Slooooooooow boot

[plautus]

When I boot my pooder the mobo screen (Asus) appears normally, but then I get a blank blue screen for a really really long time before XP (finally) starts. Is this a sign that a HD failure is imminent? Could it it simply be crapware pluigging up the system? Scan Disk and chkdsk reveal nothing abnormal. Anything else I might try before replace the HD?

Thanks!

 

[Atheus]

Originally posted by: plautus
When I boot my pooder the mobo screen (Asus) appears normally, but then I get a blank blue screen for a really really long time before XP (finally) starts. Is this a sign that a HD failure is imminent? Could it it simply be crapware pluigging up the system?

Most probably the latter - if you think you might have viruses and adware you should do your best to remove them before assuming hardware failure. A reformat/reinstall would be the only way to be sure. If you did get a new drive you'd have to back up your work and reinstall anyway, so you might as well just do it on the old drive and see what happens.

 

[Lemon law]

You can also try some hard drive health utilities---that are supposed to make statements about failing hard drives---but some what the key issue is---has this gotten dramatically worse lately or has this been a gradual process? Once booted does the computer run well or does it have the slows? It could be malware---or some bloatware you installed---it could also be a case where the windows boot process spends an inordinate amount of time searching for a file that has been moved---you can get a clue by booting to safe mode--and then boot into windows with a step by step conformation---then note what things take semi-forever to load.---boot vis could also help.---and I'd test your memory with memtest86.---make sure your hard drive is not set to plo mode.---what does device manager say?

Lots of self help things you can do before throwing money at fixing things that may not be broken.---or nuking a hard drive that may not need it.---reduce your odds of barking up the wrong tree should be your guiding principle.----all kinds of diagnostic things become possible when your computer is merely sick and not dead.