Riddle me this....

[Lee H]

I expect someone out there will be able to understand this issue because I'm totally stumped now and I've stripped and rebuilt the system several times.

The scenario is this basically.

If I cold boot my PC - as in it's all powered down for a few hours the system does not boot but gives a plethora of errors ranging from missing dlls to errors loading windows.

Now, if I leave the PC for 5-10 minutes, go make myself a coffee and have a cigarette in the back garden and THEN reboot the system it loads perfectly and will do no matter how many times I reboot or shut down and restart. It seems to be that if I shut down for more than 3 hours I have to let the PC warm up again but once warm - no blue screens, uptimes that last for months and stuff like that.

System setup is as follows (and in the my system specs);

AMD 3500+ 939 - stock speeds for the time being.
2 Gb of DDR PC3200 - 4 x 512 Mb
Windows on Raid 0 - 2 x 80 Seagate SATA on Si3114 Raid controller
Storage on Nvidia SATA ports.

So, it's over to you as I'm totally stumped as to why this is happening.

Any advice would be great

[Sinizter]

There may be a loose contact on the motherboard or something ?

Leaving it to warm up causes the solder (?) to expand and make decent enough contact. Starting from cold means the contact is not sufficient.

[Tetras]

Sounds it may be a capacitor problem, I'd have a look to see if any are bulging or discolored on the motherboard. Do you have another PSU you could try?

[s_kinton]

This sounds like the well known cold boot issue. Its almost definately the PSU.

Read here:
http://forums.hexus.net/showthread.p...ight=cold+boot
http://forums.hexus.net/showthread.p...ight=cold+boot
http://forums.hexus.net/showthread.p...ight=cold+boot
http://forums.hexus.net/showthread.p...ight=cold+boot
http://forums.hexus.net/showthread.p...ight=cold+boot

[Max Tractor]

Agree sounds like cold boot, I take it the board is the one in "my system", Asus A8N SLI Deluxe, I have the same board and can be picky with quite a few things, ram being one.

Do you have anything connected to the fan headers on the board, if I use the top 2 it wont boot on occasion, it did not like my 2gb pqi on certain dividers, and same with my crucial, you might also try a quick re-hit of the start button.

[aidanjt]

Try to coldboot with a Knoppix CD or some such, and run memtest86, I had a problem with cold hard drives failing to spin up properly once, rather annoying.

[rabbid]

What cooling setup have u got on this? Stock CPU cooler or something more aggressive? I remember reading issues with cold boots too on extra cooled cpu's.

Don't know if u have access to a similar board, spare CPU etc to try to replicate the fault? Can help narrow it down.

I have had issues similar with AMD when overclocking near the CPU limit. After you leave them a while it needs a reset or 2 after power on. Clocking them down a tad eased the problem, but I notice u still get this even after u reset clocks to stock? Are HTT & RAM timings stock as well, and voltages?

Slightly different issue to Lees, I had S754 NF3 Asus board that wouldnt restart when it was shut down until after the power had been turned off then wait a few sec then back on.
It would restart no problem, but once shut down had to kill the power to the board, wait few sec then back on and it would boot fine. A replacement under warranty board cured that.

[Harkin]

Mayyybe a faulty Bios battery or just an old and tired one?

[Lee H]

What cooling setup have u got on this? Stock CPU cooler or something more aggressive? I remember reading issues with cold boots too on extra cooled cpu's.

The AMD "heatpipe" cooler they provided with the opterons

Thanks - I'll just keep the PC on 24/7 or if I turn it on just leave it as I've got into a routine of power -> trip to the loo -> Kitchen for coffee and then restart PC again.

[-N!CK-]

weird problem, do you have a very cold house by any chance lol

[rabbid]

The workaround on the NF3, I used the very stable S3 suspend feature and used standby mode instead of turning it right off. I suppose if u want to give it a cold boot, resume it from standby then shut it down and switch it back on. I dont know how many watts of electricity they use exactly on standby, shouldnt be much tho. Bit of a palava (is it the right spelling?!) but hey, gives u an option (assuming it resumes ok after several hours too)

[explicitlyrics]

I have the S3 suspend option (STR) on my motherboard and I also have a power meter. I can tell you that the rig in 'My System' uses 0.66 Amps (RMS) when on idle and 0.09 Amps (RMS) when in S3 mode. That is quite a big difference, but I guess it does slowly add up.

[aidanjt]

What cooling setup have u got on this? Stock CPU cooler or something more aggressive? I remember reading issues with cold boots too on extra cooled cpu's.

Are you serious?.. CPU's are solid state technology, they have no moving parts to be 'too cold', just look at the Tom's hardware Liquid Nitrogen P4 overclocking.

The most likely candidate to cold boot issues are hard disk drives, they are mostly mechanical and problems like this are known to exist, which is why I suggested earlier to boot a Linux LiveCD to run memtest86 to attempt to establish this theory in this instance.

[BUFF]

Are you serious?.. CPU's are solid state technology, they have no moving parts to be 'too cold', just look at the Tom's hardware Liquid Nitrogen P4 overclocking.

go on XS & ask about cold bugged CPUs ...

[GoNz0]

if it works when its warm im betting on a dry solder joint.

you work for scan, cant you stop late one night and abuse the RMA dept?

test each componant on a cold boot basis on there test equipment.?

[aidanjt]

go on XS & ask about cold bugged CPUs ...

Err, a forum that specialises in breaking their hardware can't talk about CPU bugs.