Slow boot & apps slow to start

[glyphomax]

A7v333
512mb ram, XP home, Athlon 2600xp, geforce 4200ti, 80GB ide
(and 120 gb ide, currently disconnected)

Machine is slow to boot (3-5 minutes) and sometimes throws the "Windows failed to start screen"

It's worse first thing in the morning (when everything is cold?) - in fact restarts later in the day are slow but don't throw that error screen. System is 2 years old and I haven't changed anything
I did a complete reformat hoping that would fix it (and went to sp2) - no change.

I'm not keen on flashing the bios - the system is ok once it has started - well, nearly ok:

Other symptoms are apps are slow to start - around 20 seconds to a minute - the usb mouse sometimes doesn't light up on boot (not often)- copying files to another drive is slow (1 minute to copy a 100Mb video file off a defragmented drive to a new, nearly empty partition)

I can pin down the problem to one night the pc would not shut down, after leaving it half an hour I hit the front case switch. Next day it took 30 minute to start - yes 30 mins just to get to the XP screen. After a 'repair reinstall' it came down to a 2-3 minutes to start - where it's been ever since.

Should i suspect the mobo or the PSU?

 

[effee]

Run msconfig and remove all the uneeded programs at startup. Also, have you tried a reformat? Might just be a bad OS install

 

[glyphomax]

No difference under MSConfig start

Yup - did a reformat - that's the third install anyway even if only the first reformat

 

[dclive]

Originally posted by: glyphomax

A7v333
512mb ram, XP home, Athlon 2600xp, geforce 4200ti, 80GB ide
(and 120 gb ide, currently disconnected)

Machine is slow to boot (3-5 minutes) and sometimes throws the "Windows failed to start screen"

It's worse first thing in the morning (when everything is cold?) - in fact restarts later in the day are slow but don't throw that error screen. System is 2 years old and I haven't changed anything
I did a complete reformat hoping that would fix it (and went to sp2) - no change.

I'm not keen on flashing the bios - the system is ok once it has started - well, nearly ok:

Other symptoms are apps are slow to start - around 20 seconds to a minute - the usb mouse sometimes doesn't light up on boot (not often)- copying files to another drive is slow (1 minute to copy a 100Mb video file off a defragmented drive to a new, nearly empty partition)

I can pin down the problem to one night the pc would not shut down, after leaving it half an hour I hit the front case switch. Next day it took 30 minute to start - yes 30 mins just to get to the XP screen. After a 'repair reinstall' it came down to a 2-3 minutes to start - where it's been ever since.

Should i suspect the mobo or the PSU?

What do the event logs show? Anything?

 

[glyphomax]

dclive - thanks for your help:

yes Events log show this:
An error was detected on device \Device\Harddisk0\D during a paging operation.

and :
The device, \Device\Ide\IdePort0, did not respond within the timeout period.

These errors run in pairs around one every ten minutes but randomised - I have just copied files around and can't retrigger the errors.


I dont know zilch about Event Log but I guess that's saying drive 0, the boot drive, is faulty
It formatted fine just two days ago though

(the disk is partitioned into an 8 Gb boot and 70 Gb for files - all pretty empty right now)

Device manager shows no problems - I'll run disk error check to see if that finds anything

 

[dclive]

Originally posted by: glyphomax
dclive - thanks for your help:

yes Events log show this:
An error was detected on device \Device\Harddisk0\D during a paging operation.

and :
The device, \Device\Ide\IdePort0, did not respond within the timeout period.

These errors run in pairs around one every ten minutes but randomised - I have just copied files around and can't retrigger the errors.


I dont know zilch about Event Log but I guess that's saying drive 0, the boot drive, is faulty
It formatted fine just two days ago though

(the disk is partitioned into an 8 Gb boot and 70 Gb for files - all pretty empty right now)

Device manager shows no problems - I'll run disk error check to see if that finds anything

OK, so you have a problem with your disk (most likely) or your disk controller. So, replace one or both until the errors go away, and see if the other problems go away too.