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[HPsauce]

It's happened "occasionally" over the last few weeks, no more than once a week except oddly twice on one day.
I'll see if 23H2 makes a difference in due course.

[HPsauce]

Almost a year since I last posted on this. Since then I've updated to W11-23H2 and the occasional "hang" still happens.
With 24H2 now available (and installed on a couple of my secondary systems) I decided to try another option. I bought a spare CPU for under 20 pounds.

So far I've just swapped it over for CPU#1 and will see how it goes - no hangs in the last 2 days since doing it; fingers crossed.
If this works I'll put the replaced CPU into the other (slower) system, running a mix of CPU speeds is apparently OK.

Incidentally 24H2 doesn't seem significantly different so I expect to upgrade my main working systems soon.

[HPsauce]

Still stable, no hangs whatsoever, so consider this closed but unexplained. 

My other system has also been fully updated to faster dual processors; I bought another even cheaper at only fifteen quid (remembered to avoid the demon pound symbol!).
One of those is the second CPU from the misbehaving PC, moved to the corresponding socket.
All good there too. Maybe it was just a weird thermal issue of the CPU seating in the socket?

[parkdale]

 

[Chrysalis]

The one that seems to get stuck in boot loop, you can try to boot it in verbose mode, which will spit out a log as it boots.

[HPsauce]

So I spoke too soon; this weirdness actually continued at a lower level after the CPU swapping so I did something a bit radical, I completely swapped the whole computer, moving the hard drive to an effectively identical system that had been working without problems! (I have 3 virtually identical HP Z600s)
And the problems continued, occasional "hangs" during the boot process when loading windows, not always at the same stage.

Then I (for other totally unrelated reasons) made what I thought was an irrelevant minor hardware change....... (see next post)

[HPsauce]

The Z600, as some may know, has "pluggable" bays where a 3.5" HDD slots into a carrier frame then literally slides in and plugs straight in to a socket at the back and locks in place.
But using smaller SSDs (or ex-laptop HDD) you need to get creative as even with adapters nothing lines up. So I bypassed the power/SATA socket and ran cables directly. For power I used a Molex-SATA adapter cable as I have many many times before. The data cable I just ran straight from the motherboard. A bit untidy, but it worked fine - well in 2 out of 3 systems.....

Then, on a mission to tidy up (and fit second/third drives) I looked for a better solution and found Orico Hard Drive Enclosures, which directly convert smaller drives to standard 3.5" SATA HDD enabling use of the original carrier frames and combined power/data SATA sockets at the back.

Since doing that I've not (so far) had a single "hang" so my conclusion is that somehow the (very simple) Molex-SATA power adapter cable was not quite providing everything the SSD needed at boot time. 

[HPsauce]

Sorry to keep bringing this up, but someone may find it useful or at least informative......
I've still had the "very occasional" boot hang. 

Then I realised (or more accurately decided to investigate) that one of my 3 near-identical systems "bursts into life" the instant I touch the power button, whereas two (including the suspect one) have 2 or 3 seconds of silence before the fans start. I decided to look at the BIOS settings.

And the answer I soon worked out is EUP Compliance Mode. In this case (and probably many others) that has to be set in the BIOS.
What it does is put the system into a VERY deep sleep mode, no "wake-on-lan" or similar features as the motherboard is completely powered down. All to do with EU-mandated energy saving features.
So, I'm vaguely wondering if this is relevant and that some components are sometimes taking too long to fully power up or wake up?

EUP Compliance Mode is now DISABLED on all three systems and I'll see what happens in due course. I'd never been properly aware of it before today. 

[Alex Atkin UK]

Could very well be.  Power management is almost always what breaks things, especially the newer things like ErP (which seems to be what you are referring to here) and EEE (energy efficient ethernet).

[HPsauce]

Indeed it does appear to be the same thing or an earlier version.
The BIOS calls it EUP COMPLIANCE and the manual EuP Compliance but both are quite old, these systems predate UEFI for example.
It looks as if ErP is a more recent (and possibly wider-ranging) definition/implementation.