up to 20mins to boot up my pc!! HELP!!

[CougarsLair]

my system::

Twinforce2 - Winfast K7N415DA & Geforce 4 A250 TD64MB
Athlon XP 2100+_
512Mb RAM
Two HD - Maxtor 91024D4 10Gig & Western Digital WD400BB(master) 40Gig
DVD drive & CDRW
Netgear FA311

Dual boot: XP Pro (SP1) & win2k (SP3)


the problem:

My system has suddenly started to boot up extremely slowly. This is a random problem that can occur several times in a row then will be fine for several reboots/startups.

For example first thing this morning I switched on my PC and it took approx TWENTY MINUTES to boot!!!! (normally under 30secs).
Tthe whole process slows to a crawl - after the bios detects my drives it sits there for a 2-3 minutes before checking for a startup device (default is cdrom). This itslef takes another minute or so and then eventually the loader menu appears. Choosing any OS causes ablank screen for another minute or two before any loading bars/screen appear. The rest of the loading process can take up to about 15mins.

Once windows (either one) is loaded the system works fine - not running slow or any problems. If I reboot the restart can either be normal or slow it appears to be a random event.

It is as though my PC is running at fraction of its speed for the boot process and then runs at full speed once the OS is loaded.

I wondered about a hard drive problem but seeing as the initial boot also seems slow Im not sure if its a mainboard problem.

Norton AV does not find any virus problems.

Can anybody help - I only built this system in late August and its been great up until now.

 

[dmcowen674]

Have you loaded any Network additions lately such as Netbeui?

The system could be trying to logon to something that doesn't exist.

 

[CougarsLair]

nope - no network changes have been made.

 

[subman]

Do a search for the Microsoft free software bootvis and run it. It cut my computers boot time by 50% and it also corrects boot problems. It also shows you a list of the programs loading up at boot and the time taken by each.

 

[compudog]

Try this -->MS Fast Boot I'm not suggesting that this will solve your prob. I had a similiar with SCSI drives and Win2K SP3 (SCSI set to SCAM, switched to fixed ID's and works great!)

 

[BSEagle1]

Have you tried reformatting? Have you changed anything in the bios lately?

 

[CougarsLair]

Not keen on reformatting at the moment - seems a last resort measure to me.

I have made no bios or software changes to my sytem.

At the moment everything is working fine - but it could do it again next time I restart/switch on my PC.

i have used the bootvis utility previously - not sure if it will make a difference to my current problem but might try it next time my machine decides to run as a 486 instead of an Athlon2100...

 

[PCMarine]

Check what channels you have the HD's and disk drives set to. If you have the HardDrives as slaves and the cd rom as master, than the HD is slowed to the crawling CD-ROM speed (I think)

 

[alm4rr]

ive had on one of my comps, that the cpu cache disables itself in the bios. has happened once or twice in like 4 years. it just does it and im not sure why. the computer would take a long azz time to boot, to load proggie, to do anything.