Strange Motherboard Boot Bug Biostar MCP6P M2+ Ver 6

[DaveLembke]

So I have had this Biostar MCP6P M2+ motherboard for 2 years and was originally running the Sempron 2200 X2 (uncommon dual-core) which came bundled with the motherboard as a cheap dual-core on Windows 7 Home Premium with 4GB DDR2 800 Mhz Ram, GeForce 8400GS PCIe Video Card, with 2 IDE DVD-RW drives and a single 500GB SATA drive. And had no hardware issues or boot bugs under the original setup.

A week ago a friend of mine upgraded his system with a new motherboard, and I asked him if he would sell me his AMD Athlon II X4 620 Propus 2.6GHz 4 x 512KB L2 Cache Socket AM3 95W Quad-Core Processor ADX620WFK42GI - OEM CPU, and he said that I can have the CPU for free if I help him upgrade his system to the AMD Phenom II X6 1100T Black Edition Thuban 3.3GHz, 3.7GHz Turbo 6 x 512KB L2 Cache 6MB L3 Cache Socket AM3 125W Six-Core Desktop Processor.

The original CPU I had the AMD Sempron X2 2200 2.0GHz 2 x 256KB L2 Cache Socket AM2 65W Dual-Core Processor SDO2200IAA4DO - OEM is a 65 Watt Processor and the good used CPU is a 95 Watt.

Before upgrading my system, I checked to make sure the motherboard supported it as well as would take a 95 Watt CPU since the prior was 65 Watts, and its in the list of supported processors as seen here: http://www.biostar.com.tw/app/en/mb/cpu_support.php?S_ID=370

Now to share with you this strange boot bug... On initial boot of the system, the post screen shows and it detects and shows video card, then CPU and Ram info. Then displays the following after a 10 second delay:

Verifying DMI Pool Data .... Update Success
Boot from CD
Boot from CD
DISK BOOT FAILURE, INSERT SYSTEM DISK AND PRESS ENTER

So, I decided then to perform a Warm Reboot thru CTRL + ALT + DELETE and the system takes the command and it then boots up and right after:

Verifying DMI Pool Data .... Update Success
Boot from CD
Boot from CD

the screen then switches to booting Windows 7 with no problems within about 2 seconds after displaying this last piece of post info.

So I then went looking for anyone else with this issue with this board and found a Flash for this board at here: http://www.biostar.com.tw/app/en/mb/bios.php?S_ID=370 stating a very similar issue "Fix sometimes can't boot to OS " for the flash version "61PBM629.BSS". So I flashed the motherboard to this newer patched version to try to correct this, and the only change now is that my Biostar Logo has changed and the version is now that of the flash version. The system still at very first cold boot comes up with this boot bug of it unable to boot from the SATA drive, and I have since at cold boot not waited the 10 seconds for the boot failure but added the routine of a warm boot with CTRL+ALT+DELETE right when it starts to display the:

Verifying DMI Pool Data .... Update Success
Boot from CD
Boot from CD

And it boots and runs perfectly fine and FAST compared to the Sempron X2 I had prior.

I had a spare 320GB SATA drive from when I ran Windows XP Pro on this system and so I switched from the 500GB to the 320GB SATA drive and still at cold ( first boot ) same boot bug, so its not the drive. Also had a spare SATA cable brand new in a baggy and replaced that and still same issue.

I also went in to the PC Health utility in the BIOS to check power supply voltages as for I had a similar issue a long time ago when i upgraded my 286 to a 486 motherboard in an old desktop dell and the power supply struggled to power the 486 and the Voodoo Video Card, sound blaster 16, AT&T 28.8 Modem, and the 3com 10mbps NIC, but the symptoms with that system was a black screen on boot, and if you pressed the power button off and on a few times you could get the system to catch enough amps to boot.

I havent swapped out the power supply yet, because I dont think its the power supply because voltage levels are reporting correct in PC Health in Bios utility, and it doesnt do the black screen non post like that 486/66 motherboard did to that system that was originally rated for a 286/12 motherboard load.

