Complete repost with more details
I tried to edit the original then when I attempted to post it told me I was out of time to edit the original. . . I don't have time to edit it again so here is all the information as is.
The predominating symptom is "extreme slowness of everything. The good news is it happens a very approximate 1 time in 100 boots.
This was the third time I witnessed it occur and the first time I took time to document its behaviour.
Getting through the P.O.S.T. is slower than usual.
Response to the [F10] (enter boot menu) from BIOS very slow.
Once in the boot menu, switching options very slow.
This first occuranc I chose to enter BIOS setup instead of booting windows. To boot windows I will need to restart which will likely not replicate the problem. But I have seen what happens before with windows. Several minutes to boot for certain. And I think everything in windows was sluggish as well but not 100% sure it was a while ago.
But from the boot menu I chose to enter setup.
The system is so slow that each time I change tabs or open or close a dialog that requires part of the screen to redraw, I can see the redraw area, the blue background for example, redraw in about two discrete steps. About half the redraw occurs then it then it stalls for nearly half a second then the resto fthe redraw completes.
Response to key presses in the interface is extremely sluggish. anywhere from less than 1 second to 2 or more seconds to respond to a key. Additionally keys sometimes buffer and sometimes don't. Because of slowness I tend to press an arrow key more than once, but then sometimes it skips past the option I was trying to reach because it buffered the keys and applied them after a delay. Other times I am patient and press the key only once and wait, but nothing ever happens. For example right arrow key to move from Advanced to LabVIEW RT takes about 1 second before it completes followed by a sluggish redraw of the next screen.
An interesting thing to notice is looking at the system time the seconds only update about once every 8 to 10 seconds.
In any case I am pretty certain my system would not function following one of these problematic boots. The system is powered by a mobile computer power supply which is itself powered by a regulated DC bench power supply.
Has anyone else had this problem with the PXIe-8115 on the PXIe-1082-BP backplane.
I have a guess that it is hardware interupt related. Its as if some device in the system is triggering hardware interupts thus forking execution time away from the POST, BIOS, boot menu and OS software. But this is just a guess and I am not familiar enough with that level to know what could generate a constant repititious hardware interupt that early in startup and that the CPU / BIOS would even be configured yet to respond to it.
Another guess is the iNTEL CPU is not property initialized. However, read on, later I bang some holes in that theory.
Since the machine is sitting here booted up with the problem I will try some other things.
Selecting discard settings and restart from the BIOS reproduced the same problem on the next startup process.
Then using the hard reset button on the face of the controller also reproduced the same problem on reboot.
(went into the BIOS setup on reboot to verify each of these)
Next I allowed windows to boot - The boot process eventually completed but Win XP Pro FES took 16 minutes total with 10 minutes just to get to the windows splash screen. The HDD LED showed about 1 nibble every two seconds loading windows.
Once booted into windows everything got fast and normal. Weird! Possibly the CPU was not properly initialized and windows has code to fix it?
Next i did a soft restart from windows.
[F10] to boot menu again. Then to [Enter Setup]. Problem is positively still here. Even more weird! It came back!
Now recycle power of the backplane (5V standby remains on) by holding the power button.
[F10] to boot menu again. Then to [Enter Setup]. Problem is positively gone.
It required a shutdown of normal power to clear the problem out.
It seems that without a power cycle the problem can be reproduced again and again.
But once power cycles, reproducing it is very unlikely. I might have done a few more restrarts to prove this but I think I have demonstrated the problem well enough.
Possible related details are that the keyboard and mouse are USB and there is an auxiliary HDD which is USB attached.
