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#1
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DELL inspiron 6000 causes HD problems when booting from an USB drive
Hello All,
I've got a DELL inspiron 6000 laptop here, which works well enough (for what I need it for). Though I've got a problem: When I try to have it boot from an external USB drive (500GB, one partition with CloneZilla - but have also tried a newer 2TB drive) it throws an "HARD" error in regard to the internal HD (which subsequently "disappears" and thus cannot be backupped that way - but which is not the point of my current question) Whats more, the error persists when I switch the whole thing off, remove the USB drive and reboot. Even after having left it off for a while. Funnily enough removing the HD drive from its bay (luckily just two screws) and replacing it after a few seconds seems to solve the problem ... huh tl;dr: The question is, is this (not booting with an USB drive attached) a known problem, and if so is it solvable. Regards, Rudy Wieser P.s. The above happened before, but some SMART diagnostics (done on just the drive, by my local store) did not show anything wrong with it. One reformat-and-installation (just to be sure) later and the whole thing ran great again - up until just now, when I thought of using CloneZilla running from an external USB drive (on which I also wanted to store the backup files - hence a true drive instead of just a stick) I thought it was the high room temperature (over 30 degree celcius) which was to blame. Though after having had it checked and it not reporting a problem (SMART diganostics) I reformatted the drive and it worked without a problem, even in as hot days. |
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#2
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DELL inspiron 6000 causes HD problems when booting from an USB drive
In message , R.Wieser
writes: [] tl;dr: The question is, is this (not booting with an USB drive attached) a known problem, and if so is it solvable. [] Can't comment on all your other details. But I do remember that, sometimes - possibly always - if I left a USB memory stick plugged into my XP system (a netbook), it didn't boot - stopping fairly early on in the BIOS boot process. I think it must have been a very low-level effect, because (a) they were not bootable memory sticks (I don't think I've ever made one), (b) I normally had to go into the BIOS when I _wanted_ to boot from USB (e. g. to boot from my USB CD drive to load Macrium). [In other words, the BIOS wasn't set to boot from USB first - I think it didn't retain changes to boot order.] So yes, odd behaviour at boot when something's plugged into a USB socket isn't unknown. But _what_ I had plugged in was different to what you did: memory stick not HD, not nominally bootable. -- J. P. Gilliver. UMRA: 1960/1985 MB++G()AL-IS-Ch++(p)Ar@T+H+Sh0!:`)DNAf "If you have ten thousand regulations you destroy all respect for the law." - Winston Churchill. |
#3
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DELL inspiron 6000 causes HD problems when booting from an USBdrive
R.Wieser wrote:
Hello All, I've got a DELL inspiron 6000 laptop here, which works well enough (for what I need it for). Though I've got a problem: When I try to have it boot from an external USB drive (500GB, one partition with CloneZilla - but have also tried a newer 2TB drive) it throws an "HARD" error in regard to the internal HD (which subsequently "disappears" and thus cannot be backupped that way - but which is not the point of my current question) Whats more, the error persists when I switch the whole thing off, remove the USB drive and reboot. Even after having left it off for a while. Funnily enough removing the HD drive from its bay (luckily just two screws) and replacing it after a few seconds seems to solve the problem ... huh tl;dr: The question is, is this (not booting with an USB drive attached) a known problem, and if so is it solvable. Regards, Rudy Wieser P.s. The above happened before, but some SMART diagnostics (done on just the drive, by my local store) did not show anything wrong with it. One reformat-and-installation (just to be sure) later and the whole thing ran great again - up until just now, when I thought of using CloneZilla running from an external USB drive (on which I also wanted to store the backup files - hence a true drive instead of just a stick) I thought it was the high room temperature (over 30 degree celcius) which was to blame. Though after having had it checked and it not reporting a problem (SMART diganostics) I reformatted the drive and it worked without a problem, even in as hot days. Shouldn't you be able to get the same effect, by removing the battery pack ? You shouldn't need to pull the drive to cause it to reset. Removing DC power should be enough. The only time I've had a SATA drive disappear like that, is when the SATA processor in the drive crashes, and there is no RESET signal on the SATA cable to reset the drive. If all you do is warm restarts, the internal drive in that state, stays invisible. Removing DC power (or doing a complete shutdown, not sleep) recovers the situation. The root cause is typically that the voltage on the power rail is a bit weak, and that's why the hard drive processor has gone off into the weeds. But I don't have a really good theory in this case, that matches the symptom set. If the laptop has a "hardware monitor", you could use SpeedFan to display the voltages perhaps. This does more than set fan speed, and gives access to hardware monitor facilities, including voltage readings. http://www.almico.com/speedfan452.exe Paul |
