IBM Netvista P3-933 - Windows setup freezes - pls help

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nobody

Found curbside, with broken case (now discarded). The board seemed to
be fine, caps etc., and fit into another discarded ATX case with
standard PS. Tried to set up XP Pro - boots off CD, runs fine up to
reboot, then freezes right after displaying initial XP screen (black
with Windows logo), showing blank screen and no other activity (disk
or anything). Moved around RAM, replaced with known good, removed all
cards and ran with integrated video - same thing. Tried Adaptec card
with SCSI drive instead of IDE - same thing, starts booting, then
freezes. Tried 2kPro - same thing. Couldn't even go to text mode off
F8 - it displays the boot menu but then blank screen when any mode
picked. Flashed the latest BIOS, played with options, especially
power saving (I suspects it goes into sleep mode or something like
that) - no success.
The whole thing seems baffling - this is the first time I've ever seen
when seemingly working system refuses to install Windows (please no
Linux jokes). Any IBM specific thing (some mobo pins need to be
shortened or hooked to case fan or something like that)? Searched IBM
(Lenovo?) site - nothing beyond BIOS update suggestion. No common
wisdom seems to work, but possibly somebody around here stumbled on
this before? Please help.

NNN
 
Found curbside, with broken case (now discarded). The board seemed to
be fine, caps etc., and fit into another discarded ATX case with
standard PS. Tried to set up XP Pro - boots off CD, runs fine up to
reboot, then freezes right after displaying initial XP screen (black
with Windows logo), showing blank screen and no other activity (disk
or anything). Moved around RAM, replaced with known good, removed all
cards and ran with integrated video - same thing. Tried Adaptec card
with SCSI drive instead of IDE - same thing, starts booting, then
freezes. Tried 2kPro - same thing. Couldn't even go to text mode off
F8 - it displays the boot menu but then blank screen when any mode
picked. Flashed the latest BIOS, played with options, especially
power saving (I suspects it goes into sleep mode or something like
that) - no success.
The whole thing seems baffling - this is the first time I've ever seen
when seemingly working system refuses to install Windows (please no
Linux jokes). Any IBM specific thing (some mobo pins need to be
shortened or hooked to case fan or something like that)? Searched IBM
(Lenovo?) site - nothing beyond BIOS update suggestion. No common
wisdom seems to work, but possibly somebody around here stumbled on
this before? Please help.

NNN
Click to expand...

And no, it's not the CPU - it does the same thing with another CuMine
866. Also couldn't possibly be heat issue - it's too early into the
boot to get overheated, and the heatsink stays cool to touch.

NNN
 
Found curbside, with broken case (now discarded). The board seemed to
be fine, caps etc., and fit into another discarded ATX case with
standard PS. Tried to set up XP Pro - boots off CD, runs fine up to
reboot, then freezes right after displaying initial XP screen (black
with Windows logo), showing blank screen and no other activity (disk
or anything). Moved around RAM, replaced with known good, removed all
cards and ran with integrated video - same thing. Tried Adaptec card
with SCSI drive instead of IDE - same thing, starts booting, then
freezes. Tried 2kPro - same thing. Couldn't even go to text mode off
F8 - it displays the boot menu but then blank screen when any mode
picked. Flashed the latest BIOS, played with options, especially
power saving (I suspects it goes into sleep mode or something like
that) - no success.
The whole thing seems baffling - this is the first time I've ever seen
when seemingly working system refuses to install Windows (please no
Linux jokes). Any IBM specific thing (some mobo pins need to be
shortened or hooked to case fan or something like that)? Searched IBM
(Lenovo?) site - nothing beyond BIOS update suggestion. No common
wisdom seems to work, but possibly somebody around here stumbled on
this before? Please help.
Click to expand...

My K6-III system started doing the same thing. I have no idea why
either. I thought it was the disk drive but it worked fine in an
external USB enclosure (I got all my data off). One of these days
I'll have time to play some more.
 
My K6-III system started doing the same thing. I have no idea why
either. I thought it was the disk drive but it worked fine in an
external USB enclosure (I got all my data off). One of these days
I'll have time to play some more.
Click to expand...

