Solved Computer turns on and off when booting; happens with FreeBSD but not Windows

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4096

I recently installed FreeBSD on a new computer but every time I reboot or shut down, the next time I boot my computer it keeps turning on for about three seconds and then turns off. I have to turn the computer off with the power switch in the back and switch it back on to get it to boot. I have both a Windows drive and a FreeBSD drive and this does not happen when Windows was the last operating system that I booted from. This happened while I was using a DVD with the installer for FreeBSD on it as well as when I booted from FreeBSD on my hard disk. I don't see any indicator that any operating system had started loading when it turns on and off, and I do not see the menu that asks which drive to boot from (I used boot0cfg so that I can choose to boot from Windows or FreeBSD). I have an Intel i7-5820K CPU and a Gigabyte GA-X99-UD3 motherboard. I did a Google search and some of the websites suggested it could be a hardware problem but none gave any references to FreeBSD. I think it must have something to do with FreeBSD since it doesn't have this problem with Windows.
 
4096 said:
I recently installed FreeBSD on a new computer but every time I reboot or shut down, the next time I boot my computer it keeps turning on for about three seconds and then turns off. I have to turn the computer off with the power switch in the back and switch it back on to get it to boot.
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I did a Google search and some of the websites suggested it could be a hardware problem but none gave any references to FreeBSD. I think it must have something to do with FreeBSD since it doesn't have this problem with Windows.
Click to expand...
Lots of strange things happen on startup on modern systems. For example some motherboards look for "magic footprints" in main memory to decide if there is a BIOS update pending, since it is hard to write the BIOS to the chip under Windows, the "update utility" just asks "Are you sure you want to update?" and if you say yes, it leaves the BIOS image in memory and configures the "magic footprints" and reboots. The existing BIOS looks for the footprints and if it sees them, proceeds with the BIOS update.

It could be something like that, or it could be some hardware that is left in a state that the BIOS doesn't like, so it clears it and turns off again on the theory that things will be better the next time you power it on.

In the "old days" the way to troubleshoot this was a port 80 diagnostic card and a list of the BIOS codes output to that port.

I'd suggest looking to see if there is a newer BIOS for your board. Looking here, it seems as though the newest is F6 from just a few days ago.

If that doesn't help, you could try setting your BIOS to defaults (there may be a regular "defaults" and a "safe defaults" option - if so, try both) and see if the problem persists. Of course, make a note of your current BIOS settings so you can revert back if necessary.
 
Thanks for the response but I'm still not sure what to do. I changed the default settings on the BIOS settings and now instead of saying "American Megatronics" on the screen when it starts up, it now says "Gigabyte". However, Windows still runs normally and I still get the computer turning on and off repeatedly when booting up when FreeBSD was the last operating system that I booted from.

When I told my dad about the suggestion about updating the BIOS, he said I probably don't want to do that because if I don't do it right I could make the computer not work. In addition, the website you linked to says that BIOS flashing is risky.
 
I once had an MSI board that would not start after shutdown until the main power supply AC switch had been turned off. Or rather, power would come on, it would reset, and repeat infinitely. Later, it seemed to behave okay as long as ordinary cheap memory was in it, rather than the fancy high-speed stuff it had originally.

So try the AC power switch thing first. This is not normal, but might be livable.

Does this system have any overclocking or other non-standard configuration?
 
I believe my system does have overclocking. The website where I purchased it says the clock speed is 3.30 Ghz, and its max turbo frequency is 3.60 Ghz.
 
4096 said:
I recently installed FreeBSD on a new computer but every time I reboot or shut down, the next time I boot my computer it keeps turning on for about three seconds and then turns off. I have to turn the computer off with the power switch in the back and switch it back on to get it to boot. I have both a Windows drive and a FreeBSD drive and this does not happen when Windows was the last operating system that I booted from. This happened while I was using a DVD with the installer for FreeBSD on it as well as when I booted from FreeBSD on my hard disk. I don't see any indicator that any operating system had started loading when it turns on and off, and I do not see the menu that asks which drive to boot from (I used boot0cfg so that I can choose to boot from Windows or FreeBSD). I have an Intel i7-5820K CPU and a Gigabyte GA-X99-UD3 motherboard. I did a Google search and some of the websites suggested it could be a hardware problem but none gave any references to FreeBSD. I think it must have something to do with FreeBSD since it doesn't have this problem with Windows.
Click to expand...
One obvious thing to check is: Windows 8 installs in UEFI mode. FreeBSD UEFI support is kind of new, and this is most likely the cause of that strange behaviour.

One other thing worth mentioning is that all these UEFI motherboard "bioses" are much more MS Windows - friendly, than they should be. Or so I understood from some shared experiences...
 
I took my chances and updated the BIOS like Terry_Kennedy suggested and this fixed my problem. It turns out that I had version F2 when the latest version was F6.
 
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