Stuck in BIOS Boot Loop

cd066

Distinguished
Sep 4, 2008
2
0
18,510
System Specs
Asus A8N SLI Delux Socket 939
AMD 3500+ cpu
2X HDD in Raid 0
FDD
BluRay R/W
2GB RAM
WinXP SP3
EVGA 6800 Video Card

Background: I use this computer as a media server and/or NAS. It stays on 24/7 and has had zero problems for the last 5 years.

What its doing: The computer essentially froze up on me so I rebooted it. I did a cold boot (power off / on) and the BIOS screen comes up - the Raid screen comes up - sees the two HDD of the array and then returns to the power on BIOS screen. It does this in a loop. I get no errors and the normal one beep from the system speaker.

What I have done: I have disabled the FDD in the BIOS - no change. I then disabled the DVD/BluRay drive so It would only attempt to boot from the Raid Array - no change. I have run a memory test - no errors.

I suspect: The boot log may be corrupted in the Raid Array - but it doesn't even attempt to load windows - just recycles as if I powered it off/on.
Power supply could be going bad - fortunately I have a new one coming in the next day or so.
Possibly one of the Legacy Drives could be going bad also - FDD (not used very much at all) but disabling it in the BIOS should have taken care of this.

What I think happened to this computer is: I touched it and got a nice static shock from myself to the case. It was very soon afterward (within 20 minutes) that this problem started.

I was planning on upgrading this computer anyway with a new motherboard / processor / power supply and Win7. I have all the parts either on order or on hand. I would really like to be able to recover the Raid Array to ensure that everything I wanted is off it.

I have not yet tried to run the WinXP Repair utility from the XP install disk - I am kind of thinking that this is a hardware issue.
 

cd066

Distinguished
Sep 4, 2008
2
0
18,510
Solved problem myself - looked in the bios and the 12v rail was operating at 9.71v - i.e. bad power supply. My new power supply came in and I replaced it as soon as I was able to. Computer is up and running and no issues. I still plan on gutting it (new MB, new CPU, case fans, 4 new 2tb drives) I have all the parts on hand and will get to work on it very soon. I will most likely not run a raid array again on this computer - I'll just stick the OS and some minor apps on a 74gb 10k drive I already have and stack up a bunch of 1 and 2 tb drives for music / movies.