This is a little long but it's the best hardware trouble shooting 
process I know of.

It's not only the motherboard that has BIOS on it.  The Video, NIC, 
Sound, and other adapters  have BIOS on them.  The BIOS on these 
adapters communicates with the BIOS on the motherboard telling it what 
they are and what they need to work.

It _"sounds like_" you have a BIOS on an adapter that is causing the 
machine to hang.  In other words, object X tries to talk to object A and 
hangs the machine.  However it's usually the line, following the last 
line you see, that hangs the machine.  The objects could be hardware, 
software, or both.

First; you will need a log book, write everything down.
Look at the motherboard book and find out what order (direction) the 
slots enumerate in1,2,3, etc
Obviously an AGP video card has it's own slot.

Strip the machine of un-needed hardware.
If it hangs on AGP you need to make a change in either the speed and/or 
memory of the AGP adapter in the motherboard BIOS. 2x, 4x, 8x speed 
reducing and try reducing the amount of memory it is allowed to use.

<process>
    Boot
       if it works, shutdown
    Add 1 adapter
    Boot
       if it works, shutdown
    Add another adapter
    Boot
        and so on until something _doesn't_ work
</process>

Some adapters need to be in low order slots to work properly, start with 
sound, sound cards are notorious for causing problems.  Then move on to 
Network, Modem, USB, Firewire,  etc...  if you have them.

    Put the sound card in the first slot.  (slot 1 from the book)
       <process>
    Put the NIC in the next slot (slot 2 from the book)
       <process>
and so on...

If you find an adapter that fails after the NIC, move the NIC to the 
next to the last slot on the motherboard.  (slot 5, on a 6 slot 
motherboard, and move the non-functioning adapter to slot 2)
        <process>
If it works after that move on to the next adapter.
If it doesn't then you know what hardware to replace.

BIG HINT - don't close the case until it all works.

On a different note, I've had W2K installs hang because the processor 
was over clocked.  Slow down the processor if all else fails or if it 
hangs on AGP after changing its speed and memory.

Good luck, write everything down, then share your findings with the 
TCLUGers.

Sam.



Shawn wrote:

>On Sat, 20 Sep 2003 18:14:17 -0500
>Karl Bongers <kbongers at infinetivity.com> wrote:
>
>  
>
>>What I said in my last post is only valid if the kernel
>>is not starting.  Try to take note if the kernel starts or not.
>>Look for some message after "loading linux".
>>
>>Or try adding "vga=ask" as a boot-time parameter.  If the
>>kernel is starting, this should stop it very early and prompt for
>>vga settings.
>>
>>    
>>
>
>Okay, finally got a chance to try and figure it out some more last night.  Tried a few things, but didn't remove any hardware yet.  Will try over the weekend.
>
>The last message that I was somewhat able to read after "loading linux" said something to the likes of "reading bios" or soemthing.  If that's correct, and it's failing at trying to getinfo from the bios, what are my alternatives?  Is there mainboards that are not Linux compatible?
>
>
>  
>


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