PC Takes 30+ Minutes to Boot

[jdalin]

All,

I built a PC about two years ago. I have a Gigabyte X38 motherboard, an Intel E6850 CPU, 4 GB of memory, and three hard drives in a RAID 5 configuration. For the last 6 months or so, running Vista 32 bit, it started taking much too long to boot. I upgraded to Windows 7 (32-bit) a few weeks ago and the boot time if anything is even worse.

When the system was new, I'd reboot and the first thing I'd see is the Gigabyte splash screen with the name of the motherboard and its features. This used to last a few seconds - now it sits there for about 2 to 2.5 minutes. After that, POST starts and that still goes quickly. It shows no errors and all three hard drives and the RAID all show up as "NORMAL."

After POST completes successfully, I get the new Windows 7 "Starting Windows" screen with the four different color bugs that float towards the center of the screen and become the standard windows logo. After a few seconds of that, the screen fades to black and that's it for 5 to 10 to as much as 40 minutes, after which my desktop finally appears, it loads my gadgets, and the boot is complete.

Following that long boot process the PC works normally.

I will welcome any and all suggestions you all might have. Thanks in advance for any assistance.

Jim

 

[geofelt]

1) why is the time to post longer?
Is there an overclock that is being reset?
Is it possible that the bios is resetting itself to set a different ram voltage?
Try memtest86+ to check for ram issues.
Look in the bios for time to abandon detection for any devices that you do not have.

2) After post, why so long?
Scan for any viruses or malware.
Look at your startup tasks.
run msconfig and look for any strange tasks

If simple things fail look for the windows performance toolkit which has multiple tracing facilities

http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/performance/cc825801.aspx

 

[jdalin]

Thank you for your reply.

I'm not sure about the overclock or a different ram voltage. I'll try memtest86+

You said:

>>Look in the bios for time to abandon detection for any devices that you do not have.<<

I assume that means going into setup next time I boot. Will do. Thanks.

I use Kaspersky so I scan for viruses and malware all the time.

I did run msconfig and a un-checked a ton of apps from startup. I rebooted and the PC rebooted in a minute or so!!! Including the Gigabyte splash screen only showing up for a few seconds. That baffles me - I can't see how not starting selected apps would affect that.

Thanks again.

Jim

 

[geofelt]

Good job!

In the bios look for a setting perhaps called fast start or quick boot. It will bypass checking things on every boot.

If you have a ide adapter and no ide devices, disable the adapter.

 

[darkguset]

This reminds me of the common: I have loaded half my apartment stuff onto my car and now it won't go over 30km/h any more!...

Glad you figured it out, though the BIOS startup sounds really bizarre indeed... welcome to the strange world of computing!

 

[jdalin]

Good job!

In the bios look for a setting perhaps called fast start or quick boot. It will bypass checking things on every boot.

If you have a ide adapter and no ide devices, disable the adapter.

Will do, thanks.

Jim

 

[jdalin]

This reminds me of the common: I have loaded half my apartment stuff onto my car and now it won't go over 30km/h any more!...

Glad you figured it out, though the BIOS startup sounds really bizarre indeed... welcome to the strange world of computing!

It never amazes me how many different ways my PC is capable of unpleasantly surprising me.

Thanks for your reply.

Jim

 

[darkguset]

It never amazes me how many different ways my PC is capable of unpleasantly surprising me.

Thanks for your reply.

Jim

As a PC technician i get to think that i have pretty much seen a lot of weird stuff and that i won't be surprised next time... yet the sneaky blastards always find something new! hehe...

 

[False_Dmitry_II]

I cringed a little when you said that you upgraded. Because that sounds like not a fresh install.

 

[metalforlife9999]

Just save everything to a usb drive or something like that and reinstall windows 7 fresh if you have the full install and not a upgrade that might help

 

[jdalin]

I cringed a little when you said that you upgraded. Because that sounds like not a fresh install.

It was indeed an upgrade that went completely smoothly. In any case the slow boot problem existed before the upgrade to 7 and continued after it.

Jim

 

[jdalin]

Just save everything to a usb drive or something like that and reinstall windows 7 fresh if you have the full install and not a upgrade that might help

Thanks for the suggestion but that just doesn't seem reasonable since the problem existed back when I was using Vista.

Jim

 

[False_Dmitry_II]

That's sort of the point.