#4
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DELL inspiron 6000 causes HD problems when booting from an USB drive
John,
But I do remember that, sometimes - possibly always - if I left a USB memory stick plugged into my XP system (a netbook), it didn't boot - stopping fairly early on in the BIOS boot process. Yesterday I was too focussed on the USB thingy being a true drive, and that - as far as I imagined - a too-high power-draw would most likely be the problem. That was yesterday (do you see it coming ? :-) ) After this morning having tried a seperatily-powered USB enclosure (with a full-sized drive) and getting the same problem, I "stepped down" a notch "just to be sure", and tried the same with a fully empty, non-bootable USB stick inserted, exactly as you described. And whatdoyouknow, it failed booting too. :-( There goes my idea about a power-dip being the most likely cause ... The problem is that its not just *any* USB device that causes a problem, as I've been using the laptop with a wireless-by-USB-dongle mouse & keyboard for a while now (read: its not just an(y) USB-stack flaw). And to make things even more interresting, I thought of *not* having it boot by itself, but manually select the boot device (pressing F12 on the BIOS start screen). And whatdoyouknow, booting from either now goes without a problem, allowing me to access the HD and thus make a backup from any of its partitions. So yes, it seems to be something rather low, probably even BIOS level problem. In other words, you seem to have been right on the dot (even though it was a totally different piece of hardware ...). :-) And as the problem even pops up with a simple USB memory stick I think I may rule out any power-dip problems ... Regards, Rudy Wieser P.s. I also did some googeling, but have not found anything pertaining to this specific problem (not even a "me too!" post). Odd. |
#5
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DELL inspiron 6000 causes HD problems when booting from an USB drive
Paul,
Shouldn't you be able to get the same effect, by removing the battery pack ? Possibly, but didn't think of it to be honest. You shouldn't need to pull the drive to cause it to reset. Removing DC power should be enough. That (the computer being told to go into a full power-down) is why I didn't think of it. :-) The only time I've had a SATA drive disappear like that, is when the SATA processor in the drive crashes, and there is no RESET signal on the SATA cable to reset the drive. The drive in question is a PATA one, but the same could apply. The root cause is typically that the voltage on the power rail is a bit weak, and that's why the hard drive processor has gone off into the weeds. Although still possible, later tests and results has made it a bit less likely (please read my post in this thread to J.P Giliver for that). If the laptop has a "hardware monitor", you could use SpeedFan to display the voltages perhaps. Would that not cause a catch-22 situation ? I would need a running OS to be able to use that program to detect a problem which causes the OS not to be loaded. :-) And I forgot to tell: Connecting the same drive when the OS is up-and-running does not seem to cause any problems. Though its ofcourse possible that the power-dip is caused by multiple devices (internal HD as well as the external one for starters) all going thru a momentarily high-need phase. But as you can read from my reply to John, even just a simple USB memory stick causes the same problem. Thanks for the suggestion though. Regards, Rudy Wieser |
#6
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DELL inspiron 6000 causes HD problems when booting from an USBdrive
R.Wieser wrote:
Paul, Shouldn't you be able to get the same effect, by removing the battery pack ? Possibly, but didn't think of it to be honest. You shouldn't need to pull the drive to cause it to reset. Removing DC power should be enough. That (the computer being told to go into a full power-down) is why I didn't think of it. :-) The only time I've had a SATA drive disappear like that, is when the SATA processor in the drive crashes, and there is no RESET signal on the SATA cable to reset the drive. The drive in question is a PATA one, but the same could apply. The root cause is typically that the voltage on the power rail is a bit weak, and that's why the hard drive processor has gone off into the weeds. Although still possible, later tests and results has made it a bit less likely (please read my post in this thread to J.P Giliver for that). If the laptop has a "hardware monitor", you could use SpeedFan to display the voltages perhaps. Would that not cause a catch-22 situation ? I would need a running OS to be able to use that program to detect a problem which causes the OS not to be loaded. :-) And I forgot to tell: Connecting the same drive when the OS is up-and-running does not seem to cause any problems. Though its ofcourse