When the computer starts, you get a flashing message about the
number of hard drives, CD-Rom, etc.

I want to halt the computer to read all the messages. I think there is
an error message at the end. It disappears very fast.

How do I temporarily suspend the booting up process to read those
disappearing messages?

Of course you could use F2 and F11 keys to stop the system. That is not the thing I want.

I just want to read initial flashing messages. I think there is an error
message. I have three IDE hard drives on this computer.

Sometimes the mouse is dead. When it is dead, I remove the cable and put it back and reboot the computer.

I think there is a problem.
I am not using a regular mouse. This is a special mouse. I am sure you have all seen a special mouse with a bar. I have a bar mouse.

Does anyone know how to suspend the computer to read all the initial flashing messages?

Not sure if there's a way to completely stop it for as long as you want. However, check in the BIOS for the 'Enable Fast Boot' option, and disable that, and also, if there's a Splash-screen option, disable that too so the bootup messages are displayed (you may already have this done).
Finally, on my machine, I have powered it up with either an unbootable disc in one of the CD drives, OR booted it up with no hard disks plugged in, and it hung for some time on the messages screen. You may need to resort to something like this.

the PAUSE button will usually halt the machine when it's on the BIOS screens so you can read the message.

if it's a Linux message then I would check cat /var/log/dmesg

the 'bar' mouse is a USB mouse if I'm not mistaken.

again review the /var/log/dmesg file for differences between when it works and when it doesn't. you should be able to see what is different in the logs.

Really?? If so, that's GREAT I did not know that, but if it works, I'll be happy it does.

And to the OP - Keep in mind too, that if you want to stop the stuff scrolling up the screen as LINUX is booting, press SCROLL-LOCK, then you can use SHIFT-PGUP or SHIFT-PGDOWN to go up and down. I realize (I believe) that it's the BIOS info you want to see, but just figured you may find this helpful too sometime.

Yes, bar mouse is a USB mouse.
Now I found out another problem.

The computer does not respond to F2 and F11.


Usually when I press F2 at the beginning, I could read the
settings.
I pressed the 'Pause' at the beginning of
booting. It didn't respond.
So there are problems.

--------------------------------------------------------------
linux-3vxw:~ # dmesg | grep Error
hda: drive_cmd: status=0x51 { DriveReady SeekComplete Error }
hda: drive_cmd: error=0x04 { DriveStatusError }
linux-3vxw:~ #
---------------------------------------------------------------

Have a spare keyboard and mouse?
Also new keyboards have a F key switch... sometimes I forget to turn that on. but pause should work though.

And i hope that this is your sig.