Receptor stuck on initializing

[PhilAiken]

Receptor would not boot up at my gig last night. I get the screen that says "initializing"
and it just stays there.
I did a search here and saw that previous solutions involved editing the Bios. I suspect I'll be on the phone to tech support on Monday, but in the meantime, if anyone has any ideas, I'm all ears.

[c3boy]

I'v had that once or twice but i shut it down by holding the power button in and it was fine after a restart. Bit of a nightmare though on a gig, hope it does'nt happen to me when i gig with it in a few weeks.

[rlainhart]

I've had this happen a couple of times, and in my case, the solution was to (unfortunately) connect a VGA monitor and standard PC keyboard to the Receptor, then hold down the Delete key while booting up. You should see the BIOS screen come up on the monitor (you may have to tap the Delete key a couple of times to get to the first BIOS screen). First get to the Date screen and make sure the date is set correctly - in my case, it's the date getting reset that instigates the hang. Then get to the screen where you see "Halt On", and set that parameter to "No Errors". If this gets reset to "All Errors", which can sometimes happen, any error at all (like an incorrect date) will make the system hang at that point, which is actually what causes the Initializing freeze.

I think this Halt On All Errors "feature" is the default BIOS state, so that any BIOS reset invokes it. For a regular desktop system, it's probably useful as a debugging tool, but for a performance instrument, it's murder. I strongly encourage all Receptor to contact Muse and get them to change that default BIOS state to something that's a little friendlier for performing musicians.

[Bryan@MuseResearch]

Unfortunately, we have to have "Halt on No Errors" as the BIOS setting for Receptor, instead of the MB default of "Halt on All Errors".

Sadly, "Halt on All Errors" is not very good configuration for Receptor as the MoBo checks for a Mouse and keyboard being attached, and without such items attached, the system, well, halts. That is probably what happened in this case...

As for why the BIOS is resetting itelf back to the default conditions, it is possible that your CMOS memory battery is bad, or if the unit really got whacked then the battery could have momentarily lost contact and that will cause the CMOS memory to reset itself. If you want to contact Rick on Monday we can send you out a replacement battery...

We are going to look into this further to see if there are other things we can do to prevent this from happening. Sorry I don't have a better answer...

Groovology

[PhilAiken]

In my case....I don't even get an image on the monitor connected to the Receptor.

[Kermit Jagger]

It was the same thing for me, no VGA output, etc. I can confirm that once the BIOS has been sorted, everything went back to working as normal.

In the meantime, until Muse tell you what to do, the thing I did to bypass the Halt On was to disconnect the power button cable jumper from the motherboard and reconnect it. It somehow helped rebooting, but that problem reared its ugly head every so often, until the quick bios fix.

[Bryan@MuseResearch]

Basically, as soon as an error is determined (ie the BIOS checks for the presence of a mouse and keyboard) then the system just halts, hence no video, no nothing...

There could be another problem, if the hard drive is disconnected, then the system will also stay on "initializing" since it never finds the boot sector of the drive... please make sure your drive is connected and that the cables haven't come loose while gigging...

groovoloy

[MCal]

I have an important client with this same problem now. If he connects keyboard, monitor and screen then the halt on all errors should not stop the booting yes? leaving just the possibility of a corrupt HD?
Am I correct in my thinking?

Al.

[MCal]

Hmm after being left off for a few hours this seems to have sorted itself. But I need to know why this happens for when/if it happens again to my clients..or my own unit....

Al.

[Bryan@MuseResearch]

This is worth opening up the unit and checking the cables connecting to the hard drive, and also checking that the PCI card is firmly seated. Some units take a real beating during shipping, especially in international shipping where the attitude seems to be "hell, this is going to some foreign country, I'll never see it again, so why should I treat it with respect" and although the product has been engineered to be as robust as possible, we have seen some cables come loose during harsh treatment, and in fact we are not using a dab of silicon on the major connections to ensure this doesn't happen in the future...

Recently we had a unit returned for "no audio output", shipped back from overseas, and the problem turned out to be the audio cable came loose between the PCI card and the audio output card probably as a result of harsh shipment... its a very rare occurrence, and completely understandable that someone would return something when it doesn't work, but opening it up and checking cables is a good idea on older units (since newer units have cables better secured thanks to the miracle of Silicone)

[MCal]

Thanks for that Bryan, but the unit appears to do this intermittantly. It has been onsite for sometime and working perfectly, and (according to the client) hasn't been moved from where I installed it.
I think I'll get him to open it up anyway and check the connections..though he's very untechnical.
thanks as always for the help...

Al.