possible that the power-dip is caused by multiple devices (internal HD as well as the external one for starters) all going thru a momentarily high-need phase. But as you can read from my reply to John, even just a simple USB memory stick causes the same problem. Thanks for the suggestion though. Regards, Rudy Wieser The closest thing to "strange" I've seen here, is an Asus motherboard (2003 era), where if any disk has a zeroed MBR, it stops the BIOS dead in its tracks. You have to unplug the drive and take it to another computer, and have Disk Management assign a signature to the MBR, for the BIOS on the affected motherboard to stop doing that. A Windows To Go OS drive will disable other drives in a computer. But that isn't an option for WinXP. Whatever is going on, is some kind of bug. You should be careful to review every aspect of the disks involved (including whether the internal disk was part of a RAID array or something), in an effort to determine what it is about your storage devices that is causing this. There's got to be something abnormal on the storage devices. You could try disktype, but it's hard to get a Windows version (Cygwin is as close as you'll get), and using disktype from Linux isn't convenient either. On a Linux LiveCD booted situation, you have to go to the package manager and have disktype installed. Even though it would have cost buttons to just include it on the damn DVD. The executable is pretty small. http://disktype.sourceforge.net/ Paul |
#7
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DELL inspiron 6000 causes HD problems when booting from an USB drive
Paul,
Whatever is going on, is some kind of bug. Thats my (cautious) conclusion too. You should be careful to review every aspect of the disks involved (including whether the internal disk was part of a RAID array or something) I've checked with two different USB memory sticks, and three different USB drives. The only constant is the laptops internal HD. Though I have fully re-partitioned and formatted that HD twice now (once when I got the laptop, later because I of the same problems as now - and I thought re-doing everything could not hurt) And what should I be looking for ? I mean, if I "just look" than I will most likely miss it (because I do not recognise the odd data/problem for what it is) . :-\ Regards, Rudy Wieser |
#8
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DELL inspiron 6000 causes HD problems when booting from an USBdrive
R.Wieser wrote:
Paul, Whatever is going on, is some kind of bug. Thats my (cautious) conclusion too. You should be careful to review every aspect of the disks involved (including whether the internal disk was part of a RAID array or something) I've checked with two different USB memory sticks, and three different USB drives. The only constant is the laptops internal HD. Though I have fully re-partitioned and formatted that HD twice now (once when I got the laptop, later because I of the same problems as now - and I thought re-doing everything could not hurt) And what should I be looking for ? I mean, if I "just look" than I will most likely miss it (because I do not recognise the odd data/problem for what it is) . :-\ Regards, Rudy Wieser Is this a "legacy" BIOS or a "UEFI with CSM" BIOS ? When you Google the model number of the machine, is the machine known for its "quirks". The first generation of EFI machines were terrible. What is the history of the hard drive ? Has it always been a Legacy MSDOS partitioned disk ? No Dynamic Disk. No GPT/EFI partitions on it anywhere. You can back up a drive with Macrium Reflect, then use DiskPart while on another machine, to "clean all" and erase every sector on the hard drive. Then, restore from backup. What this does, is remove any "non-visible" history from the disk. I occasionally have problems with GPT materials, that requires "cleaning" to get satisfactory operation. You can remove the MBR or change it, and yet the BIOS can read where it might expect a 128MB EFI partition, and see signs the disk was GPT. Doing that kind of cleaning is also handy if you expect TestDisk to work properly at some future time. There won't be any phantom partitions detected, if you "whiten" the disk by zeroing out the unused parts. The cleaning effects won't last forever (Photorec is going to find copies of images you updated, and the old file is still sitting around). But in terms of TestDisk detecting fake partitions, the cleaning should help prevent that from happening with some luck. I've been careless on occasion when using disks here, and have to go through this sort of procedure to remove absolutely everything that doesn't belong. Paul |
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DELL inspiron 6000 causes HD problems when booting from an USB drive
In message , Paul
