Solved: Five minute delay on laptop boot, eventually hangs on Vista load screen.

Hi, hope somebody has seen this before or can help!

I have an Asus X50N Laptop running Vista Home Premium 32bit.
(Model:X50N-AP048C)
AMD Turion 64 2.0GHz
3GB RAM, 120GB HDD

My problem is this:
I was installing a small program when my laptop froze completely for more than 5 minutes. I force powered it off by holding down the power button, and when I attempted to reboot, the laptop was completely dead other than the hard drive light staying on solid.

I then took out the battery and held down the power button for a minute, with the same HDD light-only result. I've reseated the RAM, repeated the first thing, and eventually gave up and left the screen open with the HDD light on.

After 5-10 minutes, the laptop suddenly came to life and showed the BIOS screen, then began to boot Windows. Unfortunately at this stage however, it just hangs at the green bar loading Windows and has done this for more than 15 minutes.

I ran a HDD test a few days back when it was working fine, and there was no sign of anything bad, but I'm going to take it out and run a full one now.

I'm not sure whether this is a software or hardware problem yet, but as the laptop delays boot even before the BIOS I'm assuming its hardware...

If anyone can help or has any suggestions to try I'd appreciate it.

 

Well, the issues you've described are those of a HD failure, since its showing up even before the BIOS part of boot, but that can also be a sign of something wrong motherboard wise.

A 15 minute boot at the first time this happened was probably Vista repairing damaged files after your hard shut down. When you've turned it off since, have you used the proper shut down proceedure?

And on an odd question - even though it does use energy this way, is there an issue NOT shutting the computer down EVER?

Hard shut downs aren't recommended ever, even though ever since XP, they aren't supposed to cause too much trouble as they did before (please note the word SUPPOSED). But sometimes things can cause issues - for example, I resently had to do one myself, and I inadvertantly forgot to shut down OUTLOOK before doing it - Outlook does not appreciate being forceably shut down, and decided to eat a chunk of my OS in the process. I wound up having to find a way to save all my data and restore my Windows manually.

A-N

 

Hiya, thanks for the reply.

I thought this might be the case too, so I've popped out the HD and plugged it via USB into my W7 PC, and everything seems fine with it. I've run HDTune on it and everthing comes up fine. I also ran the built-in disk error checking and it was fine.

So it's looking more like a board problem I'm guessing?

I've not been able to shut down properly since this first happened - the only reason I had to in the first place was because it completely froze, and since then it either doesn't power on properly at all, or just hangs at the vista load screen (green bar) indefinitely. It won't power on all the way - so I can't shut it down at all.

I'm confused that this is happening because even the Bios doesn't appear when I try to turn it on - just a blank screen, no fans, only the hard drive light on.

And I've never seen the weird delay after I press the power button - there's just no response other than the light, until after five mins or so then it comes to life and crashes at the load screen. Gah.

 

I've seen it in some early model D600 Dell Latitudes with an Intel motherboard. Not only did I get long pauses in just finding the HD, they sometimes ATE them as well, causing permanent data loss and destroying them.

While you've got the drive out (or take it out again), you can test that very issue. Without the HD in there, you should be able to get to the BIOS almost instantly. If not, I'd wonder about the quality of the MB.

Also while you have it out and on a USB adaptor, you might want to take the time and image-copy it for future recovery possibilities.

A-N

 

I had a simular problem with a toshiba laptop, push power button, nothing for a random amount of time, started out as mabye a minute or so then boot, but got worse to over 15 mins, i'd push the power button and it would come "partly" on, screen would come on, and then sit for some time, then turn on, ended up being a bad joint someplace on the MB in the power supply section, i found if i was to kind of "twist" the case it would instantly boot, but would shut down if bumped just right. Kind of sounds like a simular problem, board not powering up all the way

 

Glad to hear somebody has had something like this happen!

Good idea arknorth, thanks I'll test power-on without the HD and see what happens. I couldn't figure why I couldn't get the bios to appear immediately.

Tundram - that sounds just like what's happening to my laptop It has got worse since I first started this post its taking 30mins+ to come to life after pressing the button now. I'm going to send it to some laptop specialists to get a quote and see if its repairable. Haven't tried twistin the case or anything like that but it sounds like a similar thing.

Did you ever get it fixed to a usable state or is it looking like a mobo replacement? ><

 

Update - Just tried powering on without the HD in. Same as before, no response.

Also, I've realised I've been describing the light wrong - the light that is coming on when I press the power button isn't the HD light, its a light with a lightbulb shaped symbol next to it.

The HD light flickers once when I press the power button and then stays off.

Thanks for your help in any case guys.

 

No, i never fixed it, would take a new mainboard, there is a slight chance if can find the cracked or bad solder joint that it can be fixed, but on mine i checked all the common and known issue points and didn't fix it, with my luck it's a middle trace and no way to fix it with in any kind of budget. I ended up trading it to a friend who is going to use it for parts, IE the screen and other stuff for a better processer for my desktop.

Let us know what you find out. Hope it's not as bad as mine was

 

Hey guys, thanks for all your help.

I sent in my laptop for a mobo repair but it failed (think it was a BGA repair).
Tried to get a replacement mobo but looks like I'll have to find a second hand rep or go to Asus.

Thanks again for yoru replies!