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Beeping & stalled boot

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Beeping & stalled boot

Postby Peter E » Mon Dec 20, 2010 4:10 pm

I suspect my daughter's Acer Aspire 5630 has a booting problem. The machine appears to have Vista installed on Drive C: over a previous XP installation. It has a single hard drive partitioned into two virtual drives.

The boot stalls at the Acer logo and emits a continuous beep until a key is struck. It then displays a message on a black screen:

Edit Windows boot options for: MS Windows Vista
Path:\Windows\sys32\winload.exe
Partition:2
Harddisk:c2bb19f7
[/NOEXECUTE=OPTIN
Enter=Submit

If the Return key is hit the machine continues to load Windows as normal.

The machine is clean of malware or viruses.

I have run DualBoot PRO 1.1 which displays the following Overview log:

There is currently 3 OS(s) installed on your system.
The current boot timeout is: 30

Default OS: Microsoft Windows Vista

Entry 1
----------------------------------------------------------------------------
Name: Windows Recovery Environment
BCD ID: {572bcd55-ffa7-11d9-aae0-0007e994107d}
Boot Drive: \Device\HarddiskVolume1
Windows Drive: \Device\HarddiskVolume1
System Bootloader: \windows\system32\boot\winload.exe
Windows Directory: \windows

Entry 2
----------------------------------------------------------------------------
Name: Microsoft Windows Vista
BCD ID: {current}
Boot Drive: C:
Windows Drive: C:
System Bootloader: \Windows\system32\winload.exe
Windows Directory: \Windows

Entry 3
----------------------------------------------------------------------------
Name: Earlier Version of Windows
BCD ID: {ntldr}
Boot Drive: unknown
System Bootloader: \ntldr

Under the Operating systems tab, the Windows Recovery Environment is colored black, MS Vista is colored blue and the Earlier Version of Windows is colored red.

Is it possible that the BCD is causing the stalled boot and continuous beep? If so, what should I do?
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Re: Beeping & stalled boot

Postby augie » Mon Dec 20, 2010 4:46 pm

Is it possible that the BCD is causing the stalled boot and continuous beep? If so, what should I do?
Perhaps yes to the stalled boot but no to the continuous beep as that usually means a hardware issue.

Can you please provide as much info as you can as to your machine's ID, like make/model?
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Re: Beeping & stalled boot

Postby Peter E » Mon Dec 20, 2010 7:55 pm

Here is the System Information for the machine:

OS Name Microsoft® Windows Vista™ Home Premium
Version 6.0.6002 Service Pack 2 Build 6002
Other OS Description Not Available
OS Manufacturer Microsoft Corporation
System Name HOME-PC
System Manufacturer Acer
System Model Aspire 5630
System Type X86-based PC
Processor Intel(R) Core(TM)2 CPU T5500 @ 1.66GHz, 1667 Mhz, 2 Core(s), 2 Logical Processor(s)
BIOS Version/Date Acer V3.50, 13/02/2007
SMBIOS Version 2.33
Windows Directory C:\Windows
System Directory C:\Windows\system32
Boot Device \Device\HarddiskVolume2
Locale United Kingdom
Hardware Abstraction Layer Version = "6.0.6002.18005"
User Name home-PC\home
Time Zone GMT Standard Time
Installed Physical Memory (RAM) 2.50 GB
Total Physical Memory 2.49 GB
Available Physical Memory 1.43 GB
Total Virtual Memory 5.20 GB
Available Virtual Memory 4.01 GB
Page File Space 2.78 GB
Page File C:\pagefile.sys

Let me know if you need anything else.
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Re: Beeping & stalled boot

Postby Grav!ty » Tue Dec 21, 2010 4:32 pm

That long continuous beep could be a number of hardware items not making proper contact or which have given up the ghost depending on who the BIOS is written by...although your system information says "Acer V3.50" it's highly unlikely to be written by them and is more probably AMI, Phoenix or Award.

*It could be either the RAM - try removing one of the RAM modules at a time and then starting the system to see if the long beep persists, and then replace it and remove the next and so on until you've tested them all. You should also, if that RAM test provides no conclusion, run a memory test by booting to the Safe Mode menu - press F8 repeatedly as the system starts up, but after the POST tests have run if you can get as far with booting as that.

*It could be your video card - try reseating it and check the plugs to the monitor - if you have a spare video card available that will fit that system - I can't tell if it's a PCI Express or a AGP video card - then plug that in and see what the result is.

*It could be that your power supply unit is on the blink - not sure how you can test that unless you have another PSU unit that you put in the machine temporarily to test that. Maybe someone else can let us know if they have a method of testing the PSU.


Aside from what appears to be your hardware problems, it is not clear from what you have posted in your first post whether there is an active Windows XP installation on that system. The info you post from the Overview of DBP may have been picked up from an installation "over" an old XP installation as you say in which case there is no dual boot on that system. Was it ever possible to choose between booting to XP or Vista on startup from a boot menu?
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Re: Beeping & stalled boot

Postby Peter E » Wed Dec 22, 2010 11:25 am

Thank you for those suggestions, Grav!ty. I removed the Ram modules and cleaned the contact points with an eraser. Magic! The machine boots quietly just stopping for user input to select which OS to load; Windows Recovery, Windows Vista (default), or Earlier Version of Windows. That is acceptable to me but if you can suggest how to edit the boot process so that Vista loads without the user having to select it, I would be grateful.
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Re: Beeping & stalled boot

Postby Grav!ty » Wed Dec 22, 2010 1:53 pm

Use DualBootPRO to reset the boot timeout to zero by selecting the default OS (Vista) from the menu on the Operating Systems page/tab, and then changing the boot time out. That will boot you directly to Vista.

I presume you don't want to remove "Earlier Versions of Windows" which is probably Windows XP, from your system entirely. It is going to be a fairly big exercise to do so if you do wish to. It's up to you...you can come back to us at a later stage if you want to reclaim the XP disc space for storage use.
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Re: Beeping & stalled boot

Postby Peter E » Wed Dec 22, 2010 9:58 pm

Thanks, Grav!ty. I have reset the boot timeout to zero and am very pleased that the machine still boots quietly and smoothly.

It might be good to remove "Earlier Versions of Windows" one day - the unused storage space on the C: drive is getting rather limited but for the moment I'll leave well alone. Thanks for your help.
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Re: Beeping & stalled boot

Postby Grav!ty » Wed Dec 22, 2010 10:25 pm

Thanks for letting us know you got that fixed OK ^*^
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