TheGreenButton - Windows Media Center Forums

Hi all,

I've had my rig since 2011, and as far as I can remember I've had this problem. I'd love to understand and/or solve it.

Intermittently, when I restart the computer it won't boot if the network cable is in. I get a single beep, it goes to the boot screen where it tells me to choose F2 for BIOS menu or F10 for boot menu, and that's that.

If I pull the network cable and restart, it gets to the second beep without a problem. That means it's booting successfully. I can then re-insert the network cable, and all is well.

I finally took a closer look here tonight. I thought it might be looking to boot from the network. But when this happened, I couldn't get anywhere with F2 or F10. I had to pull the network cable and restart, and then the keyboard worked and took me to the BIOS screen.

While it's true that network boot was enabled, it was number 3 or 4 on the list. Anyway, I disabled it, saved, and restarted. And...with network cable in, it beeped once and stopped there.

It's an Intel motherboard, DH55TC, with an Core i3-550 3.2 with good graphics processor for WMC duties built in. A single beep indicates that the BIOS is ready to accept keyboard input, but that doesn't appear to be the case. Nothing I do can get past that screen.

I started down this road because occasionally I'll boot an XBox extender and it won't be able to connect. The WMC rig is working fine otherwise. I have to restart it to get the extender to work, and when I restart it this happens--sometimes. Maybe half and half.

Thoughts?

I have no idea why it's doing that, but as cheap as they are I'd try sticking a network card in the machine and plugging into that.

Maybe there is a bug with the intel board that ignores the boot order? Even with it disabled, can you add other things to the boot order until PXE boot doesn't appear on the list? What does your boot order look like? It really sounds like some kind of network boot is still trying to occur but who knows.

I'll check.

Dumb Question because I am sure you checked this but have you checked for a BIOS update for that board?
Does sound like it's trying to network boot.. Buggy Bios?
Also if it's an older board you may want to try replacing the CMOS Battery. Then re-enter the BIOS and set everything up and disable network boot again.
My mom's mobo wouldn't retain settings because the CMOS battery was dead. it's just a thought..
newfiend~

I haven't checked for a BIOS update for several years, no. That board's old. Yeah, 12/2011 is the last update.

I thought about the CMOS battery, but this problem has been happening since day 1. And it's intermittent. But you know, 8 years it that can't hurt anyway.