The board might be toast - after all it's a discard. Strange though
it behaves almost normal, even goes to GUI with win9x - that's what is
on the HDD that I use to download BIOS updates to and flash. And,
coincidently, I thought to use this thing as a replacement for my old
K6-2+ system that became unstable beyond useability, which is not a
surprise - it was OCed by 100MHz since 2000 and was rearly powered
down.

NNN
 
The board might be toast - after all it's a discard. Strange though
it behaves almost normal, even goes to GUI with win9x - that's what is
on the HDD that I use to download BIOS updates to and flash. And,
coincidently, I thought to use this thing as a replacement for my old
K6-2+ system that became unstable beyond useability, which is not a
surprise - it was OCed by 100MHz since 2000 and was rearly powered
down.
Click to expand...


responding to yer "pls help" with a possible idea. :)

....that you may both be overlooking, so don't
anybody blast me without thinking 3x. :)

how about your power supply?

for different reasons, of course

for you, i suspect that yer "standard PS"
replacement has adequate power....
but are the voltages really right?
i mean, do laptops really work with
standard desktop power supplys???

more importantly, does *this* laptop,
that you are working with, really
use standard voltages?

for keith, i suspect that his revival of his
old Tyan K6-III board likely included some
new additions; so i'm taking a guess that
he has power issues with his new setup

just ideas, so kindly keep any firepower
about my dumb stupidity holstered. :)

for D.C. also note that i didn't xpost. :)

bill
Click to expand...
Click to expand...
 
[email protected] said:
responding to yer "pls help" with a possible idea. :)

...that you may both be overlooking, so don't
anybody blast me without thinking 3x. :)

how about your power supply?

for different reasons, of course

for you, i suspect that yer "standard PS"
replacement has adequate power....
but are the voltages really right?
i mean, do laptops really work with
standard desktop power supplys???

more importantly, does *this* laptop,
that you are working with, really
use standard voltages?

for keith, i suspect that his revival of his
old Tyan K6-III board likely included some
new additions; so i'm taking a guess that
he has power issues with his new setup

just ideas, so kindly keep any firepower
about my dumb stupidity holstered. :)

for D.C. also note that i didn't xpost. :)

bill
Click to expand...

I wish I could use your guess, but...Netvista is no laptop, it is a
regular (if you can say so about anything IBM) desktop. The board is
s370 microATX with AGP, 3xPCI (one next to AGP is a bit longer, with
extra connector for proprietary NIC, but shorter than PCIX) and an
edge connector that looks pretty much like PCI card and probably can
accommodate a PCI riser in slim models. The BIOS is IBM proprietary
and displays that legacy floppy image and the row of F-keys with
invitation to press F1 to repeat boot process when it finds no boot
disk. As I found somewhere searching for the solution for my problem,
the board was designed and made by MSI - but these info tidbits don't
help. Oh, yeah, this board is also known to be very prone to caps
leaks - but the caps on mine look OK.

Don't take it as a flame - IBM (and other big name) brands are quite
confusing, anyone can mix up Netvista, Thinkpad, ThinkCentre etc.
Quite contrary, thanks for the attempt to help.

NNN
Click to expand...
Click to expand...
 
responding to yer "pls help" with a possible idea. :)

...that you may both be overlooking, so don't
anybody blast me without thinking 3x. :)

how about your power supply?
Click to expand...

Could be, in my case, I suppose. It's a PCP&C PSU, which has been
quite good. I gotta check the fansink too. I did some work around
there a way back.
for keith, i suspect that his revival of his
old Tyan K6-III board likely included some
new additions; so i'm taking a guess that
he has power issues with his new setup
Click to expand...

It wasn't a "revival". I've been using it all along as my Windows
machine (the Opteron runs Linux). I've since replaced the K6
system with a ThinkPad so haven't looked further into it.
just ideas, so kindly keep any firepower
about my dumb stupidity holstered. :)
Click to expand...

Ah, shucks. What a target. ;-)
Click to expand...
Click to expand...
 
Keith said:
Could be, in my case, I suppose. It's a PCP&C PSU, which has been
quite good. I gotta check the fansink too. I did some work around
there a way back.


It wasn't a "revival". I've been using it all along as my Windows
machine (the Opteron runs Linux). I've since replaced the K6
system with a ThinkPad so haven't looked further into it.


