Blue Screen on Win ME

[Zoidberg]

I got a really strange problem and I did not find any similar threads in this forum:

Sometimes my Windows Me System hangs showing a BSOD and at reboot, the bios does not detect the HDDs on the primary IDE channel. After entering BIOS and HDD auto detection, everything works fine.

My explanation for this is that the bios forgets about HDD settings while the computer is running, and this results in a bluescreen because windows does not find the swap file any more.

I think the Mainboard is an Epox 8KTA3 with VIA Chipset and a 1000MHz Athlon processor.

Maybe somebody has an idea of how to fix the problem.
I consider installing Win 2000 with NTFS, but as i think it is a hardware related problem, i do not believe it would solve the problem.

Thanks in advance

 

[Scotty35]

Checkout your ram and PSU, they are the two most common causes IMO.

Oh I see you have the Epox problem, try starting as normal and wait for a few seconds then hit the reset button at or before post bios screen. This is what’s called a warm reset and hopefully you only need to do it once in a blue moon, they say doing it too often does something bad to the capacitors on board.

Sometimes my Windows Me System hangs showing a BSOD and at reboot, the bios does not detect the HDDs on the primary IDE channel. After entering BIOS and HDD auto detection, everything works fine.

That effectively is a warm reset, which means your drives , fans and system is already running so less power is required by the mainboard. It is somewhat common on some epox boards and I dont remember exactly why but if it persists I would consider returning the board. No bios flash will fix it afaik.
But that is only fixing the symptom and not the cause, I would look at the PSU as the main culprit.




:tongue: Whatever!<P ID="edit"><FONT SIZE=-1><EM>Edited by Scotty35 on 07/31/02 02:13 PM.</EM></FONT></P>

 

[PCcashCow]

Ummm without out putting any extra thought into what i read, maybe the bios forgetting could be due to a faulty CMOS? Even though our not seeing a CMOS error, the battery could be shorting from time to time undetected. Which in this case the 3 dollar solution doesnt work, then move on to your PSU breakdown.

-Tim

It seems that every time I reboot my wallet gets smaller.

 

[Zoidberg]

Thanks for the answers, I think I will try a different PSU as a first.

Tom: Thanks for the idea, but it sounds quite unbelievable to me. I think a battery shorting would lead to a complete loss of CMOS data and, as you said, to a checksum error.
Actually, the HDD setting in BIOS is auto-detect, and this is also what it does when rebooting. The only thing is - it does not find anything.

I suspect Windows power management being somehow involved with this. But since the error does not occur very often, I can't say if switching off APM solved the problem.
The "random" blue screens could be explained by this - it would not be the first time I see a Windows system that shows some weird error messages instead of switching to energy saving mode.
But by this I still can't explain why BIOS does not find my HDD after reboot. Maybe someone knows a similar problem.

Thanks in advance

 

[Scotty35]

Well I have a Epoxy 8k7a+ on RMA as we speak, it started with symtoms simular too yours, it progressively got worse over some months where sometimes it would boot fine and other times it would not boot at all, it finally would not show a screen in the end just blank. I tried everything to check all other hardware on another system, I replaced ram, psu etc everything, it was a big headache.
Then a friend of mine with a 8k3a+ motherboard reported simular happenings but he fixed his with a warm reset and since has had no re-occurance.

<A HREF="http://www.commonwealthgames.com" target="_new"> Its all Gold for Australia</A>. Manchester games.

 

[lhgpoobaa]

u talkin about moi?


had an issue with a particular bios flash. didnt like cold boots at all. would power up but go nowhere. pressing the reset button did the trick.

i reflash back to an earlier bios and had no probs since. bit odd. but apart from that my systems been fine.

<b>Before visiting THG i was a clueless noob. Now im still clueless, but look at my nice title!<b>

 

[Scotty35]

I said a friend! :tongue: j/k

Nice title tho'.

<A HREF="http://forums.btvillarin.com/" target="_new">http://forums.btvillarin.com/</A> "CLICK"

 

[lhgpoobaa]

LOL hehehe
ill set my Hamster on you for that :lol:

thanx

<b>Before visiting THG i was a clueless noob. Now im still clueless, but look at my nice title!<b>

 

[Scotty35]

Oh no, I promise to be ya friend, please!

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