A weird boot problem...

[Alan]

Ever since I toasted my old CPU and replaced it maybe 50% of the time I cold boot, my PC hangs on the BIOS logo page. If I then press the reset button it boots perfectly normal and is perfectly stable till the next time I cold boot in which case its a coin toss if the same thing will happen again.

Any ideas? PSU or BIOS seems the obvious ones but a bios reset hasn't solved it and I don't have a spare PSU.

[eny]

Have you checked the connections of everything it searches for up to the hang? Maybe a drive or card connection is less than perfect?

[Wrathbone]

Could be a bad RAM stick. If you’ve got 2 sticks, try them separately and see if it helps.

[Alan]

Did try reseating everything, didn’t try memory individually but now have and same!

Since it’s a cold boot thing I wonder if it’s just a capacitor somewhere that’s on its way out. It is 9 years old and well used so I can’t blame the poor thing. Planning a new build in July so fingers crossed it lasts.

[Raid]

Yeah, I had a very similar sounding problem a few years ago that a motherboard replacement solved. Even when it did boot, it took longer and longer to post until it started getting stuck at the same place yours is. I seem to recall someone on PW at the time suggested it might be a faulty capacitor.

[Wrathbone]

It probably is the motherboard, but something else occurs that may be a long shot. Do you have an old mechanical hard drive hooked up to it? I have an external drive that takes ages to spool up and delays the POST until it's done, as I discovered when I unplugged it and the POST was lightning fast. I'm wondering if it could be a dodgy drive that's struggling to get up to speed on startup.

Again, it's a long shot, but you never know!