gary g. taylor

Relayed from alt.hacker:

============

Subject: [Misc. Information] Reboot Trouble From:
"-=SilliCone=-" <noone@nowhere.net> Newsgroups: alt.hacker
Date: Sat, 10 Jun 2006 21:48:44 +0200

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For some days i had trouble rebooting when i had run windows before. Since
it took me some time and the reason seems a bit uncommon (to me at last) i
thought i just post it here if someone runs into something like this too.

Description:
Windows XP with all patches, the usuall stuff installed (mostly games, the
more "serious" things are done with linux). System runs without any
unusual behaviour.
Now the trouble-
After shutting down the computer (doesn't matter if it was a shutdown or
reboot) system hangs in BIOS POST. NOT in windows boot, not in lilo, just
in plain bios, right _before_ the memory test. The fun part? It doesn't
hang when i reboot from linux. Never. Doesn't matter if it is a shutdown
-h or -r.
I was pretty sure it couldn't be a hardware problem, since this should be
the same for windows and linux. I was half right, half wrong. After toying
some time with various possibilities (like driver trouble, malware and
such) i got me a POSTcard (the stuff that monitors system behaviour and
displays BIOS status and such on a LCD display). With this i found that
the hang occured while system was trying to set up the USB system. With
this i found that my USB-IRDA adapter was the problem. Seems that windows
doesn't shut down this device, leaving it active even after reboot (having
a infrared monitor on the Palm did help too) and thus confusing the BIOS.
Linux does switch off the device so the problem doesn't happen.
Conclusion:
Only that a device does operate flawless doesn't mean that windows can't
**** it up ;-)

- --
"as appealing as it might seem, it is impossible to patch or upgrade
users" <Security Warrior>


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aragorn

On Monday 12 June 2006 03:50, Gary G. Taylor stood up and spoke the
following words to the masses in /alt.os.linux.mandriva...:/


If the machine hangs at boot time and you can't determine the cause,
this is indeed the wisest thing to do.


This has indeed been reported earlier. Windows doesn't properly shut
down USB devices.

The same goes for the contents of the video framebuffer on reboot. The
Linux kernel clears it on boot time, but Windows doesn't. This lead to
reports - in /alt.os.linux.mandrake/ at the time - of gibberish on the
screen when rebooting from GNU/Linux into Windows 98, where the non-GUI
parts of the Windows boot sequence would show garbled messages due to
remnants of LILO still residing in the framebuffer.

We know that from just about every PC running Windows. Sadly enough, it
also seems to do the same thing to the Windows users' conceptions of
what a computer is and what it's (not) supposed to do. ;-)

--
With kind regards,

*Aragorn*
(Registered GNU/Linux user #223157)