🚀 go-pugleaf

(Ken Shaffer) writes:
>My brother's system when booted cold will not boot from his hard disk.
>If he let's it sit and warm up (leaving the invalid boot device message
>on the screen - or similar) for 15-20 minutes, then ctrl-alt-del, the
>system then boots from the hard disk.
>
>Any suggestions as to the fix?  What is the cause?
>
My guess is that the drive format is a little flakey, and the drift
caused by the platter's thermal expansion is enough to make a difference.

It's normal for some drives to fail boot when they are very cold, 0-20
degrees F or so, and it's not a good idea to try to boot one that is
that cold - writing to a very cold drive can cause problems when the
drive warms up again.  
  
Unless your brother keeps the room temperature at 50F or so, I'd suggest
re-low-level formating the drive at normal operating temperature.  It
could be that the original format was done when the drive was very warm,
or it could be that the drive has "drifted".  Drives that start to 
"drift" often don't last more than a year or two.  (Rough estimate,
I've only seen it happen a couple of times.)
 
As to power supply problems, it's certainly possible, but usually
PS failure occurs at high, not low temp, and usually the failure
mode is no output on any line.   

Quimby
  
(mailer disfunctional, replies to: quimby@mts.rpi.edu, quimby@rpitsmts.bitnet)