips. I have in fct narrowed the problem down. First of
all, I should clear something up. I don't know if I forgot to mention on my
first note posted as "Off topic" that this buggy system I'm working on is
not a Libretto. I think I had mentioned that it was a desktop PC with a
Matsonic MB. I'm getting the inpression from your notes that you're
thinking it's a libretto.
I think I said that I took all the cards out of the system except the video
card from a working system, and memory from a working system. I experienced
the same problem of the system locking up anywhere from 0 to 200 seconds or
so. Again, SOMTIMES the system would work, sometimes it wouldn't. I was
beginning to suspect that the only constant that seemed to exist for when
the system wouod work, was when the ambient air temperature was warm.
So easly this morning as the idea stuck me, I crawled out of bed, took a
gooseneck lamp with a low power mini bulb, shoved it inside the mini tower
case on its side, and covered the corners with magazines to keep the heat
in. Sure enough, after 20-30 minutes and a few attempts at booting, the
darned thing booted up just fine. The system ran for 10-15 minutes with no
problems, booting and rebooting, and just sitting playing mp3s.
Today when I got up, again, the thing would not boot. I put the lamp back
in, covered the sides, and in 15-20 minutes, the thing booted fine once
again.
Now I'd tried heating up the lithium battery by itself originally the other
day a few times, but nothing. I'm suspecting a cracked MB, or some failed
component on it. I haven't yet tried swapping the power supply, but the
area I put under the lamp was the center of the MB, acutally moving it over
the the CPU side oonce in a while during the 15-20 or warming everything up.
So I've got the experiment to repeat the same way twice now. I took it
outside to sit an hour ago. I'll bring it in, then I'm sure it won't boot.
If it boots after the third round of heating under the lamp, I'll be pretty
convinced it's a MB component of flaw of some kind. I think I mentioned
that I found the MB was being held in with ONE screw. There was another,
but it was too small, and was basically keeping the board from swinging!
I;m told tonight that my friend's kids took the MB out and replaced it while
trying to fix something theirselves.
I'll still look at testing the battery though. I still don't understand, as
you suggest, how the battery can have enough power to maintain the CMOS
settings, but for some reason may need more power to allow the system to
read the settings. But it's the cheapest/easiest thing to replace if it
tests bad. I'll run it down to the camera store on Tuesday.
About the bad HDD:
You siad:
>Plug the baby into a desktop with a 2.5" to 3.5" IDE converter ($10), then
>use Partition Magic, Ranish Partition Manager, Linux, or any other good HD
>low-level MBR formatter to get rid of that messy MBR, restore it to normal,
>and format the entire HD.
I did try to get Partition Magic to access the drive, but PM froze up trying
to access the drive. It was the only drive in the system at that point, so
I made it slave to another and tried booting PM from floppy. Still PM froze
up attempting to access the drives.
At least I THINK it froze trying to access the drive. This was back before
I had this heat/cold issue in this system buttoned down. I'm pretty sure
the system was working and booting off another HDD at that point. I'll
throw the dead HDD in another unit, and try booting PM from the FDD in it.
It's be nice to be able to recover the thing.
>There should be no way on earth a virus can affect the HD unless the HD has
>flash BIOS and the virus has changed that.
Well, I assume the virus blew the MBR apart, and that that was why I was
getting the DOS boot message that no boot record could be found on the HDD.
>All of the Major HD makers should have a low-level program that'll nuke a
>messed up MBR and restore the HD to working condition.
I just don't see how I'll be able to access the drive of the system doesn't
recognize the drive in the first place. The BIOS sees it, but trying to
execute commands on it as the C: drive just comes up with errors saying that
no such drive exists. I'll try again though. If such programs exist, there
must me a way for them to effect a drive with a bad MBR. Unless, of course,
the drive has developed unrelated mechanical problems. This PC tried to
survive amongst a huge hoard of kids.
Well... I'll do some more testing. Thanks for the help David.
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