3 to 4 minute waiting period at boot process -- any HELP?

[jwege]

Hi all,

since some weeks, I have a strange problem with one of my IBM TP's.

When booting (or rebooting from Windows), it starts booting normal (system messages white on black).

No errors are shown (!)

Then, with the following lines on the screen, it stops for somewhat 3 to 4 minutes:

** begin of the screen **

CPU...
RAM ...
System BIOS shadowed
Video BIOS shadowed
UMB upper limit segment address: DC00
Mouse initialized
Fixed Disk 0: IC25....
ATAPI CD-ROM: HL-DT-STDC-RW/DVD DRIVE GCC4240N

To interrupt normal startup, press the blue Access IBM button

** end of the screen **

Then, after theses minutes of nothing, it beeps one time relatively loud (it is another frequency that the beep when pressing the pobutton) and continues normally, Windows starts, I can do all work, all is fine, and also shutdown works well.

If this info helps: pressing the blue access ibm button, the line "To interrupt ..." goes away but the process obviously is further because after the beep, it does NOT enter into the bios setup.

Having the system in hibernation, the same happens. It stops at the very same position.

Pressing the blue ibm access button immediately after the line appears, also the system waits for the given period in time and then enters into the bios setup.

No USB devices are attached, not network cable is attached, the system is on its own. No changes (willingly) have been made prior to the occurence of the problem. The HD for example ran for 3 years prior to the problem and it is still the same.

Can anybody help?

[sarbin]

nothing has changed in the bios, that you know of?
at first, it sounded to me like the extended memory post was enabled, but i'm not sure how long that takes as i never enable it.

[jwege]

Here are the lines that are shown after the waiting period:

Clear screen

{prompting underscore}
{beep}
Initializing Intrel (R) Boot agent Version 4.1.07
PXE 2.1 Build 083 (WfM 2.0)

{windows startup procedure}

Maybe that helps?

[jwege]

even when I press F1 for entering the BIOS setup, the Message

"Entering Setup" appears on the screen and afterwards, it takes the 3-4 minutes quiet period prior to enter into BIOS setup.

So, there must be a very low level procedure running that causes the delay (or timeout with no message)

jwege

[sarbin]

wait one, let me check something. i need to reboot my machine into bios to look at something. i'll be back shortly.

[sarbin]

ok...
boot to your bios and select the 'NETWORK' option.
are any of the following items set to 'ENABLED'?
- Wake on LAN
- Flash over LAN
- Intenral Network Option ROM

[jwege]

Hi all and thanks for the suggestions.

I have found a very simple solution (which I do not really understand, but that's PCs):

Removing the DVD drive prior to booting and all is done like it has been before. Seems that the DVD drive has a fault.

Thanks again
jwege

[sarbin]

well...
glad you got it sorted out.

[rkawakami]

Removing the DVD drive prior to booting and all is done like it has been before. Seems that the DVD drive has a fault.

Have you tried updating the GCC-4240N firmware recently? I ask since I have a couple of Pioneer DVR-K17RS drives which act the same way; when installed, the laptop pauses at boot time showing just a cursor for about 60 seconds, then continues with loading Windows. However, the delay is NOT present when accessing the BIOS screen (which sounds different than what you are experiencing).

<Ray goes to time the delay using a T23 in order to get an accurate figure for the previous sentence...>

I just grabbed the drive in question and installed it in one random T23 I had laying around. It booted without any delay . Previous to this when I was verifying the drive in another T23, it always took 1 minute to resume loading Windows. I selected another random T23 that I've been using in the last couple of days and installed the Pioneer drive inside. When booted, it delayed one minute before Windows continued loading.

Up to now I had thought that the problem was in the firmware of the DVD drive. I buy various bare DVD burners off of eBay for cheap and fit them into an Ultrabay 2000 caddy for use inside T23s. Now I'm thinking that it's really a question of the firmware of the T23. The system which does NOT have the delay has a 1.16 (1AET60WW) BIOS revision and the Embedded Controller is 1.05. Fairly recent. The system which DOES have the delay has a 1.03b (1AET43WW) BIOS revision and the 1.02 Embedded Controller; really old. Of course there's many other differences between the two T23s but this would be my initial guess. When I get enough time to perform a BIOS/EC update on the system that has the delay, I'll post the results back here. For now, thanks for posting this problem as now I've found that I can use the DVR-K17RS in at least one of my systems .

So, some additional questions to ask:

- has any changes been made with the DVD drive's firmware OR the laptop's firmware?
- prior to the "since some weeks" you mentioned, was the GCC-4240N drive ever installed in your Thinkpad?
- what model of Thinkpad are we talking about?
- what is the current revision level of the BIOS and EC?

If your Thinkpad was working all this time and then suddenly started having this boot problem without any system configuration changes (hardware, software or firmware), then your problem may not be related to what I'm seeing with my Pioneer drive and T23s.

[sarbin]

@jwege...

did you ever check the following:

boot to your bios and select the 'NETWORK' option.
are any of the following items set to 'ENABLED'?
- Wake on LAN
- Flash over LAN
- Intenral Network Option ROM

[jwege]

@rkawakami

No, I have not (willingly) changed anything n hardware or the drivers. The PC is used by my wife and she has no knowledge about such things.

However, the auto-update for Windows XP ist on, so, maybe here comes the failure from?

@sarbin
I have checked and no, nothing of such options seems to be the reason.

And as outlined, when removing the DVD drive prior to boot, everything works just fine. No waiting. Therefor I guess it has barly to do with the DVD drive / Bios Compatibility / whatever.



@rkawakami
I will check your questions, whoich will take some tme since I am on a business travel right now and only return on the 18th. I will also try another dvd drive whe I return.


Thanks again for your inputs!
I will post once I am back.
jwege