Ah, shucks. What a target. ;-)
Click to expand...

Doesn't anybody use live cd's anymore? This sounds like the perfect
time to pop in a Knoppix, or Ubuntu or what ever the live cd flavor of
the month is. Then if it finishes the boot process you know it's a
software, or hardware problem. The fact that you can get enough along
to get a bios update suggest it's more on the software side. In my
experience if a board is dead, or you have board hardware problems you
won't get that far in the boot process. It wouldn't be a bad idea to
run memtest86+ just to verify your memory, you never know stranger
stuff happens.

Rthoreau
 
Doesn't anybody use live cd's anymore? This sounds like the perfect
time to pop in a Knoppix, or Ubuntu or what ever the live cd flavor of
the month is. Then if it finishes the boot process you know it's a
software, or hardware problem. The fact that you can get enough along
to get a bios update suggest it's more on the software side. In my
experience if a board is dead, or you have board hardware problems you
won't get that far in the boot process. It wouldn't be a bad idea to
run memtest86+ just to verify your memory, you never know stranger
stuff happens.

Rthoreau
Click to expand...

Have not tried these live cd's but when hooked up an old hdd with
bootable win98 the damn thing went all the way to GUI, and attempted
to recognize tons of devices that it had no drivers for. It's NT
flavors that it refuses to boot.

NNN
 
Doesn't anybody use live cd's anymore?
Anymore?

This sounds like the perfect
time to pop in a Knoppix, or Ubuntu or what ever the live cd flavor of
the month is. Then if it finishes the boot process you know it's a
software, or hardware problem. The fact that you can get enough along
to get a bios update suggest it's more on the software side. In my
experience if a board is dead, or you have board hardware problems you
won't get that far in the boot process. It wouldn't be a bad idea to
run memtest86+ just to verify your memory, you never know stranger
stuff happens.
Click to expand...

The problem is *no* time.
 
Run setup under non-ACPI HAL. For more details see links in
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/310760/en-us

....snip...
Click to expand...

Thanks but I don't see how this helps. The problem pops up not during
the initial setup phase the article deals with. This part of setup
runs just fine, but then it reboots and has to start Windows first
time - that is when it flashes windows logo for a short while and all
goes black with no activity whatsoever.
But thanks anyway.
NNN
 
This is a sign of either bad driver or incompatible HAL. Not all ACPI
systems are compliant, there are a lot of bad ones around. If you force
SETUP to run with and install non-ACPI HAL, it may work.
 
This is a sign of either bad driver or incompatible HAL. Not all ACPI
systems are compliant, there are a lot of bad ones around. If you force
SETUP to run with and install non-ACPI HAL, it may work.
Click to expand...

At least in my case the system *did* work with Win2K (for five
years). Something broke.
 
Windows 2000 doesn't use ACPI HAL by default, except from a list of known
good ACPI systems. You can force it to install ACPI to any platform by
editing txtsetup.sif. I did it back then for ASUS MB.
See http://support.microsoft.com/kb/216573/en-us and
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/224826/en-us
Click to expand...

Tried both xp and 2k with the same result - the thing would run Setup
all the way to reboot just fine, and then wouldn't go into windows.
While setting it up with regular pc hal would be a good idea, I can't
check it now - the CPU, disks, cards, etc. went into another system.
I picked from the same pile of junk a Dell mobo and put together a
throwaway box that now sits next to my main box and runs emule
non-stop, and also is used to visit iffy sites - I wouldn't ever
search Astalavista from my main box ;-)

BTW Keith thanks for a reminder in another thread that Dell boards
must go with Dell PS - I first tried the board with regular ATX PS (a
decent 350 W with dual fan) and it looked dead, but works with crappy
200 W Dell PS just fine. Other than that, it's an Intel d815eea board
with some connectors and 1 memory slot missing.

Question: can I flash it with regular (non-Dell) BIOS? I hate that
blue Dell bitmap it displays on booting.

NNN
 
I have the exact same problem with 3 different computers. except mine
run @ 1 ghz tried different hdd, mem, power supply and nothing....
still googling
 
That might be a sign of bad (or incompatible) memory. Did you try any decent
memory test?
 
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