System is stoping at boot phase

English Hardware
1

Hello!

Sometimes when I turn on my laptop - Lenovo ThinkPad the boot stops on the first screen - the one with Lenovo logo - if everything works after that screen you get to chose the type of boot in openSsue - normal or recovery (don’t recall the name) - there are 13s at this stage. if I get to this stage everything is OK but sometimes it doesn’t want to go there.

I turn off and on the laptop and nothing happens - the only thing is to unplug the power cable and/or open the CD/DVD socket. Then it eventuallny turns on.

Now - is it something with my installation, hard disk or something else? Is there a way to check what is the problem in booting? After it starts it always works flawlessly - since lats 3 years no problems.

My system is openSuse Tumbleweed but I got the same problems on stock 13.1 XFCE.

2

It is almost certainly a hardware problem. If your BIOS is configured for quick boot, try changing that so that you will get more diagnostics.

I recently ran into a somewhat similar problem, though not identical. It turned out to be a failing hard drive. See:
Disk drive (failing) question?

3

I did as recommended and sometimes it goes smooth and sometimes it shows that it finds cpu, ram and then it stops, after some time it shows the HDD and mouse and then it boots to the openSuse first screen but sometimes I get some errors which appear only for a short moment so I can not see the clearly. Is there a log in which I can have a look at them?

4

I don’t know of a better way of getting info on the problem. Sorry.

On the computer where I had problems, it would sometime pause for about 1 minute while the Dell boot progress bar was at around 50%. That was occasionally happening, even when the computer was new.

Since I replaced the disk, that has never happened again. So I think I may have had a bad (and slowly getting worse) disk from the time when I originally purchased the computer.

It’s hard to track these problems down. I had thought it was an on-board logic problem rather than the disk, because it was more likely to happen when a USB drive was plugged in. But it now looks as if it was the hard drive all along.

You might want to start with memory tests. Memory errors can cause strange behavior. If memory seems good, then I suppose the disk is the next to check. You could try “smartctl” tests in opensuse.

5

You can use the SMART hard drive tester found on boot disks such as Parted Magic. SystemRescue to test your hard drive.

6

I recommend that you read through the thread that nrickert referred to in his first answer to you, and try the things you read in there.

Thread is Disk drive (failing) question?

It is a Hardware problem, most likely early symptoms of the Drive failing (check your connectors to make sure they are clean and solidly connected), possibly memory.