I have had one ongoing problem with my production machine since putting it together. Every few weeks, it would shut down.

There was no indication, and it wasn’t to a time, just purely random. Last week, I decided that I would look in Event Viewer, and I found that it was experiencing a kernel power error 41.

Surfing around, it was becoming apparent that I had a problem with either bad RAM, bad contact between the processor and heatsink  or power supply issues. So I decided today that I would create a MemTest86+ disk and run the RAM tests. That was the easy part.

Pressing F12, the computer gave up a list of boot devices, and naturally I chose CDROM. The boot continued straight into Windows 7. OK..

More surfing and yet more, finding lots who had the same issue, the $64000 question remained. How do you boot from CD when the computer is set for AHCI?

One solution was to set BIOS back to Native IDE, which is what I did, and the computer would readily boot from CD. Some considerable time later, MemTest86+ came back with no errors..

My power supply is a base mounted unit, taking air from underneath. I stand the case on one of the Styrofoam inserts just to keep it up off of the floor a little. Maybe there was not enough air getting underneath, So I cut ventilation slots into the sides of the Styrofoam and maybe that will fix the shutdown problem. I can only wait and see.

I know that it is not the CPU because Speedfan 4.45 keeps me informed, and it has yet to breach 42°C.

So, back to the AHCI and why the computer would not boot from CD. The solution was staring me in the face every time I went into the boot list. The AHCI SATA name for my optical drive is NOT CDROM as appears in the boot list. The name is…….

PORT 4: ATAPI

Click on that, and the computer boots straight into whatever is on the inserted CD/DVD. You may have to go a fair way down the listing to find yours. Mine was almost the last entry of twelve options..