writes: R.Wieser wrote: Paul, Whatever is going on, is some kind of bug. Maybe, but ... Thats my (cautious) conclusion too. You should be careful to review every aspect of the disks involved (including whether the internal disk was part of a RAID array or something) I've checked with two different USB memory sticks, and three different USB drives. The only constant is the laptops internal HD. .... I think not in a drive. [] What is the history of the hard drive ? Has it always been a Legacy MSDOS partitioned disk ? No Dynamic Disk. No GPT/EFI partitions on it anywhere. You can back up a drive with Macrium Reflect, then use DiskPart while on another machine, to "clean all" and erase every sector on the hard drive. [] I yield to your (vastly!) greater knowledge and understanding of hard (and other) disc partitions and so on; however, I (name's John by the way) and Rudy think it's something fairly low-level in the machine's BIOS, which if booted with anything drive-like in a USB socket (memory stick _or_ real drive via USB adapter), fail to boot. (Rudy has said his mouse dongle doesn't upset it.) Though on my old netbook, if I got in early enough to get in to change the boot order (which often took more than one go), I _could_ get it to boot from a CD in my external (USB) optical drive. (That's how I always booted Macrium when imaging.) -- J. P. Gilliver. UMRA: 1960/1985 MB++G()AL-IS-Ch++(p)Ar@T+H+Sh0!:`)DNAf "Usenet is a way of being annoyed by people you otherwise never would have met." - John J. Kinyon |
#10
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DELL inspiron 6000 causes HD problems when booting from an USB drive
Paul,
Is this a "legacy" BIOS or a "UEFI with CSM" BIOS ? I get the feeling its legacy, as I did not see any entries indicating UEFI. On the other hand, it does not show which BIOS it uses either (other than "revision A08" - below a big DELL logo). When you Google the model number of the machine, is the machine known for its "quirks". I already googled for the specific machine (dell inspiron 6000) together with keywords for the problem (USB boot), but did not get anything back in that regard. Not even posts about other people having the same problem. What is the history of the hard drive ? Has it always been a Legacy MSDOS partitioned disk ? That I cannot be sure (the machine was gifted to me), but it has always been an XP machine. In other words, not much chance of the HD ever been formatted with anything else than FAT32 or NTFS. As for cleaning the HD itself ? Any "strange stuff" on there *should* have been orphaned by me repartitioning (and subsequent reformatting the partitions). If any remainder of other filesystems are picked up it cannot (or should not) be happening thru the new MBR. I just now also (temporarily) replaced the HD with another old one I had laying around (and had previously set up as a replacment of - what I thought at the time - a dying drive). The boot process worked normally on its own, but again failed when I tried booting after having an empty USB stick inserted . I think that that pretty-much rules out the origional HD as the cause of the problems. In short, it looks like I've bumped into some kind of BIOS problem. Though why I can't find it using google is beyond me. Luckily I now know how to recover from and circumvent it. Not the absolute best result, but not bad either. :-) Regards, Rudy Wieser |
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DELL inspiron 6000 causes HD problems when booting from an USBdrive
R.Wieser wrote:
Paul, Is this a "legacy" BIOS or a "UEFI with CSM" BIOS ? I get the feeling its legacy, as I did not see any entries indicating UEFI. On the other hand, it does not show which BIOS it uses either (other than "revision A08" - below a big DELL logo). When you Google the model number of the machine, is the machine known for its "quirks". I already googled for the specific machine (dell inspiron 6000) together with keywords for the problem (USB boot), but did not get anything back in that regard. Not even posts about other people having the same problem. What is the history of the hard drive ? Has it always been a Legacy MSDOS partitioned disk ? That I cannot be sure (the machine was gifted to me), but it has always been an XP machine. In other words, not much chance of the HD ever been formatted with anything else than FAT32 or NTFS. As for cleaning the HD itself ? Any "strange stuff" on there *should* have been orphaned by me repartitioning (and subsequent reformatting the partitions). If any remainder of other filesystems are picked up it cannot (or should not) be happening thru the new MBR. I just now also (temporarily) replaced the HD with another old one I had laying around (and had previously set up as a replacment of - what I thought at the time - a dying drive). The boot process worked normally on its own, but again failed when I tried booting after having an empty USB stick inserted . I think that that pretty-much rules out the origional HD as the cause of the problems. In short, it looks like I've bumped into some kind of BIOS problem. Though why I can't find it using google is beyond me. Luckily I now know how to recover from and circumvent it. Not the absolute best result, but not bad either. :-) Regards, Rudy Wieser It's got quirks. https://www.dell.com/community/Lapto...0/td-p/1589965 My search term was: dell inspiron 6000 usb boot ******* It's from the year 2005. Supports Dothan processor with 533MHz processor system bus Supports up to 2GB of single channel 400MHz and 533MHz DDR2 memory 16-lane PCI Express graphics interface Direct Media Interface (DMI) to ICH6-M South Bridge Supports ACPI 2.0 1257-ball 37.5mm x 40mm Micro FCBGA package 915GM has integrated display interface supporting 2D and 3D graphics That