[BENBOB]

Hi,

Yesterday my PC was working perfectly. No new drivers, updates, components or software have been installed. Recent virus scan was clean. Seemed to shutdown fine. However, I turned it on today and now it takes 41 minutes to boot up!! Heres the sequence of events:


23.35PM - Turn on PC. The monitor comes on, motherboard makes a beep, and displays the POST (Power On Self Test) as normal, then a dash _ blinks a few times in the top left corner, after that the monitor just goes completely blank (not even a cursor).

00.14AM - Finally the Windows loading bar appears. Longer than usual delay before the Windows circle icon appears, but from here everything appears to load fine.

00.16AM - Into Windows.


Ive reset several times and it always takes this long (even in safe mode). Though once in Windows everything runs like normal, no errors, no corrupt files etc.

Heres what Ive done so far to try and fix it: reset bios to default, took cmos battery out, removed all peripherals apart from keyboard and mouse, tried different keyboard and mouse, using different monitors, removed soundcard, checked connections, checked fans, tried different graphics card, run virus and spyware scans (clean), defragment, scandisk, registry scan, hard drive health checker, checked boot order.

Additionally, Ive inserted the Vista disk and clicked "Startup Repair" but it found no problems, so manually entered "x:\bootrec /fixmbr" into the command prompt to repair the master boot record which it said was successful. Still no luck.

Does this sound like a hardware or software issue? Is there anything in BIOS or the Boot or Startup tabs in msconfig that I could change to try to fix this? Or any software that repairs startup problems? Or could it be a memory issue?

Please help!





-------------------------------------------------------------
CPU: Intel Q6600 Quad Core
OS: Windows Vista Home Premium
MOBO: Asus P5N-E SLI
PSU: 550W
RAM: 4GB DDR2 667MHz Memory (4x1GB)
GPU: nVIDIA GeForce 8800GTS 512MB
SFX: Creative Sound Blaster X-Fi Fatal1ty FPS
HDD: 2x 500GB SATA Hard Drive with 16MB Buffer
LCD: Samsung T220 22" Widescreen
MANUFACTURER: MESH Computers
-------------------------------------------------------------

[Megabite]

Go Start>>Run..type msconfig click enter...then click on Startup tab and see what is set to startup.......try removing what is not really needed and try (re-start thE PC).....do this again until you may find the culprit

[BENBOB]

Originally Posted by Megabite

Go Start>>Run..type msconfig click enter...then click on Startup tab and see what is set to startup.......try removing what is not really needed and try (re-start thE PC).....do this again until you may find the culprit

Thanks for the fast reply. Will give it a try, but since the delay occurs before Windows is even loaded, would any programs listed under startup have any effect (and the delay occurs in Safe mode)?

[Megabite]

It maybe a hardware issue......try removing a stick or so of memory and try and the try swapping the memory sticks and see...

Are all the fans spinning?

[Megabite]

Don't know the history but also could be the power supply

[BENBOB]

Thanks for the replies Megabite, tried removing sticks of RAM - same problem so can rule out memory issue. Also check the fans. What makes you think its the power supply? How can I check?

Additionally, I have tried this:

• Ran several checkdisks with recover bad sectors enabled.
• Made sure DMA was enabled (tho on one IDE channel it had no option to enable or disable)
• Swapped RAM sticks over so can rule out memory issues.
• Used Knoppix Live Linux Boot CD. Booted into Linux fine from the CD within about 5 minutes. So does this indicate either hard drive or windows problem?
• Disabled everything under services and startup tabs in msconfig. And booting in safe mode. No difference.
• Now Im running a Spinrite 6 scan (says 40 hours remaining!!) in DOS.

One thing I didnt mention is that while the screen is blank, the hard drive light still flashes, and sounds like its reading one part of the drive continously. I guess this would indicate a hard drive problem, but then youd think it wouldnt be able to boot at all and have other issues once in Windows?

I shall try looking at the event logs later, and doing a repair install of Vista (do I need to uninstall SP1 first?).

Many thanks for all the help.

[madox2009]

To check out the power supply, look up the tech info on the type of the power supply and get Digital Multimeter and check each connection.