Recurring hanging problem on boot

meghatronic · 17 Nov 2008 at 08:05

Just rebuilt my system (Asus P5W deluxe) and removed some old IDEs and one sata to reduce heat and noise. My computer always seems to hang right after detecting memory on boot, i.e. whilst detecting devices. This hang can be anything from 10 seconds to 5 minutes, but then boots quickly after that. I always assumed it was the other sata drive, as it was on the Jmicron controller, but apparently not, as I've removed that drive and disabled the controller. The problem still occurs. It's more annoying than anything else, but more ideas?

I have HDD, DVDRW, DVDRW all on sata in that order. IIRC onboard IDE is set to "enhanced mode" rather than AHCI or RAID.

My major concern is, Vista (non-sp1) used to do this hang on resume from standby. And the Jmicron drive would 'disappear' until a reboot. Sometimes some USB would fail too, prompting reboot. I always put this down to Vista and the Jmicron controller.

Any ideas?

Skidilliplop · 17 Nov 2008 at 10:20

doesn't sound healthy. If you can disable all controllers that are not being used, including empty sata ports. Stuff like IDE0 pri auto; sec auto should be
set manually to "not used" or "disabled". This will prevent them being scanned for devices at boot. Also make sure that the boot sequence has all the present devices first. If it's not a missing device causing it then I'd connect one device at a time to find a faulty device.
The resume thing is probably Vista playing silly buggers re-loading the drivers. Though if you don't use the jmicron controller, removing the drivers might also help as it could be that.
Do you get a happy beep before the hang? might also want to turn off quick booting to get a more verbose POST/BIOS output to see exactly what it's doing at the point it appears to hang.

linktoinsanity · 17 Nov 2008 at 10:45

Try disabling Legacy USB in the BIOS (helped with my old PC), but make sure you have a PS/2 keyboard handy so that you can get back into the BIOS afterwords as this will disable any USB keyboard in BIOS.

meghatronic · 17 Nov 2008 at 10:48

I can always steal a keyboard from work. I'll try that.

Also, no beep as I have no speaker! I'll try long boot later.

Boot sequence is cd/hdd0/floppy so that's fine.

All of the main board sata are filled, and there are no IDE. So I'll disable everything, in addition to disabling the jmicron controller.