Anyone have any suggestions? Right now its looking like the only options are try swapping PSU which shouldnt be the problem, replace the motherboard with a newer motherboard, or continue to perform the cold followed by warm boot to bypass this boot bug.

If it was the power supply, I would expect it to become unstable during games, but I have had both DVD-RW drives converting DVD movies for my sony movie/mp3 walkman, and playing i-tunes music minimized, and been playing wow in a dungeon with it with tons of graphics and processing stuff going on and this quad-core is really fast compared to what i have had before and has no flaws under extreme multitasking which puts the power supply under quite a load.

History of his quad-core CPU was a very stable system with no flaws. Reason for upgrade is that he has the need for speed and doesnt mind spending money. As for myself, I like cheap upgrades and will run hardware into the ground before retiring it to a landfill. Also to note he gave his motherboard away to another friend who wanted to build a cheap system, so its not like I can ask now for the motherboard he had as well to pair the CPU and motherboard back up again.

[Salmon Trout]

I think you are right to suspect the power supply. They vary not only in nominal power rating but also stability. Cheaper ones don't like it near the edge of their comfort zone. You have checked voltages and indeed they seem steady once the system is finally up and running. But the time immediately after a cold start is a crucial period. There is a surge and if voltage rails have not yet stabilised you can get problems like you describe. I once built a system when money was tight and I got the Socket 462 motherboard I wanted (an Abit KT7A) but I economized on the CPU (I got a 750 MHz Duron instead of the Athlon XP 1800 that I really wanted) and (fatally) a (very!) cheap case-and-PSU deal which cost 19.99 UK pounds (about 32 US dollars). The whole thing worked absolutely fine until I upgraded the cpu 6 months later. Much heavier power draw. Big surge at start. It would boot into Windows if there was no disk in the CD drive, but if there was a disk you would hear the drive motor start to spin up and... crash! A click from the PSU and it would restart. It was very marginal and I got frequent BSODs. The complete solution was a new "certified for AMD" PSU at 40 UK pounds (around 65 USD).

I think you have the idea because you wrote this about your old Dell

you could get the system to catch enough amps to boot.

Does it boot OK if you go into the BIOS and just view settings, changing nothing, and then exit? Because if so, one thing you could try is to see if there is a setting in the BIOS for "hard drive pre-delay" or a similar name. If present there will be options like "disabled" and selectable delay times in seconds. Making the BIOS wait for that period of time before attempting to initialize the hard drive(s). It might be worth trying this anyway.

Finally I'd just like to say I thought your post was a very good model of how to ask a question.

[DaveLembke]

Thanks for your suggestions salmon... I ended up finding out that the power supply is the cause of this boot bug, even though it can take on all the heavy load multitasking I can throw at it once up and running successfully. I located my 2 digital multimeters and set them on the one unused P connector to watch the 5V and 12V on cold boot and sure enough the 5V side is actually starting low at around 4.6V and then within about 15 seconds it climbs slowly to 4.98V.

The 12V side starts out around 11.8V and climbs quickly to around 12.05V. With the power supply having been run for about 10 minutes, I shut down my system and waited about 30 seconds and booted it up again in full cold boot, but after the power supply had been run within last 30 seconds or so. System Booted without boot bug and the 5V read 4.75V at initial power up and then climbed to 4.98V quicker than the initial cold boot after system wasnt used for last 12 hrs or so. I figured that 30 seconds was adequate time to wait for capacitor drain and then cold boot from recent warm run. So it appears that the power supply is lazy at getting the 5V to 5V after its been sitting unused for a while, and if powered back up after been run recently, its quicker to get the 5V to a healthy voltage.

With the 5V side being slow to hold healthy at 5V, it can be affecting the SATA drives boot logic causing the DISK FAILURE message.

I guess I will buy myself a new power supply next pay day.