Strange Boot Routine

[Sun-Tzu]

Hi All,

I'm still fairly new here and I really like what I see so far. There are some very tallented people here and I have learned quite a bit just from reading reandom threads and seeing how people trouble shoot problems.

Anyways, on to my strange computer behaviour (to me at least). I have recently built a new system to satisfy my never ending appetite for the latest and greatest. My system consists (at it's base) of the following:

- Intel Desktop Board DX48BT2
- Seasonic M12 - 700W
- 2GB OCZ DDR3 PC3-12800 Intel® XMP Ready Titanium Edition
- Sapphire ATI 3870x2
- Vista 32bit

So what is happening that is making me worry if this is normal? Let me tell you. When I first hit the power button the computer seems to go through the usuall power cycle and the fans start to turn and then click! Everything turns off. The first time this happened I thought my system was a dud. But then the computer just restarted on it's own and all is fine in Vista Land.

Another thing that I find a little strange is that I no longer hear the post beep. The speaker is built into the motherboard and I have not had to install this. I'm thinking that I may have disabled this somehow. Or maybe this board only makes sounds if there is something wrong.

If anyone knows of why my system seems to power up twice please let me know, it's making me a little nervous even though everything seems to work fine. I'm going to try and figure out how to find boot logs later on tonight and see if there are any clues there.

Thanks in advance for any hints on this strange behaviour.

[Sun-Tzu]

So no thoughts on this? I must admit that I have never run into this before. The fans turn on and then shut down and then turn on again to finish the boot sequence.

[Paul Komski]

That sequence seems to happen with any new Dell Vostro Desktops that I have seen over the past month or so. I guess its a power saving feature and that if overheating begins the fans will switch in at that point and they do so at startup as part of a "test routine" maybe.

[Sun-Tzu]

Yeah,

I've been asking around and that seems to be the concensus. It looks as if it may be some kind of power/thermal test that the motherboard does before actually starting the boot routine.

I just can't seem to find literature that would explain exactly what is happening.

Thanks for the input.

[Sun-Tzu]

Just in case some of you like to follow a problem to its conclusion I have some news about this strange boot procedure.

I used to turn off the power supply at night before going to bed in order to conserve electricity - yep I'm one of "those".

I recently stopped doing this in order to troubleshoot this strange behaviour and now it does not do it anymore. I want to turn off the power supply and try it again. But I go by the motto, "if it ain't broke..." and have a hard time getting myself to do something that I know will probably put my computer back into a strange boot state.