GA-M68SM-S2 Cold boot problem?

[MyJoy]

Hello everybody,

I've problem with my GA-M68SM-S2 board. Sometimes (not allways), when I switch on the machine, it won't boot, the screen just shows the post screen, cpu type and counts the memory and than just stops. Then, I have to press the reset switch and it boots to windows no problem and everything works fine with no problems whatsoever. Also, when I have to reboot from within windows, the reboot process takes forever. The configuration includes Brisbane 4000+, 2x1 GB Kingmax 800, Powercolor HD2600 Zero DDR3, 250 gig Seagate SATAII, 500 gig Samsung SATAII, 250 gig Seagate IDE and DVD/RW IDE. OS is winXP SP3 on Seagate SATAII AHCI enabled. PSU is Chieftec 400W. Aynone has any ideas what may cause this? Sorry for the long post.

Regards,

MyJoy

[Lsdmeasap]

IS that PSU enough for that system?

The long shutdowns can be MANY things, mostly dealing with your XP setup and processes you have installed and or running, and how fast you have some things set in the Registry such as Waittokilltimout And the other timout settings. All of which are very messy it changed wrong. So we will leave those alone for now.

As for your slow startup, AHCI likely is the cause of the hang there. But I would also say memory issues can cause the system to not fully boot as well.

Sadly, I do not know much about AMD, so little that I do not even know if the board you mentioned is new or old! HAHA Really

But I can say that ram is kinda cheap right? Are you sure it is good still? have you tested it with memtest86+ Version 2.01

[MyJoy]

Wow, that was fast!
As for long shutdowns you mentioned, I wasn't referring to that, what I ment was that when I have to reboot from windows, the reboot to windows takes unusually long, shutdown is fine. As for PSU, I think Chieftec 400W is pretty decent PSU and should run this configuration no problem. Also, I know Kingmax is el cheapo brand but it's fine for me since I dont overclock, hence the board bios doesen't have any overclocking options. I've tested ram with memtest, everything's fine, tried also with my other A-Data 800 2x1GB sticks, problem remains. It seems to me there's a problem with SATA/ATA controllers since when the problem occours, I get the post screen, cpu, ram and when it should autodetect hdd's it stops, then I manually reboot and it works just fine, no restarts, no BSOD no freezes.

[Lsdmeasap]

AHCI Is likely the cause. I know I tried it once or twice and it always tripled my boot time because it does HAVE TO load a special AHCI Bios before windows starts to load.

[MyJoy]

Thank you for your answer Lsdmeasap. I know how AHCI works and what is it for and I know that I don't really need it as a home user, but since I have it why not enable it? ;-) There's one thing I haven't tried yet, and that is to remove the IDE drive and disable it in bios and let the SATA controller be the only hdd controller of the system. I saw on other forums that sometimes people have problems with SATA and IDE controllers working together.

[Lsdmeasap]

Ya Could be some of the issue. I have IDE and SATA and no issues.

How long exactly is your boot process?

[MyJoy]

The actual boot process takes about 1 min. 30 seconds, but I don't mind that 'cause I know it's mostly 'cause of the usb wlan adapter. When I reboot from within windows, that reboot process takes much more than than. I even get to see the white line before windows welcome screen (you know the one we used to se on w2k boot?) I just came home from work, turned on my computer and the problem reapeared. I'll try to take out the IDE drive and see for couple of days what happens.

[Lsdmeasap]

Best of luck, you may have no fix really with AHCI and USB lan it may just always take that long

NA, I dont remember the white line!!!! HAHA what is it?

[MyJoy]

Haha, I knew someone was going to laugh, I could't explain the "white line " better. Sorry my english is a bit "rusty". Anyways, I was reffearing to that running line on the bottom of the screan just before the "loading windows 2000" appears if someone still remembers that.

[Lsdmeasap]

Ahhh, Ohh yeah! I remember, it has just been so long since I saw a 2indows 2000 boot up I fogot