Hi, Can anyone help me?
I’ve re-installed 10.3, but still my pc won’t even peep unless i unplug the ATA cable on my sdb (my data disc). (It loads normally if i do unplug it.) Then, I connect it up and warm boot it where it loads normally.
This problem occured without me altering the bios.
What should I do?
Hi there,
Would you mind clarifying: If you boot from a powered off system, it hangs during POST? If you unplug sdb it POSTS, but then you plug it in, warm reboot and it POSTS?
Also (sorry, just checking) you are not attaching the data cable to the drive wile the power is on correct? That is not recommended. Sure, you can get away with it sometimes, but it can damage the drive or controller. (Don’t mean to sound critical or naggy - and I am sure you are likely not doing this. . . )
If it won’t POST from a cold boot, then it is BIOS / Hardware related. If it hangs during booting the kernel or Grub it can be something else entirely.
I am sure we can help get it sorted out, just let us know what the exact story is.
Cheers,
Pete
Thanks for your interest.
This problem seemed to occure when I left my os distro in the tray and re-started… Since then my established setup fails to make it to the peep from cold: just the fan spins. When I unplug the data cable to my sdb, re-start from cold, it will go ahead and load the os from my primary drive but of course my data disc is not connected.
If once passed the peep from cold with sdb cable disconnected, I pause at the 1st green screen and connect the sdb data cable. then press the warm-boot button on my pc it loads normally as it used to. I hope thats clear.
Hi there,
That is odd. By the way - it is a very bad idea to connect data cables to devices while running.
If no POST with both drives connected, I seriously suspect a failing drive or a drive misconfiguration. BIOS must recognize the devices during POST. This has nothing whatsoever to do with the OS on them. If you get no beep, no POST screen, etc. the issue is hardware. I would suggest verifying the jumpers on the drives to ensure they are set correctly (try master / slave rather than cable select, etc.) and see if you can get BIOS to see them correctly.
Perhaps you also have a failing drive? Hook them up one at a time, boot to a live CD and run #smartctl -a /dev/hda and look at the smart attributes, especially: pending reallocated sector, reallocated sectors and any SMART errors.
The system should definitely POST and recognize all drives with out significant delay if the hardware is good and configured correctly.
Hope this helps!
Cheers,
Pete