Black Screen waking from sleep mode

[Mike99]

I recently built an HTPC and it was working OK until last night. I’ve been using it mainly as an OTA DVR and it does wake up, record, etc.

I went to program a recording & it was already awake & the HDD indicator LED was on. However the HDTV had a black screen with a message to select boot device & press any key. This was not a BSOD but a black screen. There was no way to select anything as every time I pressed a key the same message displayed another time. I finally powered off.

Another program was scheduled to record at this time but it should not have. It was a series schedule set for new but this episode was not. That’s one strike against the EPG. Anyway it started recording after I booted back up but it was missing the first 40 minutes because I booted up 40 minutes into the program.

I don’t think the program was the problem but maybe there was a glitch at the start of the recording which caused the problem, I don’t know. Unfortunately I have no idea how long the HTPC had been sitting in the “select boot” state. It could have been that way for hours.

I looked at the PC’s event logs to see if anything was obvious. But there were so many logs I had no idea what I was looking at.

Any ideas what would cause a PC to display the message or where to look? Could this be a motherboard or RAM problem?

 

[Kaktussoft]

"select boot device" is normally a message form BIOS id it can't find a proprt boot device. I think win7 crashed and did an automatic reboot. On reboot it couldn't find or access the harddisk. Do you have "automatic restart on crash" enabled? If so, disable it so you can see the BSOD

Download BlueScreenView (in Zip file)
Download BlueScreenView with full install/uninstall support


Source: Blue screen of death (STOP error) information in dump files.

 

[Mike99]

I know there is a BIOS setting to restart the PC after a power failure & the power is restored & I never enabled that. Is that the one you are talking about or is there another one for software crashes that I should be looking for?

The black screen was not the usual black screen I see when I want to enter BIOS. It was just 2 lines of text, and kept repeating every time I hit a key. I did try the delete key but never tried a function key so who know what that would have done.

 

[Kaktussoft]

1. Click on the Start button and then on Control Panel.
   Tip: In a hurry? Type system in the search box after clicking Start. Choose System under the Control Panel heading in the list of results and then skip to Step 4.
2. Click on the System and Security link.
   Note: If you're viewing the Small icons or Large icons view of Control Panel, you won't see this link. Simply double-click on the System icon and proceed to Step 4.
3. Click on the System link.
4. In the task pane on the left, click the Advanced system settings link.
5. Locate the Startup and Recovery section near the bottom of the window and click on the Settings button.
6. In the Startup and Recovery window, locate and uncheck the check box next to Automatically restart.
7. Click OK in the Startup and Recovery window.
8. Click OK in the System Properties window.
9. You can now close the System window.
10. From now on, when a problem causes a BSOD or another major error that halts the system, Windows 7 will not force a reboot. You'll have to reboot manually when an error appears.

 

[Mike99]

I’m using this PC as a DVR. If there is a power failure I really want it to boot up again. I also recently had Windows Media Center set to automatically start when Windows started. But after the problem I turned that back off.

I did look where you mentioned & “Automatically restart” was checked.

I also noticed “Write an event to the system log” was checked. I looked in the event logs and was completely lost. There were hundreds of events & nothing seemed obvious to me. Where in the event logs would I look to find out what happened?

 

[Kaktussoft]

Disable "automatic restart on crash" (it least temporary).
Diagnosing Windows Errors: Event Viewer Secrets » TuneUp Blog about Windows

You can sort event log by date/time and it has a search option

 

[Mike99]

I've looked through the event logs several times but nothing wrong is obvious. Some of the Windows diagnostic logs state some driver(s) was slow to wake up or respond, or words to that effect. However I have no idea if that crashed the system.

Thanks for the link. I'll re-read it and look at the event logs again.