My system specs are: Processor: Core 2 Duo Motherboard: ASUS P5g41t-m LA GPU: Nvidia 9500 GT HDD1: WD 500 GB SATA HDD2: WD 500 GB SATA Optical drive: Samsung DVD RW Power Supply: Some unbranded one that claims on its label it's 700W which I seriously doubt. I have Windows 7 64 bit in HDD1 and OS X Lion in HDD 2 that I installed using Hackintosh distro. I press F8 key on POST screen which gives boot drive selection menu from where I select the HDD to boot from. The system was running flawless on both operating systems until recently. The problems are listed below: - Almost always it takes unusually long for POST screen to appear (around 60 to 90 seconds) whereas during good condition it used to appear within 5 to 10 seconds of power on - Sometimes the system doesn't receive display signal - If I take out power cables from all SATA drives but one, then the POST screen usually appears normally for sometime. - At one time I removed ALL SATA drives, i.e. both HDDs and DVD then turned on, it turned on promptly without delay. Then I connected Optical drive and turned on, it turned on properly. Then connected the HDDs one by one, and it still turned on without delay. But this lasted only for 2 days after which the same problem, i.e, either POST screen appears after painfully long time or doesn't appear at all Before this motherboard, I had Intel DG43NB and had both Os X and Win 7 and experienced exactly the same problem and my hardware guy told me that my motherboard had gone down so I replaced with this ASUS one. Again the same problem with this board My questions: - Where is the problem? - Could the problem possibly be in the motherboard? I think it's unlikely because once the system starts it works flawlessly, i.e. no errors, no crashes, nothing. - Could it be the power supply? Since it seems to work better with less load, i.e. some drives disconnected. - Could it be the GPU? - What's the best way to diagnose? - Does the problem have anything to do with my frequently switching boot drive from POST startup menu? Any help will be greatly appreciated since I am in the middle of an important project and I dread the day when I am not able to turn my machine on at all. LA
Yea ! this could be a number of things, I don't believe it is the Motherboard... I would remove the OS X hard drive, and then fix your boot manager, then see what happens..
Thanks Ghostman 1 for your response. I think the boot manager is fine on both drives. As of now, the the OS X drive's power is disconnected. Still when I power on, it takes painfully long time even for POST screen to appear, but once it does, the boot up is perfect. Any suggestions as to how should I check if the problem is in the boot manager? LA
Your Problem is the Mac boot manager,,, you will need to remove it some how.. you might be able to remove with partition magic without messing up Windows...I would do some research first, so you don't distroy both partitions..
SOLVED I wanted to make sure that the problem is not in any hardware before I messed with the boot manager, so I took out everything, even SATA and power cables of all drives but the problem remained. So the last thing that was left was the display card. I removed it and connected my monitor to the onboard VGA and it worked. The problem was the display card. I cleaned the contacts and reinserted the card and the problem went away. It's been two days and not a single glitch. LA
Hello, Thanks for this thread i have the same problem hope by reading your thread my problem will also get solved!!
