Slow Format and slow boot

[DaveU]

3 yr old dell PC
PC was running very slow.
Blew away HD and formatted.
Fomatting was very slow.
PC did continue to format and OS (XP)
did install. every time we reboot, it takes like 5 min. to boot.
Bar shows on bottom of screen and progresses really slow.
Once the PC boots, takes about 5. seems to run ok, but not much else installed.
when it's booting the HDD light stays solid light rather than blinking.
We have checked the HDD and it's registered in
device manager in DMA Mode not PIO (read that somewhere else).
I have formatted and helped people with more than a few PC's
and havn't seen this before.
Any suggestions or insight would be appriciated...
thanks!

 

[mechBgon]

You might want to start with HDD diagnostics. One method is to get the HDD maker's diagnostic utility; some of them are listed at the bottom of this page.

Another idea: chuck a different HDD in there in place of the suspect HDD, and see if it behaves differently.

While you've got the system open, look around for bulging or leaking capacitors. Both ends should be flat like a can of soup.

 

[robisbell]

when you wiped the drive did you delete the partition and rebuild it?

I'd go to http://ultimatebootcd.com and burn the ISO and boot your system with it and run the appropriate manufacturer diagnostics on the HDD.

 

[dclive]

Originally posted by: DaveU
3 yr old dell PC
PC was running very slow.
Blew away HD and formatted.
Fomatting was very slow.
PC did continue to format and OS (XP)
did install. every time we reboot, it takes like 5 min. to boot.
Bar shows on bottom of screen and progresses really slow.
Once the PC boots, takes about 5. seems to run ok, but not much else installed.
when it's booting the HDD light stays solid light rather than blinking.
We have checked the HDD and it's registered in
device manager in DMA Mode not PIO (read that somewhere else).
I have formatted and helped people with more than a few PC's
and havn't seen this before.
Any suggestions or insight would be appriciated...
thanks!

If you look in the System event log, do you see lots of disk-related errors?