CF-28 Boot Failure-Blinking Cursor.

Hi all,

I have a CF-28STJGZDM Ver 3.00 Bios. Win XP. Came with a new samsung 100GB drive.

Ive enjoyed the forum and reading about the various fixes. My problem is similar but with different circumstances. Right now it POST's but wont do anything past the blinking cursor.

Events leading up to this condition are;
Clean Win XP install on a new WD 250GB HD. Everything working fine, after all drivers installed, many reboots, updates, additional software installs, etc.

It appears that upon random occasion if the machine shuts down, or goes to sleep, the boot info is lost. 'Ive not really determined the exact set of circumstances, but I think it just shuts down too quickly for some reason.

Bios recognizes the HD, but if I boot with the XP CD for a startup repair, it does not recognize a windows install, and will only let me re-install, not repair.

This is the second time it happened. when I got the new 250 GB drive I did a HD duplication with Paragon. worked like a charm, then after several days of use it just failed to boot with the same symptom(Blinking Cursor). I suspected maybe it did not like the copy so I did a clean install, after several days the problem re-occurred. I can still pop in the first drive and everything seems fine, although I did not test exhaustively to see if it would eventually lose its way as well.

I suspect it has something to do with an APMI glitch not cooperating with the bios on certain occasions when either going to sleep or shutting down. I did not have hibernation enabled, but it was set to sleep after 1 hour. I have seen it wake up several times successfully.

I have looked at the drive through an external enclosure hooked up to another PC, and the files are all there. Win 7 won't let me view the boot.in though.

Is there any way to rescue this thing without doing a clean install?
What can I do to prevent this from occurring in the first place?

Any thoughts or help would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks.

Marty

 

Have you tried with different hard drives ? My toughts is a bad boot block in the boot sector...

 

How large a hard drive does that bios recognize? Maybe partition it into 2 smaller drives?
Get a copy of Easeus partition manager. USB the drive on another machine with Easeus loaded. You can use Easeus to rewrite the boot sector or repartition it to 2 or 3 smaller drives. 90% sure that you won't lose ay data.

I am sure other software will also do this. I use Easeus or boot a Live cd of any Linux you want. Gparted is really powerful on partitioning and formatting.

 

Interesting comment above. (not my quote) Maybe test with "always on"?

Are you using Panasonic restore disks?

Have you done an upgrade to Intel? But you say you are stalled at a blinking cursor now? Hmmmmm

Is the lid magnet still in place? Enables shut down on closing the lid.

Re: Shawn's comments....I use Linux at times as a test unit. For repair to boot problems in XP I find that Paragon 11 answers most of those needs.

Think about heat, ram and os conflicts ....in that order I think.

Edit: http://tips4pc.com/computer-problem...-to-a-black-screen-with-a-flashing-cursor.htm

 

Have you tried setting the bios into default?

ohlip

 

Your comments and quote on power saving reminded me of something I read a while back.
It was on the subject of Windows (at least XP)power saving vs Intel's power saving built into the cpu. They are sometimes in conflict and fight each other. The article recommended the "Always on" setting. The other settings mess with the cpu speed and the processor power/speed just continues to slow down if you use windows to control the power saving (XP at least)
I read the Microsoft didn't trust that Intel knew what they were doing on the power saving.

 

Very good food for thought from all, thank you. I will digest and try a few ideas as I continue my work in progress.


Shawn, you did clue me in on a possible issue, the BIOS only reports the 250GB as a 137. Although Win XP installs fine and recognizes the full capacity, I will try your suggestion with Easeus.

Sadlmkr, No I am not using Panasonic restore discs, just a clean copy of WinXP. FYI, I can get the system up and running and very happy on one partition, enough to fool me into thinking its fine to release into the wild, only to falter several days later. No I didnt do any hardware upgrades, not sure what you mean by intel, but no. I dont think its the lid magnet, it will successfully POST, but when the boot loader should be executing it just hangs with a blinking cursor and non responsive. Its not running long enough for heat to be an issue and my work room is usually fairly cold this time of year.

ohlip, I thought of that, and would love to play around with some BIOS power settings, however, the Pheonix BIOS has only of value, enable or disable of Fn+F7/Fn+F10 key, I will disable for my next test.

