20 minutes to boot

[rockerman]

hi all. i got a prob with a home built pc. it takes about 20 minutes to boot up its ok up to windoes xp splash screen then the screen gos blank for about 10 minutes then it stays on the blue welcome screen for about another 10 minetes after that is all ok. i have done a clean install or windows and installed the motherbord cd but its still the same. when it is has booted it all works fine.
the spec of the pc is:
Windows xp Service Pack 2
Memory 2 gig:
pentium 4 3.00GHz
Motherboard: Gigabyte . 8I945PMF
graphic card radeon x1950 pro
sata 120 gig hard drive
450w psu
do anyone have a clue to why it takes so long to boot up . many thanks

 

[teh_boxzor]

sounds like bad RAM. run memtest86.

 

[rockerman]

thanks tec_boxzor could you tell where i get run memtest86 and is it easy to use

 

[Darkness Flame]

Wow ... my system runs XP with a fourth of that amount of RAM, and yet starts up in less than a fourth of the time. Like the guy above me said, check your RAM.

 

[teh_boxzor]

its a free download just google it. my motherboard came with it so i cant tell you how to run it in DOS. ask the other members or use google again for instructions for using it.

 

[zenmaster]

Run "eventvwr.exe" a nd look in the logs for Red Errors.
That may give you a clue.

 

[techgeek]

Download it here and burn to a CD.

http://www.memtest.org/#downiso

It's an ISO image. Once it's burnt, reboot your computer with it in your CD drive, set your BIOS to boot from the CD. It boots very quickly and starts to run the default test. Let it complete a few passes, the more the better. I have found that it may take several passes before it starts to error, or you could get lucky and it starts to error right away. Obviously if it doesn't error after many passes, your RAM is fine.

That all said, slow boots aren't normally a result of bad RAM. Usually bad RAM shows up in random lockups/reboots, BSOD's, application crashes, etc. It couldn't hurt to run the scan anyway though. One thing I have found with slow boot/shutdown problems is usually related to network problems. You could try looking in your Event Viewer and see if there are a bunch or warnings.

 

[DXRick]

It could also be a sign of a hard drive problem. My parent's PC started doing weird things on boot. I replaced the HD, and the problems stopped.

 

[teh_boxzor]

i agree with dxrick my old hard drive gave me long boot times but it was slow on the windows load screen not the login screen.

 

[rockerman]

hi all. i ran memtest86 five times but passed with no errors. so i put anther harddrive in but the pc is still the same. looks like i got live with a pc that is a 20 min booter.

 

[teh_boxzor]

theres got to be a problem what is your system spec?

 

[rockerman]

some thing i did notice is when im playing meda ie a music cd when the screen saver kicks in the sound goes funny it makes a echo sound.

 

[teh_boxzor]

well now the only parts left to look at are you CPU, MoBo and PSU looks to me like it could be the motherboard because the audio isnt playing right when screensaver kicks in.

 

[DXRick]

What happens if you boot into safe mode? Did you look at the Device Manager for any problems?

 

[rockerman]

its still the same in safe mode. iv looked in device manager and all is ok.

 

[cd14]

its still the same in safe mode. iv looked in device manager and all is ok.

You have a buddy that has an imaging program and a good spare hard drive? Try to clone your OS to another drive with Ghost, TrueImage, etc. Ghost does pretty good with bad sectors. Also try HDTune, it can do a error scan.

As said above, your hard drive may be bad, possibly mechanically.

 

[rockerman]

i have tryed 3 other hard drives useing trueimage

 

[teh_boxzor]

well looks like your SOL buddy your processor might be dying or your not getting enough juice from the PSU to power your PC.

 

[cd14]

i have tryed 3 other hard drives useing trueimage

Try to boot with the bare minimum. Maybe there's a bad component. If you have USB devices pull them all out. If you have expansion cards, ie sound, take them out. Use only the OS hard drive, no CD/DVD drive, no network. Even try just one stick of ram. Basically just enough to boot and load the OS. Hopefully, if it's a bad part, you can isolate it.

Also, when you reinstalled Windows, did you notice slow booting before installing any drivers? Perhaps there's a bad driver.