T43p hard drive freezing before booting to Vista

[minc3d]

Hey All,

Got a weird problem that started occuring recently on my T43p Vista laptop. The laptop turns on OK and all, but at what should be the end of the IBM logo screen and boot to hard drive, the unit just stalls. It does not FREEZE, as when I press F8 to enter the boot menu and force it to boot from HDD, it goes right to Vista OK.

However, it should not have to be given a "kick in the behind" to get booting.

BIOS is set to only boot from HDD and nothing else. I have latest firmware for the HDD installed, as well as the latest laptop BIOS and Embedded Controller.

What could be causing this pause? A bad HDD? If you have seen this in the past let me know.

PS: This issue has been somewhat recent and started occuring about a week ago. Only thing it coincides with is a replacement keyboard which I had sent from warranty service to replace my bad one.

[ArtShapiro]

Well, it sure sounds like some of the boot information has become corrupted. I guess, if this misfortune befell me, I'd be inclined to install the freeware program BootMagic, which has a pretty good rep. I use it to manage my XP/Vista dual-boot T42 without incident. I'm sure it creates appropriate booting structures and writes them to the hard disk, and I don't see why it wouldn't function in a single-boot configuration.

Unless someone here chimes in to the contrary, I don't see any downside to doing this, and if it fails to cure the problem you're no worse off than you were.

Art

[minc3d]

Why would the hard drive then boot just fine once I press F8 to force the boot menu within the IBM? If it truly had a boot issue then even after an F8 press the drive would show an error or some other issue relating to a broken boot record.

I have a feeling something deeper within the BIOS is screwy. perhaps someone has seen this before?

Thanks for the above help, though!

[andyP]

The first thing I would do is re-seat the hdd, basically take it out and gently shove it back in. I have often seen machines which don't boot properly and this simple action has helped.

[GomJabbar]

This problem could be happening if your hard drive is taking too long to spin up. If this drive was previously working fine with Vista, then I would suspect your hard drive may be starting to show signs of failing. If this problem only occurred after installing Vista, then it might just be a Vista problem. I suggest you try one of the hard drive diagnostic tools below to check your hard drive. You can also look in Event Viewer for ATAPI errors. Start > Control Panel > Administrative Tools > Event Viewer.

Hitachi Drive Fitness Test

Fujitsu Diagnostic Tool and Erase Utility

Samsung HUTIL

[minc3d]

Hitachi Drive Test shows the drive as being excellent.

I will attempt to reseat the connection and see what happens.

[GomJabbar]

Check that your BIOS, Embedded Controller and Hard Drive Firmware are at the latest version levels.

Drivers and software - ThinkPad T43, T43p

Hard drive firmware update utility (Bootable CD ISO) - ThinkPad

Try removing the the optical drive and see if that makes any difference.

I found the following in the Microsoft Knowledge Base. Maybe it will help.
How to use the Bootrec.exe tool in the Windows Recovery Environment to troubleshoot and repair startup issues in Windows Vista

[minc3d]

So I decided to have a look at what VistaBootPRO would show me. Under Advanced settings, I found that there was a "Previous INstallation of Windows" line showing in the boot record - alas, the beta copy of Vista I thought was deleted in the reformat but it was truly not!

Deleted the line item in the program, applied settings, restarted - voila no more hanging before boot!

Hard drive is OK, and system runs like a charm!

Thanks for the input everyone! VISTABOOTPRO is a GREAT APP!