Shawn, Yes I agree with that as well, for this unit it is probably not worth worrying about power saving features and the pitfalls that might come with it. This is a fairly old unit, and I do remeber battling power saving issues in the past with hardware that didnt get along well with MS software. The standards are better on todays stuff but I still run into issues with AMD cool n quiet drivers not behaving. the Proc evolution is so rapid they keep changing the way they save power. Anyway thanks for the tips, Ill report back to let you all know what happens, although I might be awhile testing this thing to fail, hopefully it just wont act up again, and I'll release it back into the wild.

Thnaks again,

BirDog98

 

Thanks for the input guys. It always helps to have an extra pair eyes and brain to get the process flowing.

Easeus did not help rebuilding the MBR. Too far corrupt? I treid copying the boot.ini and ntloader files from my working drive with no effect.

I took the plunge and formatted the drive once again. I definitely will be making a backup image on another external for restoration if needed. I partitioned the drive to try and make the bios happy, but I suspect it wont care, it didn't mind before reporting only 139GB for the WD250BEVS, IMO, because windows setup reported it correctly as a 250.

I think the whole issue was an incompatibility between the newer hardrive ACPI spec and the older WinXP or Phoenix ACPI spec. By disabling the Fn+F7/Fn+F11 option in the power section of the bios, it completely removed any options for sleep or hibernation. Its kind of a misleading setting in the BIOS, suggesting it only enables/disables the sleep function keys. A clue though is the icons on the keys, F7 is a BIOS CMOS chip, F11 is a HDD Platter. Does that mean F11 should put the hard drive to sleep and F7 make the system hibernate? Never seen a hotkey to isolate the HDD for sleep.

After reading up a bit on the newest ACPI spec(Ver 5) I think it was simply a conflict between the antiquated ACPI spec and the new spec implemented in the WD250BEVS. Since 1996 there's been about 11 revisions. I remember building systems with the old BX6 chipset and the slot P-II 266's reading about ACPI. I think it contributed to some of my HD's crapping out instead of just letting them run. Waking them up you'd hear em click and spin up and then BSOD.

Of course I may be way off the mark but I will run the system through its paces and let you know.

So far I have rebooted it about a dozen times, hot boot and cold boot, with no issues. Successfully installed all the drivers and windows updates, started copying my database to the second partition.

I'll keep you all posted.

Thanks,
BirDog98

 

The CF-28 only recognizes the first 128 Gb of your HD. Not saying that is your problem but it could not hurt to repartition the HD so your boot partition is less than 128 Gb.

 

Try another hard drive, i mean a 60 80 or 100 GB hd it should work fine, the acpi specs ar in-date with the computer and the size is compatible with the bios, is also posible to have a physical bad sector on the mbr, if the mbr is damaged it wont boot at all.

 

Remove your RAM and try it. The CF-28 is VERY, VERY picky about the type of RAM you put in.... Just because it fits doesn't mean it works.

You can search the CF-28 thread to see what I mean. All sorts of gremlins come out of the woodwork.....

 

Yes i confirm the pickyness of the cf28 on ram, i tried a buch of rams befor finding one good.

 

Thanks for all the advice.

After a thorough testing phase it seems to be happy with the ACPI disabled. I purchased this with a fresh WinXP install on a new 100GB drive, and reverting back to that showed no signs of sleep, wake-up, start-up or boot issues. I think that rules out any memory or other hardware issues.
It definitely faked me out the first time because despite the BIOS hardrive limitations windows recognized all the capacity of the 250GB and everything worked great throughout all my driver, software installs and many updates and even 200 GB of Data transfer, about 18 hours worth.
Only when a sleep state was entered by closing the lid, I had purposely setup Windows to do that, is when it would not wake up and upon powering up the boot sector was corrupt. All the data was intact on the drive.

I truly believe it is an incompatibility with that large of a drive with the BIOS when it came time to enter a power saving state. The drive is new and tested fine throughout all of WD's DLG tests.
(Or that new of a drive, 250GB 2.5 drives are relatively new for the old IDE standard and I'm not aware of any larger IDE drives in a 2.5 form factor)

Ive got it back up with no issues, although I did split the partitions, one partition is still 200GB. I've done everything I can think of to get it to trip but it just keeps on ticking.

For sure the workaround is to disable FN+F7/FN+F10 BIOS power option, as this did remove any sleep or hibernation options from windows power settings.

Thanks for all the input,

BirDog98

 

Glad you got it worked out.