could be right around when USB2 booting was invented. In that era, it's possible Award and AMI had a separate USB2 page in the BIOS, which included boot emulations (the emulations convert various device types into "HDD"). But the pictures of the Dell BIOS don't show such an entry. (It should at least have the word USB in it, if present.) They couldn't do this in the USB1.1 era, because the bus then was only 1MB/sec and too slow to boot anything. http://racecar56.no-ip.org:81/wiki/a...s/repairs/i6k2 It suggests for Dell, this was some sort of unfinished project. Normally, OEM BIOS like that receive a bit of testing before being released to the public, and that's one reason some machines don't have a lot of BIOS versions. There's enough versions for the Dell, to "almost make them an Asus" :-) Asus gives five updates for unpopular motherboards, more updates for popular motherboards. There are some laptop products out there, which receive zero or one updates. And Dell is up to A09 in this case, to no good effect. Paul |
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DELL inspiron 6000 causes HD problems when booting from an USB drive
Paul,
It's got quirks. What you linked to there is the *next* BIOS version. Most likely I found it too (googeling exactly the same as what mentioned), but ignored it - as I was looking for confirmation of the problem first, before looking for its cause and a possible solution. It suggests for Dell, this was some sort of unfinished project. :-) And ofcourse *I* had to run into it ... The whole thing got even a bit odder though: I suddenly had the brainfart to see if I could get rid of the HD detection problem by disabling USB devices in the auto-boot sequence, but leave it accessible in the "one off", manual boot-device selection (F12). So, I disabled the floppy (wtf, the laptop does not have one ...) and ofcourse USB. As a result the booting (of the HD) ran fine, with or without an USB stick or drive inserted (and I could still select them in the F12 menu !) But to make sure that it was not the floppy which caused weird stuff to happen, I re-enabled USB, inserted a blank stick, and rebooted. Although the boot process froze (probably because the stick could complete the booting process) no more HD failures popped up. When I redid it with the Clonezilla USB drive the booting of it was instantly, and no HD detection errors either. huh? As a "just to make sure" test re-enabeling the floppy again (restoring the old boot sequence) did not cause the HD detection error to re-occur. In other words, just by disabeling and re-enabeling of USB as a bootable option seems to have gotten rid of the HD detection with USB memory/drive inserted failure ... Its as if I did the BIOS equivalent of the Windows "have you tried to switch it off and on again" magic. I normally like computers, but behaviour like that is when I sometimes question myself why exactly ... Regards, Rudy Wieser |
#13
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DELL inspiron 6000 causes HD problems when booting from an USBdrive
R.Wieser wrote:
Paul, It's got quirks. What you linked to there is the *next* BIOS version. Most likely I found it too (googeling exactly the same as what mentioned), but ignored it - as I was looking for confirmation of the problem first, before looking for its cause and a possible solution. It suggests for Dell, this was some sort of unfinished project. :-) And ofcourse *I* had to run into it ... The whole thing got even a bit odder though: I suddenly had the brainfart to see if I could get rid of the HD detection problem by disabling USB devices in the auto-boot sequence, but leave it accessible in the "one off", manual boot-device selection (F12). So, I disabled the floppy (wtf, the laptop does not have one ...) and ofcourse USB. As a result the booting (of the HD) ran fine, with or without an USB stick or drive inserted (and I could still select them in the F12 menu !) But to make sure that it was not the floppy which caused weird stuff to happen, I re-enabled USB, inserted a blank stick, and rebooted. Although the boot process froze (probably because the stick could complete the booting process) no more HD failures popped up. When I redid it with the Clonezilla USB drive the booting of it was instantly, and no HD detection errors either. huh? As a "just to make sure" test re-enabeling the floppy again (restoring the old boot sequence) did not cause the HD detection error to re-occur. In other words, just by disabeling and re-enabeling of USB as a bootable option seems to have gotten rid of the HD detection with USB memory/drive inserted failure ... Its as if I did the BIOS equivalent of the Windows "have you tried to switch it off and on again" magic. I normally like computers, but behaviour like that is when I sometimes question myself why exactly ... Regards, Rudy Wieser These things can happen, if you flash up the BIOS and don't reset the CMOS table and do the settings from scratch. The situation could exist for years... or until the CMOS battery gets changed out. Some BIOS flash commands, include a command line option to reset the CMOS as one of the steps, and that ensures the "map" in CMOS, matches what the BIOS is doing. As the BIOS will re-initialize the CMOS, if it's been blown away and the checksums fail. The CMOS has documented areas, and undocumented areas. Some add-in hardware products, used to use the undocumented areas. And because the developers weren't required to "register" their usage anywhere, occasionally there would be surprises ("undesired interactions"). Paul |
