I built my own computer/PVR last fall: Windows XP, Gigabyte motherboard, Fusion card for OTA HD, Hauppage for cable analog, ASUS with Nvidia graphics, Soundblaster Xtreme sound card, BeyondTV from snapstream.
When the system is booted from a cold start, it frequently hangs up during the boot process (the little blue squares stop dancing across). I must restart, boot in safe mode (always does that fine), turn off and cold restart. If I don’t boot in safe mode, it keeps hanging up. Sometimes I need to do that 3 or 4 times. Once it boots OK, I can turn on/off repeatedly with no problem, unless I leave it off for a few hours.
I know the easiest fix is: a) never turn off, or, b) always turn off in standby mode, but I am somewhat anal about stuff like this. I boot with the absolute minimum applications (no BTV, firefly remote, etc.), so I am convinced the drivers are in some kind of conflict. I did print ntbtlog.txt, so I have a list of all drivers as they load.
Does anyone have any thoughts re a process, test, diagnostics, literature, reference, etc. that could help work the problem? My Windows XP book doesn’t go there. TIA, Bill Roberts.
Is your power supply compatible with all peripherals?what is the ampere rating of your power supply?.
Because the computer will work without a problem after a restart I don't think it's the PSU.
Has this problem just started recently? If so try a last good configuration.
I would be interested in seeing what is showing up in the event viewer at those times.
It's a Antec Neo HE 430 PSU (I assume 430 watts). The manual does not have ampere specifications, but it is pretty hefty. It was recommended in some article I read on building your own PVR.
Since I added applications (such as BeyondTV) over time, I just have the opinion that the problem has been there since all the drivers, etc. were loaded. It is also a little hard to tell since the problem occurs mostly on a cold boot, and once I get past that, it reboots fine. The Event Viewer is a good idea. I'm not familiar with it, but I will try. I don't know if it will capture this type of failure. TIA
Bill Roberts
I had that problem with Windows NT, and it turned out to be a network card which was issuing its recognition signal before Windows was ready for it. Windows got the wrong byte as the first byte, and sat there waiting for the correct signal.
Thank you. Actually it turned out to be both the sound card and the graphics card were both on IRQ16. When I moved the sound card to another slot (the only one available) it moved to IRQ17 and the boot is reliable. "We get too soon old and too late smart".
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