Does anyone know what is causing this system hiccup at startup?

[TemjinGold]

Hey guys,

So a long time ago, I bought an OCZ 250 gig Vertex to use as a system drive. It was fast but I had a few problems:

1) On bootup, the system would "freeze" for a bit before I could do anything. This freeze was anywhere from 2 mins to about 10 mins long (basically got longer each time.)

2) Most programs/games loaded fine but Office 2007 Pro programs initially start instantly, then took longer and longer as time went on.

So I thought it was the drive, sold it on ebay, and bought my G2 to replace it. All starts fine at first. Then the same problems start creeping back. I thought it might be the ICH9 on my DS3L, so I sold that and got the mobo in my sig.

Problems are back again. Word/Excel take like 3 minutes to open. Startup freeze happens nearly every bootup. These problems go away if I reinstall windows (on Win 7 64-bit) but slowly creep back in. Never had these problems with a mechanical drive as the system drive. Am I just really unlucky that I got 2 bum SSDs or is there something else going on? This is driving me nuts...

 

[NoStateofMind]

After showing this to a couple friends one of them recommended removing your SSD and run seatools on that Velociraptor. Apparently Windows 7 is either indexing or shadowing both drives. If one is failing "hiccups" or the like can occur. Maybe even removing just the WD drive will alleviate said issues. Give it a shot and get back to us 😛

 

[TemjinGold]

Hmm... interesting... So my velociraptor could be what's dying? I won't have time for a few days to try that but I'll definitely try to remove that drive and get back to you. Thanks!

 

[razel]

1) On bootup, the system would "freeze" for a bit before I could do anything. This freeze was anywhere from 2 mins to about 10 mins long (basically got longer each time.)

You replaced the HDD and the motherboard and it's still happening. Clean windows installation is fine, but as you start to use your PC normally and install apps the freezing occurs. When you say bootup do you mean windows bootup? If so, everything seems to be pointing to a software issue. Perhaps you have a virus or malware on your system? Another way to investigate is to run a Windows boot analyzer. I think MS has one for free and will tell you what's taking so long.

 

[TemjinGold]

You replaced the HDD and the motherboard and it's still happening. Clean windows installation is fine, but as you start to use your PC normally and install apps the freezing occurs. When you say bootup do you mean windows bootup? If so, everything seems to be pointing to a software issue. Perhaps you have a virus or malware on your system? Another way to investigate is to run a Windows boot analyzer. I think MS has one for free and will tell you what's taking so long.

Hey there, thanks for the help. When I say bootup, I mean from a powered off state, I switch the machine on. It doesn't happen every time but more than 50% of the time, when it gets into windows, I can click a bunch of things (Firefox, launch program, etc.) and would need to wait over a minute before any of those things launch. A clean install "fixes" it but only for about a week of use or so (I shutdown every night) even if I don't install more stuff. A virus or malware is unlikely as this never happened when the Velociraptor was the system drive and an old 250 gig spindle was the storage using the exact same stuff.

Earlier guy: I unplugged my velociraptor and booted up with just the SSD. Same thing. Word 2007 took exactly 39 seconds to open. I even tried waiting a few minutes after bootup to load it. No other programs running in background either. The first day on a clean install, Word would be open as soon as I click it.

 

[razel]

The only thing left that perhaps you haven't tried hardware-wise is a different sata/pata cable. Next that I'd do is run the basic SMART (don't need the long test) tests on the SSD/HD. If it's ok, I'm guessing it might be a hardware driver. So once in windows do basic benchmarking like AS SSD. Run it in safe mode and compare to regular windows.

Also try to get more info when it freezes. Run the resource monitor in task manager and see if the CPU is stuck or spiked or HD access is busy. Actually when you start word and it takes 39 seconds check the resource monitor's disk activity tab. It'll tell you the current average transfer rate for each process/program.

 

[TemjinGold]

Hmm... no dice on the cable. Not sure if I want to risk benching the SSD as I've heard bad things about that. What I can say is that there only appear to be problems with Office 2007 and right after it boots up. No other program seems to have a problem...