Crashes on boot with new HD

[Harold Pimentel]

Hi all,

I own a T61 and I recently installed a new hard drive.

Sometimes when I boot into Ubuntu it crashes before the actual OS loads. I have no idea if it's the new drive, or maybe a bad installation of ubuntu and I'm not even sure how to diagnose it.

If anyone has any suggestions I'd greatly appreciate. Here is a photo of where it usually hangs:

http://ecs.fullerton.edu/~pimentel/pics/laptoperr.jpg

Oh yeah, I don't have an issue with Windows 7 at all.



Thanks,

Harold


     
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[Richard Neill]

Harold Pimentel wrote:
> Hi all,
>
> I own a T61 and I recently installed a new hard drive.

I suspect this isn't the problem. Once in Linux, use smartctl to double
check that the drive is OK.

>
> Sometimes when I boot into Ubuntu it crashes before the actual OS loads. I have no idea if it's the new drive, or maybe a bad installation of ubuntu and I'm not even sure how to diagnose it.
>
> If anyone has any suggestions I'd greatly appreciate. Here is a photo of where it usually hangs:
>
> http://ecs.fullerton.edu/~pimentel/pics/laptoperr.jpg
>

Interesting that it is in the ACPI portion of the boot. I had trouble
with that too (though in my case, it was a faulty motherboard).


> Oh yeah, I don't have an issue with Windows 7 at all.

So *probably* not dodgy hardware.



Does this happen almost every time you boot Linux or just rarely?

Can you see any pattern to it?

When it crashes, do you have to power-cycle the machine, or does it
respond to, say, Alt-Sysrq-{R,S,E,I,U,B}?

Which Ubuntu version are you using? Could you try out another one? (the
easiest way is to boot the live environment from a USB key; unetbootin
makes this very easy.)

Richard




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[Harold Pimentel]

--- On Tue, 10/6/09, Richard Neill <rn214@...> wrote:

> From: Richard Neill <rn214@...>
> Subject: Re: [ltp] Crashes on boot with new HD
> To: linux-thinkpad@...
> Date: Tuesday, October 6, 2009, 7:41 PM
>
>
> Harold Pimentel wrote:
> > Hi all,
> >
> > I own a T61 and I recently installed a new hard
> drive.
>
> I suspect this isn't the problem. Once in Linux, use
> smartctl to double check that the drive is OK.
>
> >
> > Sometimes when I boot into Ubuntu it crashes before
> the actual OS loads. I have no idea if it's the new drive,
> or maybe a bad installation of ubuntu and I'm not even sure
> how to diagnose it.
> >
> > If anyone has any suggestions I'd greatly appreciate.
> Here is a photo of where it usually hangs:
> >
> > http://ecs.fullerton.edu/~pimentel/pics/laptoperr.jpg
> >
>
> Interesting that it is in the ACPI portion of the boot. I
> had trouble with that too (though in my case, it was a
> faulty motherboard).
>
>
> > Oh yeah, I don't have an issue with Windows 7 at all.
>
> So *probably* not dodgy hardware.
>

Honestly if anything I expect the drive to be bad, as the old drive had no problems for about a year and a half. the only reason I swapped was for more storage space.

>
>
> Does this happen almost every time you boot Linux or just
> rarely?
>
> Can you see any pattern to it?
>

It happens very often. I would say about 60-70% of the time. I've noticed that it usually does so when I restart after being on for a few minutes and being "warmed up."

> When it crashes, do you have to power-cycle the machine, or
> does it respond to, say, Alt-Sysrq-{R,S,E,I,U,B}?
>

I usually power cycle the machine. I haven't tried any of those key combinations, only CTRL-ALT-DEL

> Which Ubuntu version are you using? Could you try out
> another one? (the easiest way is to boot the live
> environment from a USB key; unetbootin
> makes this very easy.)
>

It's on ubuntu 9.04. I tried loading kubuntu 9.04 live cd earlier and I it gave me a pnpbios error, so I reboot with pnpbios=off and it started fine.

The new drive is a 7200 RPM, and the only a 5400rpm. This sounds like a rather ludicrous question, but could that be an issue?

I am currently running spinrite on the entire disk to see if there are errors (I already ran fsck and found none). it says it will be done in about 20 hours :X

For now I put the old drive in and haven't seen any issues yet..  


Thanks,

Harold

> Richard
>
>
>
>
> -- The linux-thinkpad mailing list home page is at:
> http://mailman.linux-thinkpad.org/mailman/listinfo/linux-thinkpad
>


     
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[Daniel Castro-4]

Is it really crashing or just hanging there for a long time?
Does it continue loading after a while (~3 mins)?

