System Boot times skyrocket (help thread)

KillaKilla

Senior member
Oct 22, 2003
416
0
0
System Specs

Literally overnight (14/17 to 18/05) the system began a very odd problem:

On boot, single normal beep (no beep code), POST begins. It stops at the "Memory Testing" line, but not always (Sometimes, though a minority of the time, it stops at the line with the CPU's identification, something like "AMD Athlon(tm) 64 2800). It waits for 3 to 4 minutes.

Then it goes on normally, trough to the OS selection screen(I have dual boot on 1 HDD, 2 partitions, both WinXP professional). I pick one (Same problem with both). The splash screen "Microsoft Windows XP" that has the blue bar at the lower middle, does not appear. The systems sits for a normal amount of time (20-30 seconds) at a blank screen. It goes through to the login screen, and everything is normal while the system is on.
 

BobDaMenkey

Diamond Member
Jan 27, 2005
3,057
2
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Your hard drive might be bitting the dust. I've had that happen before, bought a new HDD and switched the one that was causing problems to be the secondary one. It's transfer rates have been slow since, but it still manages to work.

I'd point at a failing HDD to be the cause man. It might be something else, but that's what it sounds like. It is sitting there trying to figure out what everything is on the IDE channels.