Unbelievably slow boot. PC running Windows 8.1 takes 2 hours to boot!

[inf1nity]

My PC was running a little jittery, so i decided to reboot it. This, i figured, would clean up the memory and give it a fresh start. I hit restart and went away to get myself a snack.

When I came back after 5 minutes, I saw that it was at the loading screen, with the blue Windows logo and those revolving dots below it. This continued for 20 minutes. Then the screen went pitch black, and stayed that way for another 20 minutes. Then the welcome screen appeared, but when I hit enter, it took 5 minutes to get out of the way so that I could enter the password.. and so on.

It took a total of 135 minutes to get from turning on the power to get to the desktop. Seems like every step in the booting process is taking 500x the time it normally should.

Its running unbearably slow. I restarted it again, and again the same thing happened.

What do i do?

 

[Mushkins]

First thing: Back *everything* important up.

Then check the event logs (control panel > administrative tools > event viewer).

When I see behavior like that it normally indicates an impending hard drive failure, you'll probably see a ton of disk read errors in the logs. If the windows pre-boot stuff is taking forever you're not even to the point where installed software or extraneous device drivers could be causing it. You can run manufacturers HDD health test software to double check. Basically it takes so long because every sector its trying to read to boot fails and retries dozens of times before it finally gets through.

Could be something hosed the MBR too, but that normally causes a flat out refusal to boot into windows and not just slowness. You can try booting into the windows recovery console and repairing too. Maybe run an SFC /scannow to check OS file integrity.

 

[Puffnstuff]

Are you using a hard drive or ssd?

 

[TheELF]

First thing: Back *everything* important up.

Then check the event logs (control panel > administrative tools > event viewer).

When I see behavior like that it normally indicates an impending hard drive failure, you'll probably see a ton of disk read errors in the logs. If the windows pre-boot stuff is taking forever you're not even to the point where installed software or extraneous device drivers could be causing it. You can run manufacturers HDD health test software to double check. Basically it takes so long because every sector its trying to read to boot fails and retries dozens of times before it finally gets through.

Could be something hosed the MBR too, but that normally causes a flat out refusal to boot into windows and not just slowness. You can try booting into the windows recovery console and repairing too. Maybe run an SFC /scannow to check OS file integrity.

Could also be bad memory/psu/mobo or a host of other things...
Take out the drive and connect it to an other machine,that's the easiest way of seeing if the drive has had it and to try to backup/recover any important data.

 

[inf1nity]

Puffnstuff: I'm using a mechanical hard drive. A Hitachi Deskstar, in use since Feb 2008

Mushkins: It seems you're right, i googled the other symptoms and learned that I have been experiencing something called The Click of Death. Also, my HD activity is erratic and seems to touch 100% for no apparent reason, rendering the PC unusable.

I fired up the computer, and luckily it booted up normally now. I have started taking backups.

 

[inf1nity]

So I checked Event Viewer and it does not show any serious warning or critical issues, just regular information events.

 

[TheELF]

So I checked Event Viewer and it does not show any serious warning or critical issues, just regular information events.

Problems on the HDD's pcb won't show up in any software,also problems in other components can fake a click of death,say a faulty power connection to your HDD can make it power on and of continuously producing similar sounds.

 

[inf1nity]

Problems on the HDD's pcb won't show up in any software,also problems in other components can fake a click of death,say a faulty power connection to your HDD can make it power on and of continuously producing similar sounds.

Why would the computer continue to run normally if its powering on and off?

 

[TheELF]

The connection to the HDD has nothing to do with the rest of the system your HDD alone might loose power due to a faulty wire, loose connector or whatever.

 

[Puffnstuff]

Hitachi has some drive tools and I would dl and run them and let it diagnose your drive health.

 

[inf1nity]

The connection to the HDD has nothing to do with the rest of the system your HDD alone might loose power due to a faulty wire, loose connector or whatever.

What I meant was that why would the system continue to even run if the HDD isn't powered on?

As in, why would the PC boot up, even get to the login screen and let me log in.

 

[TheELF]

Mushkins already said it

Basically it takes so long because every sector its trying to read to boot fails and retries dozens of times before it finally gets through.

This is not true only for the boot up but for the operation of the OS in general.
If in-between the tries it connects with the drive it will continue for a bit.
Anyway as I told you put the HDD in an other system to see if it is ok or not.

 

[inf1nity]

Do I need to put it into another PC? Can I use one of those drive bays to connect it to a laptop via an eSATA port? Looks like I'll have to buy something like this, which will cost me more than a new drive.

 

[Ketchup]

SATA hard drives use the same cables, whether in a desktop or a laptop. If you have a desktop, you can just borrow the cables from your DVD drive and back up your important data. Good opportunity to upgrade to an SSD here.

Also, if you have not made recovery DVDs for your PC (if it is a name-brand PC), now is the time to do it.

 

[flexy]

Sometimes it's simple things like the SATA cable "bad". Those things are notorious for failing once un- and re-plugging a few times. They're literally designed as to not re-plug them too many times, especially the cheap ones which often come with boards.

As a first tip, unplug SATA cable(s), route differently in case, re-plug, make sure they're plugged in well. Had similar happen not too long ago and this solved it.

If this doesn't help, swap SATA cable, use new one, test.

Use different SATA port, test.

Also check connections to the drive(s) from your PSU.

If this doesn't help...probably wrong driver or some BIOS setting?

 

[Iron Woode]

my Gf's computer starting doing similar things. It takes 20 mins to go to desktop on win 7. I told her to stop using it and I will back up the drive and get her a new one.

inf1nity, does your hdd drive light stay on constantly?

you could try running chkdsk to see if its got problems.

either way it looks like the hdd is the most probable culprit.

 

[jlee]

SSD-Z will pull SMART data, if your drive supports it.

 

[JackMDS]

Run fast and buy a Lotto since you are very lucky person.

I.e., using a 7 year old HD that worked until now.

That said you are already "playing around" here for the last two days with this issue.

Right now any Boot can be the last Boot and you might lose it all.

 

[Ketchup]

Run fast and buy a Lotto since you are very lucky person.

I.e., using a 7 year old HD that worked until now.

That said you are already "playing around" here for the last two days with this issue.

Right now any Boot can be the last Boot and you might lose it all.

While he is lucky that he has time to back it up after such a scare, 7 years is nothing. I have a 20-year-old IDE drive in a controller running 24-7 without so much as a peep. And while it is backed up, I hope the hard drive in my server makes it far longer than 7 years.

 

[inf1nity]

Sometimes it's simple things like the SATA cable "bad". Those things are notorious for failing once un- and re-plugging a few times. They're literally designed as to not re-plug them too many times, especially the cheap ones which often come with boards.

As a first tip, unplug SATA cable(s), route differently in case, re-plug, make sure they're plugged in well. Had similar happen not too long ago and this solved it.

If this doesn't help, swap SATA cable, use new one, test.

Use different SATA port, test.

Also check connections to the drive(s) from your PSU.

If this doesn't help...probably wrong driver or some BIOS setting?

Looks like you were right. I used a different SATA cable and the drive worked normally. I then took the old cable and inspected it, it was bent in many places. I wound it around my finger, straightened it out and then rerouted it through my case. And now my PC is working normally.

Thanks, flexy!

 

[inf1nity]

And btw it appears that the Click of Death sound has stopped now..

 

[Ketchup]

I see you opened another thread about the drive:
http://forums.anandtech.com/showthread.php?p=38000804