[cymro]

I have an HP MCE2004 box and I discovered that after a power outage the computer does not automatically boot up when power returns.


The consequence of this is that if you schedule a number of recordings while you are on vacation, recordings scheduled after the outage will not be made.


This does not happen with Tivo; it does an auto boot up after a power outage. Obviously a UPS will solve the problem for short interrupts, but for longer interrupts a UPS with sufficient capacity would be quite expensive.


To me, this is a major drawback of the MCE2004 system. It really ought to do an automatic boot after power returns.


Am I missing something? or, is this "life in the big city" for MCE2004?

 

[Cliff Watson]

That is a function of the motherboard BIOS, not the operating system.


You need to check the BIOS to ensure boot after power failure is enabled. I've never seen it set on by default.

 

[salsbst]

Reboot after BSOD can be dangerous. If there is a very quick crash after the reboot your machine will continuously reboot itself until something (you or a blown power supply) intervenes. I think you might be able to find a UPS that can schedule a reboot as it gracefully shuts down your machine when its battery gets low. That would seem to be preferable.

 

[cymro]

Cliff & Stuart:


I really appreciate your help.


I've done the BIOS thing and I now have auto re-boot, but I'm now concerned about the endless re-boot situation.


Any recommendations for a UPS that can schedule reboots?


Thanks again.


BTW, how is an ordinary consumer buying a MCE computer going to deal with this sort of thing. Altough I like MCE (despite the poor PQ), IMO MCE isn't ready for an ordinary person. In my case on the MCE I see some anomalous event at least once a week whereas my TIVO is solid - no quriks whatsoever.

 

[salsbst]

In rereading I may have jumped the gun with my warning. If your BIOS can distinguish between a power failure and a system BSOD, then you might be fine as is.

 

[cymro]

Stuart:


What the heck is a BSOD? And, how do I tell if the BIOS can make such a distinction?


Thanks again

 

[salsbst]

Blue Screen of Death. It's what happens when Windows completely loses its mind. Some motherboards allow you to set them so that the machine will reboot when this happens. It is that which I would recommend avoiding.

 

[cymro]

Got it.


I've never seen a BSOD with the XP OS in over two years of use.


Thanks

 

[IVB]

I recall reading somewhere that XP was written to never display BSOD, but rather either reboot or shutdown that process.


A quick google didn't reveal any truth to that, but I'm pretty sure you won't get BSOD on XP.

 

[salsbst]

Oh, you can get BSODs on XP. I've seen it first hand. The reboot until your power supply blows problem happened to me on XP Pro. I guess it may have been an XP setting that I found to disable the automatic reboot, but I was thinking that it was a BIOS setting.

 

[ctreptow]

Yep Windows XP will reboot on BSOD, You need to go into the control panel system properties and under the advanced tab you will see a button for startup and recovery options. Make sure the automatic restart option is unchecked and your system will no longer reboot after BSOD. This combined with a good UPS and auto restart after power failure should take care of most of the problems related to HTPC booting.

 

[sspears]

By default XP will re-boot on a BSOD. You can go into sysdm.cpl and disable that feature if you want.

 

[cowtown]

ATX power supplies are smart enough to know the difference between a power outage and a OS initiated reboot. The likely hood of endless reboots is very low.

 

[orbitzboy]

If you purchased a retail MCE2004 system and have added no hardware or software, it's not likely you will have any BSOD issues.... MCE requires signed WHQL drivers and software components (like windows 2000 datacenter edition) which makes it much less likely an errant driver bug, bad coding, or OS hiccup will hit you during normal use. If you do a search on BSOD & MCE, most of the posts convern people trying to install non-eom hardware into their box.

 

[nabsltd]

Quote:

Originally posted by orbitzboy If you purchased a retail MCE2004 system and have added no hardware or software, it's not likely you will have any BSOD issues.... MCE requires signed WHQL drivers and software components (like windows 2000 datacenter edition) which makes it much less likely an errant driver bug, bad coding, or OS hiccup will hit you during normal use.

If you think signed drivers (even ones that supposedly passed WHQL) make that much difference, I've got some swampland to sell you.


Overall, XP and Win2K are very stable, but I've had both signed, official drivers and random things cause problems occassionally.


My favorite, though, was the Intel CC820 motherboard that was recalled due to a memory bus error. It took me nearly 6 months to get around to replacing mine, and Win2K usually BSOD about once a month on a machine that was up 24/7 running lots of active processes. It says something about the stability of the OS that known broken critical hardware doesn't kill the OS more than that.

 

[cymro]

Gentlemen:


Thanks for the invaluable advice