2009/10/7 Harold Pimentel <withfalseemotion@...>

--- On Tue, 10/6/09, Richard Neill <rn214@...> wrote:

> From: Richard Neill <rn214@...>
> Subject: Re: [ltp] Crashes on boot with new HD
> To: linux-thinkpad@...
> Date: Tuesday, October 6, 2009, 7:41 PM

>
>
> Harold Pimentel wrote:
> > Hi all,
> >
> > I own a T61 and I recently installed a new hard
> drive.
>
> I suspect this isn't the problem. Once in Linux, use
> smartctl to double check that the drive is OK.
>
> >
> > Sometimes when I boot into Ubuntu it crashes before
> the actual OS loads. I have no idea if it's the new drive,
> or maybe a bad installation of ubuntu and I'm not even sure
> how to diagnose it.
> >
> > If anyone has any suggestions I'd greatly appreciate.
> Here is a photo of where it usually hangs:
> >
> > http://ecs.fullerton.edu/~pimentel/pics/laptoperr.jpg
> >
>
> Interesting that it is in the ACPI portion of the boot. I
> had trouble with that too (though in my case, it was a
> faulty motherboard).
>
>
> > Oh yeah, I don't have an issue with Windows 7 at all.
>
> So *probably* not dodgy hardware.
>

Honestly if anything I expect the drive to be bad, as the old drive had no problems for about a year and a half. the only reason I swapped was for more storage space.

>
>
> Does this happen almost every time you boot Linux or just
> rarely?
>
> Can you see any pattern to it?
>

It happens very often. I would say about 60-70% of the time. I've noticed that it usually does so when I restart after being on for a few minutes and being "warmed up."

> When it crashes, do you have to power-cycle the machine, or
> does it respond to, say, Alt-Sysrq-{R,S,E,I,U,B}?
>

I usually power cycle the machine. I haven't tried any of those key combinations, only CTRL-ALT-DEL

> Which Ubuntu version are you using? Could you try out
> another one? (the easiest way is to boot the live
> environment from a USB key; unetbootin
> makes this very easy.)
>

It's on ubuntu 9.04. I tried loading kubuntu 9.04 live cd earlier and I it gave me a pnpbios error, so I reboot with pnpbios=off and it started fine.

The new drive is a 7200 RPM, and the only a 5400rpm. This sounds like a rather ludicrous question, but could that be an issue?

I am currently running spinrite on the entire disk to see if there are errors (I already ran fsck and found none). it says it will be done in about 20 hours :X

For now I put the old drive in and haven't seen any issues yet..


Thanks,

Harold

> Richard
>
>
>
>
> -- The linux-thinkpad mailing list home page is at:
> http://mailman.linux-thinkpad.org/mailman/listinfo/linux-thinkpad
>



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________________________

Daniel Castro, M.Sc.
[phone]
dancasmo@...
castromd@...
________________________

[Jeffrey L. Taylor-9]

Quoting Harold Pimentel <withfalseemotion@...>:
[snip]
> The new drive is a 7200 RPM, and the only a 5400rpm. This sounds like a
> rather ludicrous question, but could that be an issue?
>
The new drive probably draws more power and runs hotter.  It were my computer,
I'd run powertop to measure the former and anyone of a number of packages to
measure the latter for both the new and old drives.  Oh, and battery
temperature for both drives.  Also look at the correlation between boot
crashes on battery power and on AC.

HTH,
  Jeffrey

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[Harold Pimentel]

--- On Wed, 10/7/09, Daniel Castro <castromd@...> wrote:

> From: Daniel Castro <castromd@...>
> Subject: Re: [ltp] Crashes on boot with new HD
> To: linux-thinkpad@...
> Date: Wednesday, October 7, 2009, 1:25 AM
> Is it really crashing or just hanging there
> for a long time?
> Does it continue loading after a while (~3 mins)?
>

Here is an update:

It really does crash. The longest I've waited is about 7 or 8 minutes.

I was convinced there was something wrong with the drive after installing different distros with no success. I got a Western Digial 320GB, 7200rpm and SAME PROBLEM! So I'm sure it's something with the laptop... I don't think hardware because my old drive works perfectly fine!

I updated the BIOS, nothing. I tried the hard drive fireware update, nothing.

Am I missing something? Is there something I'm supposed to do other than install the drive?

I need a bigger hard drive! I though about the heat thing... but then I remember there being a 7200rpm option on mine... so that *shouldn't* be an issue right?



