My computer hangs on a warm boot - how do I diagnose?

Question

When I boot my computer from an off state, it boots just fine. But if I do a restart, my machine hangs before the BIOS even comes up. I'm running a clean install of Windows 7.

How do I diagnose the issue? Has anyone else ever had this problem?

Answer 1

Do you have evidence that the OS actually relinquishes control of the machine?

I've had this happen (albeit on Linux), and it was related to the ACPI configuration, so one more thing to try would be changing the ACPI drivers (from your motherboard manufacturer, or the ones included in windows) or updating the bios.

Answer 2

I don't know how to diagnose it with any certainty, but my best suggestion would be to

1. Open the PC
2. Remove the BIOS battery (recommend giving both sides of battery a quick 'buffing' to make sure they're clean)
3. Wait twenty seconds (or the time it took you to buff the battery!)
4. Replace the BIOS battery
5. Boot up
6. Enter the BIOS and select 'Load Failsafe Defaults'
7. Hit reset
8. Assuming it does go to BIOS again -
9. Enter the BIOS and review and restore the configurations as you choose.

I've seen anomalies like this before, and it's often fixed by just completely resetting the BIOS's little brain.