Author Topic: Early Boot Freeze at Spinning Cursor?  (Read 3468 times)

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vienna01

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Early Boot Freeze at Spinning Cursor?
« on: April 10, 2011, 05:04:27 AM »
From COLD boot only [when PC has been off] I get a freeze as soon as the spinning cursor begins to rotate. The cursor is frozen at an angle. This does not happen the second or subsequent reboots [pushing REST button]. The cold boot freeze always happens. A successful boot always happens after a reboot.
About 30 seconds after the freeze the PC reports "EBIOS READ ERROR: DEVICE TIMEOUT BLOCK0x0 SECTOR 0" This read error string repeats every ~30 seconds.

When the boot DOES complete [resets] it reports:
Darwin/x86 boot v 5.0.132
Chameleon V 2.0 RC5 r699
Build date 2011-01-09

When the boot is successful, all the HDDs are properly displayed on the Chameleon boot screen..

My installation of OSX 10.6.6 was built with iBoot & Multibeast 3.4. It is fully functional & stable.

The PC hardware configuration includes a 1TB SATA drive with OSX, A 300 GB SATA drive with Win 7. Each was built with the other HDD disconnected. The WIN 7 build was built using the Win install disc only. The Win 7 HDD is MBR. The OSX HDD is GUID. There are 3 additional HDDs connected to the PC via USB 2.0.

Because this failure occurs so early, I don't know where I can look to see what is happening. Is there a log file that has info and is readable after a reboot? I don't have any Linux builds but could use Ubuntu 10 live for test purposes.

I am not a programmer.  I have a few months OSX86 experience ONLY.
ANY HELP?

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GA-P55a-UB3 F 11, i5 650,8GB OCZ 1333 RAM, 700 watt PSU, USB keyboard & mouse. The freeze happens with only 4GB RAM installed too.
GA-P55a-UD3 F11, i5650,8GB OCZ 1333,700w PSU, Asus 8400 GS silent, OSX 10.6.6 & Win 7 Sp1 on separate drives. Built with iBoot & Multibeast [various versions up through 3.4].
USB keyboard & mouse, 1TB OSX & 300GB WIN7 [mbr] HDDs.

Gringo Vermelho

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Re: Early Boot Freeze at Spinning Cursor?
« Reply #1 on: April 10, 2011, 05:45:01 PM »
This is not related to the Chameleon bootloader. It's a hardware issue.

For troubleshooting purposes, try unplugging all hard drives but the OS X drive.
Disable off-chipset drive controllers in the BIOS (jmicron, marvell etc etc).

Maybe your drive controller needs more time to initialize your drive on cold boots. I think there's a timeout value somewhere in the BIOS you can increase. If this is the case unplugging the other drives will help you narrow down which drive it is. Probably your OS X drive :-)

That said, this is the Chameleon forum and that's why your thread is now in the Black Hole. Try asking on InsanelyMac, Project OSX or one of the other scene forums.
« Last Edit: April 10, 2011, 05:51:02 PM by Gringo Vermelho »
10.9.5 - ASUS P8Z77-V Pro - i5 3570K - GTX 660 - Chameleon 2.3 svn-r2xxx
How to...
Install Chameleon: http://forum.voodooprojects.org/index.php/topic,649
Make your own Chameleon boot CD: http://forum.voodooprojects.org/index.php/topic,484.msg2131.html#msg2131