Thanks,

Harold


     
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[Helen Borrie-2]

At 04:32 PM 9/10/2009, you wrote:

>Here is an update:
>
>It really does crash. The longest I've waited is about 7 or 8 minutes.
>
>I was convinced there was something wrong with the drive after installing different distros with no success. I got a Western Digial 320GB, 7200rpm and SAME PROBLEM! So I'm sure it's something with the laptop... I don't think hardware because my old drive works perfectly fine!
>
>I updated the BIOS, nothing. I tried the hard drive fireware update, nothing.
>
>Am I missing something? Is there something I'm supposed to do other than install the drive?
>
>I need a bigger hard drive! I though about the heat thing... but then I remember there being a 7200rpm option on mine... so that *shouldn't* be an issue right?

I don't know whether it's relevant to your situation...but when I took delivery of my T60, it had a 60GB HDD 5400 rpm which I immediately replaced with a 250GB 7200 rpm.  I wasn't getting problems with Mandriva 2008-1 on that box.  I saw that your startup was creating a RAM disk, which mine doesn't, so i have no idea whether that makes any difference between the two Linux setups.  

But I definitely was having a crash problem with the Windows installation - blue-screening at random with one of those idiotic "parity check error" messages.  As it got more frequent (3 or more crashes a day when running Windows), I scoured around and came up with a thread from the Lenovo forums where someone who seemed to be a Lenovo support person told the OP to check the BIOS for the AHCI setting.  There is apparently NO BIOS version in existence for the T60s that provides reliable AHCI support.

I knew that mine was set for AHCI, because I remembered setting it deliberately myself for no particularly good reason.  ;-) When I switched mine back to the generic 'combined' setting (I forget the actual name of the option itself but I think it just means 'IDE') the problem disappeared - no more crashes for more than a month now, even tho' I've been running the T60 24/7 as an Apache 2 server under WinXP for a project I'm doing.

Helen

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[Harold Pimentel]

--- On Thu, 10/8/09, Helen Borrie <helebor@...> wrote:

[snip]

> I don't know whether it's relevant to your situation...but
> when I took delivery of my T60, it had a 60GB HDD 5400 rpm
> which I immediately replaced with a 250GB 7200 rpm.  I
> wasn't getting problems with Mandriva 2008-1 on that
> box.  I saw that your startup was creating a RAM disk,
> which mine doesn't, so i have no idea whether that makes any
> difference between the two Linux setups. 
>
> But I definitely was having a crash problem with the
> Windows installation - blue-screening at random with one of
> those idiotic "parity check error" messages .  As it got
> more frequent (3 or more crashes a day when running
> Windows), I scoured around and came up with a thread from
> the Lenovo forums where someone who seemed to be a Lenovo
> support person told the OP to check the BIOS for the AHCI
> setting.  There is apparently NO BIOS version in
> existence for the T60s that provides reliable AHCI support.
>
>
> I knew that mine was set for AHCI, because I remembered
> setting it deliberately myself for no particularly good
> reason.  ;-) When I switched mine back to the generic
> 'combined' setting (I forget the actual name of the option
> itself but I think it just means 'IDE') the problem
> disappeared - no more crashes for more than a month now,
> even tho' I've been running the T60 24/7 as an Apache 2
> server under WinXP for a project I'm doing.
>
> Helen

Hi Helen,

Thanks for the response. I've tried both AHCI and combined setting and no success =\ Is it worth calling a lenovo tech about this or are they clueless about linux?



Thanks,

Harold



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[Helen Borrie-2]

At 04:43 AM 10/10/2009, Harold Pimentel wrote:
>Helen Hi Helen, Thanks for the response. I've tried both AHCI and combined setting and no success =\ Is it worth calling a lenovo tech about this or are they clueless about linux? Thanks, Harold      
>--

Ooooh, I don't think it would be possible to say all Lenovo techs are clueless about Linux.  I've had all positive experiences with the ones operating out of Sydney, Australia.  If they don't know an answer straight-off, they'll move your ticket to someone who does.  In my experience, if your TP is under warranty and you are using "approved" hardware, they will move mountains to get things right for you.  Mileage may vary according to location, of course.  

Don't forget the Lenovo forums, either.  Lenovo techs, as well as clued-up users, watch those. There are huge archives and scads of active users who might already have bumped into a similar issue to yours.  From what I've seen, this list is triple-A for very specifically Linux issues and carries know-how to the lowest levels of numerous kernel versions and implementations...not something I think you can find in any of the Lenovo forums.  But when you don't know whether you have a hardware issue or a driver one, it does no harm to fly a kite in one of those other forums.

Actually, I thought of something else.  If you are using a HDD that has a jumper panel on it, try setting it for SATA I.  I read somewhere that the system bios on the T-series doesn't support SATA II.  I've often wondered why some SATA drives have the jumper option while others don't.  My 250GB 7200rpm Hitachi doesn't have the jumpers, btw, from which I infer that the drive's own ROM has the nouse to figure out how to play nice the system bios.  (In case it's not obvious, everything I know about hardware has been learnt by osmosis! )

Helen

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