Strange startup behavior

[cheesehead76]

My T500 with Vista Enterprise x64 is exhibiting strange startup behavior. During a cold or warm boot, the machine displays the ThinkPad POST screen, and then appears to search for a boot device...and then reboots. On the second try, the machine displays POST again and then enters the normal Vista boot process.

My primary HDD has a 2 GB active boot partition and a 150 GB system partition. I also have a secondary HDD in the drive bay with an inactive 300 GB data partition. I can boot successfully from CD, USB HDD, USB floppy, and alternative hard drives, but the "double boot" problem is always there. I have tried every variation I can think of in the startup device order, and I have tried disabling the Intel AMT features. No luck.

Has anyone else experienced this problem?

Thanks in a advance.
Josh

[truk]

I have a similar problem on my desktop with XP. I'd run memory and disk tests. Did you mean that other boot devices worked with or without double booting?

[Kappa7]

I have the same issue on my W500 and it happens with all boot sources, so isn't a SO problem. Maybe it's normal. Any others with this problem?

[Kappa7]

I've found the solution: I had enabled the VT (virtualization) feature in the bios. Now i have disabled it and the strange dual boot disappeared.

[cheesehead76]

Yeah, you nailed it. Disabling the VT features solved the problem for me, too. Unfortunately, that "solution" doesn't help me since I rely heavily on virtualization for my labs and customer demos. Hopefully Lenovo will address the issue at some point.

Thanks for the info.
Josh