Windows XP boot time... 5 mins

[leegroves86]

I am working on a friends computer for them. They appearantly got a virus and decided to reload the OS... they reloaded it but after installing it (XP Home) it loads up extremely slow.

It starts off with going past BIOS splash screen and goes to black screen, stays there a minute and then white bars come up on the bottom of the screen. They eventually begin to connect (left to right) like a progress bar and get about a 1/3 of the way done when the XP screen comes on. The entire process up to here is literally 3-5 mins.

They said they reformated it and did it again with the same results. I look at the system and it seems very normal, nothing is installed on the computer to slow it down.. But besdies this happens appearantly after BIOS and before XP, what in the world is it? It just started after reformating so it sounds like software... but what?

The system is a Gateway, Pentium 4, gig of ram, integrated graphics, 80 gig HDD, XP Home edition.

I am stumped on this one, I loaded SP 2, drivers and XP updates and it helped nothing. I fooled around in BIOS and disabled everything and it didn't help either. What am I missing? Thanks!

 

[leegroves86]

any ideas?

 

[leegroves86]

bump

 

[cprince]

I would download the diagnostic software of the hard drive manufacturer and test the drive. Also, most diagnostic software also have write zero option, which writes zeros to the entire drive. This will erase any traces of old data, bad format, etc. Check to see if the drive is installed properly. If you are using IDE cable, make sure it's 80-wire type and not 40-wire.

 

[travisray2004]

Is there any external hard drives plugged into this machine? If so disconnect them until windows has booted up. This is what my brother and I ran into.

 

[WildHorse]

Decrease system loading time by changing network settings

Read tweak no's 79 through 84 on boot speed improvement

Download the free tweak guide, it's got lot's of useful pointers on boot speedup techniques, although the author is annoyingly verbose

The problem could be so many different possible causes.

Suggest you set all BIOS options to their default values, at least temporarily.

In Device Manager, for IDE ATA/ATAPI Controllers/Primary IDE Channel -properties-advanced settings, make sure transfer mode is set to DMA. Also in Device Manager under Disk Drives - properties - policies, make sure Write Caching is enabled.

Sounds almost like that computer is struggling to find enough memory to load the OS. Double-check that their RAM chips are properly seated and locked into their slots. Maybe the RAM got pulled out and played with while they were working on things, & not put back quite right. Consider running MEMTEST86+ on their RAM.

I'm not sure how much paging is done during OS loading, but that might be another area of memory trouble, so also check that the Paging File is adequately sized.

Good luck to you~