Hanging during POST

gavinpoo

gavinpoo

gavinpoo

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Joined
25 Sep 2003
Posts
433
Location
Derbyshire
I hope someone can help me with a problem I'm having - when I press the power button I'll get a single short beep suggesting everything is ok, then...

Sometimes it'll freeze during POST at:

PC2-6400 Dual Channel Interleaved
Initializing USB Controllers .. Done.

If it manages to pass this point it'll sometimes freeze at:

Checking NVRAM...

On a couple of occasions it hasn't beeped at all and my monitor remained in standby. If I perform hard resets it will eventualy boot.

I ran memtest overnight and it found no errors.
I ran orthos overnight with no issues.
I have removed, cleaned and reseated memory and video card with no improvement.
I have tried disconnecting all drives and USB devices and issues remained.

The strange thing about this is that once I get it to boot to Windows I can switch off and restart and it'll behave perfectly unless I leave it switched off for a few hours, and I can keep the computer switched on for a week or more with no errors. It's like the exact opposite of overheating. The computer has been running at current spec for two, maybe three years. Nothing is overclocked.

----------

In testing I think I've ruled out everything except motherboard and PSU. As the computer is running perfectly after passing POST from cold it's hard to know what to do next. As it's often hanging at 'Checking NVRAM' could this be due to a dodgy BIOS chip?

Any ideas of what to test next, or suggestions of what may be at fault would be greatly appreciated...

Spec is

Asus P5W DH Deluxe
Core2Duo E6600
4x1GB Corsair XMS6400 DDR2
Sapphire Radeon HD 4670 Ultimate
Seasonic S-12 600W (I think)

Thanks in advance.
 
Yes, Legacy USB support is disabled.

I don't think it's anything to do with USB. The hang is just before it says 4096MB OK. so I previously thought it was RAM but that checked out ok in memtest.

Am I right in saying that Checking NVRAM is to do with the BIOS chip?
 
NVRAM is part of the BIOS memory I believe, have you tried resetting it using the hardware jumper? Doesn't appear much else you can do, at least not by my knowledge.
 
I took the battery out and set the jumper this afternoon and just now tried my computer again. It consistently froze at Checking NVRAM again. After about 20 minutes of resetting it eventually booted to Windows.

It turns out a friend of mine has the same motherboard as me so I'm going to nick his BIOS chip and a graphics card just to rule those out.

Methanoid said:
Or selling that HD 4670 Ultimate ;)
Click to expand...

I'm very pleased with the card. It might not be the fastest but it's well worth the £60 to be able to sleep at night :)
 
I had a problem with my p5k when I first used the thing.

Computer wouldn't post at all... Eventually discovered the problem was when my keyboard was plugged in :rolleyes: (I know you say it isn't usb related).

Anyway, I updated the bios and have had no problems after :)

Might not solve your problem, but maybe updating bios would do the trick?
 
have the same thing when i have my phone pluged in on boot it wont boot with the overclock at 3400 but will boot at defalt 2800 or somthing all i have to do is unplug my phone and it will boot no probs then when windows is up plug the phone back in and its fine still no idea why that is?
 
Thanks for the suggestions but I think I've finally got to the bottom of it.

It would appear that the motherboard doesn't like having 4 sticks of RAM anymore. It's a shame the first thing I tried when I was getting problems was to run memtest, turned out to be a bit of a red herring. It doesn't appear to be specific to any slot or module, just that the motherboard has become more fussy with age. I'll investigate further, but at least now I'm able to boot properly :)
 
I have been having similar issues it seems to all be ram related and doesn't mean your ram is faulty.

So far I have managed to get the system stable it seems (fingers crossed)

Make sure under the bios that you set the Ram to 2T not 1T if you have four banks of ram.

Increase the Ram voltage (I myself just stuck it on 1.9 even though it's supposed to be 1.5 for my ram but hey whatever works. I also increased the Northbride voltage slightly.

I'm currently testing it with Bank interleaving disabled and Channel interleaving disabled. So far stable I will try with them on if the system is still stable in a few days to see if they effect anything badly.

I am running my ram at 1600 even though it shouldn't be able to but as I said before I don't care it works and I have been having a nightmare for months with these issues.

One thing I find with my M4A79XTD EVO is that if you take two slots out and put two back in etc or move ram around it seems to reset certain parts of the bios so don't be alarmed if a few things change and you get an error on first bootup asking you to change setup defaults just go back in and set it to what you were trying to achieve and the second time round so long as your not moving ram slots again it should work.

Hope this helps a little.
 
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