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DELL inspiron 6000 causes HD problems when booting from an USB drive



 
 
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  #1  
Old July 16th 18, 06:14 PM posted to microsoft.public.windowsxp.general
R.Wieser
external usenet poster
 
Posts: 1,302
Default 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.


Ads
  #2  
Old July 16th 18, 07:35 PM posted to microsoft.public.windowsxp.general
J. P. Gilliver (John)[_4_]
external usenet poster
 
Posts: 2,679
Default 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  
Old July 16th 18, 11:05 PM posted to microsoft.public.windowsxp.general
Paul[_32_]
external usenet poster
 
Posts: 11,873
Default 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  
Old July 17th 18, 09:51 AM posted to microsoft.public.windowsxp.general
R.Wieser
external usenet poster
 
Posts: 1,302
Default 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  
Old July 17th 18, 10:10 AM posted to microsoft.public.windowsxp.general
R.Wieser
external usenet poster
 
Posts: 1,302
Default 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  
Old July 17th 18, 11:03 AM posted to microsoft.public.windowsxp.general
Paul[_32_]
external usenet poster
 
Posts: 11,873
Default 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  
Old July 17th 18, 12:16 PM posted to microsoft.public.windowsxp.general
R.Wieser
external usenet poster
 
Posts: 1,302
Default 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  
Old July 17th 18, 01:45 PM posted to microsoft.public.windowsxp.general
Paul[_32_]
external usenet poster
 
Posts: 11,873
Default 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
  #9  
Old July 17th 18, 02:22 PM posted to microsoft.public.windowsxp.general
J. P. Gilliver (John)[_4_]
external usenet poster
 
Posts: 2,679
Default 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  
Old July 17th 18, 05:58 PM posted to microsoft.public.windowsxp.general
R.Wieser
external usenet poster
 
Posts: 1,302
Default 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


  #11  
Old July 17th 18, 11:39 PM posted to microsoft.public.windowsxp.general
Paul[_32_]
external usenet poster
 
Posts: 11,873
Default 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
  #12  
Old July 18th 18, 01:05 PM posted to microsoft.public.windowsxp.general
R.Wieser
external usenet poster
 
Posts: 1,302
Default 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  
Old July 18th 18, 07:35 PM posted to microsoft.public.windowsxp.general
Paul[_32_]
external usenet poster
 
Posts: 11,873
Default 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  
Old July 18th 18, 08:42 PM posted to microsoft.public.windowsxp.general
R.Wieser
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Posts: 1,302
Default 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  
Old July 19th 18, 12:11 AM posted to microsoft.public.windowsxp.general
Paul[_32_]
external usenet poster
 
Posts: 11,873
Default 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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