Forgive the wall of text. If anyone has a spare 5 mins i'd appreciate some input as I have no clue whatsoever!
Two weeks ago we built and imaged 36 machines for a client, boxed them up, and went on-site a few days later to join them to the domain and finish things off. The monday after one went down - the HP logo flashed up but it never booted into Windows. There was no 'drive/OS can't be found' message, or any indication of booting into Windows or even a post message - the PC would just reboot and loop like that forever. We thought hardware and arranged for it to be sent to us. The next day another went down and the day after two more - all with the exact same problem and looping at the HP logo. Now we thought dodgy image (although how that would prevent the machines trying to boot from something we didn't know) and said lots of rude words. When the PCs arrived we checked that we could get into the bios, which we could, and that the settings were correct, which they were, and tested the hardware. All was fine. We reimaged one machine and everything worked. Weird. With the next machine we messed about with everything we possibly could and after a day or two the machine sprung to life. Unfortunately we had no idea what made the difference. With the 3rd machine we booted up and left it looping for a while - no change - and while it was looping we unplugged the monitor and plugged in an ancient crt - straight away the 'windows failed to start correctly .. ' message appeared and we could boot normally. Apps still there, on the domain - everything was fine. With the 4th PC the same behaviour - PC constantly switching itself off at the HP logo, never positing or trying to boot from the HD (despite the HD being detected in the bios), until we plugged in the CRT and it instantly sprang to life. Is this some weird power issue? Is our CRT magic?
Two weeks ago we built and imaged 36 machines for a client, boxed them up, and went on-site a few days later to join them to the domain and finish things off. The monday after one went down - the HP logo flashed up but it never booted into Windows. There was no 'drive/OS can't be found' message, or any indication of booting into Windows or even a post message - the PC would just reboot and loop like that forever. We thought hardware and arranged for it to be sent to us. The next day another went down and the day after two more - all with the exact same problem and looping at the HP logo. Now we thought dodgy image (although how that would prevent the machines trying to boot from something we didn't know) and said lots of rude words. When the PCs arrived we checked that we could get into the bios, which we could, and that the settings were correct, which they were, and tested the hardware. All was fine. We reimaged one machine and everything worked. Weird. With the next machine we messed about with everything we possibly could and after a day or two the machine sprung to life. Unfortunately we had no idea what made the difference. With the 3rd machine we booted up and left it looping for a while - no change - and while it was looping we unplugged the monitor and plugged in an ancient crt - straight away the 'windows failed to start correctly .. ' message appeared and we could boot normally. Apps still there, on the domain - everything was fine. With the 4th PC the same behaviour - PC constantly switching itself off at the HP logo, never positing or trying to boot from the HD (despite the HD being detected in the bios), until we plugged in the CRT and it instantly sprang to life. Is this some weird power issue? Is our CRT magic?