#14
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DELL inspiron 6000 causes HD problems when booting from an USB drive
Paul,
These things can happen, if you flash up the BIOS and don't reset the CMOS table and do the settings from scratch I myself have not done that (reflashing the BIOS)*, but I can ofcourse not say anything about the previous owner. *I once trashed a motherboard because I tried to make a backup of the BIOS first before flashing a new version onto it. And to add insult to injury, I already had fixed the problem (the secondary drive being told to go to sleep after just a few seconds) with a small program - but wanted to do it the official way... :-( if it's been blown away and the checksums fail. I would expect that even if the CMOS checksum would not fail, a simple sanity-check of the available data would also invalidating the contents (assuming data gets shuffeled around and/or added). The CMOS has documented areas, and undocumented areas. Not really, but I take it you are referring to (in the old days) the date/time related hardware in the first 14 bytes of the CMOS address space.. And because the developers weren't required to "register" their usage anywhere, occasionally there would be surprises ("undesired interactions"). AFAIK CMOS space is off-limits for anything else than the BIOS. But it could happen ofcourse (though you would need to go low-level, as an OS as Windows does not allow a user (of any level) to directly touch it). There would be a bit of a problem with it though: if such a program would try to use it for its own purposes it would alter some data, but not update the checksum (it would not even know where it is stored nor how its calculated), causing the 'puter to balk the next time its started. In other words, as far as I can tell that scenario isn't all that likely. Still possible ofcourse, just not likely. Regards, Rudy Wieser |
#15
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DELL inspiron 6000 causes HD problems when booting from an USBdrive
R.Wieser wrote:
Paul, These things can happen, if you flash up the BIOS and don't reset the CMOS table and do the settings from scratch I myself have not done that (reflashing the BIOS)*, but I can ofcourse not say anything about the previous owner. *I once trashed a motherboard because I tried to make a backup of the BIOS first before flashing a new version onto it. And to add insult to injury, I already had fixed the problem (the secondary drive being told to go to sleep after just a few seconds) with a small program - but wanted to do it the official way... :-( if it's been blown away and the checksums fail. I would expect that even if the CMOS checksum would not fail, a simple sanity-check of the available data would also invalidating the contents (assuming data gets shuffeled around and/or added). The CMOS has documented areas, and undocumented areas. Not really, but I take it you are referring to (in the old days) the date/time related hardware in the first 14 bytes of the CMOS address space.. And because the developers weren't required to "register" their usage anywhere, occasionally there would be surprises ("undesired interactions"). AFAIK CMOS space is off-limits for anything else than the BIOS. But it could happen ofcourse (though you would need to go low-level, as an OS as Windows does not allow a user (of any level) to directly touch it). There would be a bit of a problem with it though: if such a program would try to use it for its own purposes it would alter some data, but not update the checksum (it would not even know where it is stored nor how its calculated), causing the 'puter to balk the next time its started. In other words, as far as I can tell that scenario isn't all that likely. Still possible ofcourse, just not likely. Regards, Rudy Wieser There's a web page with the defacto standard such as it is. This isn't the one I'm looking for, but it'll do for this purpose. http://www.bioscentral.com/misc/cmosmap.htm The CMOS area is typically 256 bytes. The top 128 bytes is not used, at least not officially. Third parties have been known to store things up top. Of the lower 128 bytes, perhaps the bottom 64 bytes are most likely to have those standard materials. The BIOScentral web page seems a bit larger than the other page of info I've seen. You would think it would be relatively easy, to keep the same definitions from A01 to A09, when it comes to the BIOS. But just because it's relatively easy, it doesn't have to work that way. Developers do all sorts of dopey stuff, like change the boot loader segment, then program the Flasher to erase the boot block and reprogram it. Which increases the odds of bricking the computer, if there is a functional failure during the flash operation. The intention of a boot block, is that it never be changed over the design life of the BIOS. You're supposed to be able to recover from a bad flash operation, if the boot block remains intact. Paul |
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