IWB's prevent some PC's from booting when plugged in via USB

[Garacesh]

We have around 50 AVB378PRO interactive whiteboards at the moment, and this problem only affects a few machines

 

During the PC's boot, it freezes if the IWB is plugged in via the USB. Removing the USB connection, allowing the machine to provide past POST and then re-plugging it back in and all works as intended.

All of our staff machines are identical HP 8000 Elite SFF machines with identical setups (no expansions/memory changes etc) and it's only happening on a handful of machines.

 

I've tried to find a firmware upgrade but have been unsuccessful in locating anything and I'm at a bit of a loss of where to go from here.

Any help would be appreciated. Thanks

[phillyrovers]

Hi Garacesh,

That does sound like a very strange problem and not one I have seen before.

Before you look at the firmware of the board (which is update-able and I will explain how to obtain the necessary files later) I would suggest that on affected machines only that you check that the Boot order in the BIOS is not looking at USB drives for it's first boot-up option, it could well be that the PC is trying to boot up into it's operating system from the board (which is obviously never going to work ).

Failing this you would then need to contact Promethean support via PrometheanKB in order to obtain the latest firmware for the ActivBoards you have.

 

Hope this helps.

[bladedanny]

We have around 50 AVB378PRO interactive whiteboards at the moment, and this problem only affects a few machines

 

During the PC's boot, it freezes if the IWB is plugged in via the USB. Removing the USB connection, allowing the machine to provide past POST and then re-plugging it back in and all works as intended.

All of our staff machines are identical HP 8000 Elite SFF machines with identical setups (no expansions/memory changes etc) and it's only happening on a handful of machines.

 

I've tried to find a firmware upgrade but have been unsuccessful in locating anything and I'm at a bit of a loss of where to go from here.

Any help would be appreciated. Thanks

 

I have these same boards on the same machines and experience the problem here also. It's very intermittent here. It will sometimes work and sometimes not.

 

I've always presumed that it's trying to boot from the board or trying to see if it can use it as a boot device.

 

Maybe try disabling all boot devices in bios except the internal HDD.

[DarrenM]

We had the same problem, worked around it by connecting a USB hub between the PC and board. Not had time to figure out the cause but both times it's happened was on the same PC and board combination.

[Garacesh]

Hmm. I disabled USB Booting in the BIOS, which according to the teacher, has solved the problem.

Odd that it should think the board a bootable device?

[JHLEHS]

We had the same problem, worked around it by connecting a USB hub between the PC and board. Not had time to figure out the cause but both times it's happened was on the same PC and board combination.

We had this and we used a USB hub and it works It's something to do with the power the USB requires. Maybe plug it in one of the front USB ports and see if that works.