Slow Boot Up

rian222 · Aug 22, 2009, 11:54 PM

Hello. I had a problem with my network recently and I found out that I had to reinstall Vista. I had the computer taken apart before I came to that conclusion becuase I was trying to figure out if the problem was with the hardware. When I was putting it back together, I dropped a screw about two inches, the one that holds my gfx card in, onto my motherboard. I picked it up and finished putting the computer back together, and booted on the Vista CD right away. I realized it was loading everything really slow. So when I got the first opportunity during the installation, I rebooted the computer regularly, and it took about 5-10 minutes to boot into my regular setup. Idk if this is from canceling the installation, which I doubt. The network issues I was having, which I also doubt. Or because I dropped the screw on the motherboard. I was wondering if anyone can help me narrow down the problem so I can find a cheaper solution than buying a new motherboard. Should I continue trying to reinstall Vista? Any help would be appreciated, thanks.

Primary HDD - Windows Vista Home Premium x32
Secondary HDD - Windows XP Pro x64
GFX Card - Geforce 9800 GT
RAM - 3GB DDR2

Tyrsonswood · Aug 23, 2009, 12:11 AM

If the system was properly powered down so you could take it apart and put it back together then that screw shouldn't have done anything. The slow speed could still be an underlying hardware issue but I would check and make sure the BIOS settings are correct, cables all snug (HD cable especially) and do a complete new install (not continue the interrupted one) and then see how it runs the OS. If you are concerned there may still be a network problem, I can't see it effecting an install though, do the install with the network cable unplugged.

Tipstaff · Aug 23, 2009, 01:17 AM

Did you remove the motherboard at any time during this, or disconnect any of the case connectors, or data cables (floppy, SATA, IDE) to the motherboard?

If you removed the board, double check that you put the board back in correctly. Most metal back plates that manufacturers provide have small pieces of metal sticking out of them into the case, and the idea is that these touch the tops of certain areas to help with the grounding (they usually touch the PS2 connectors, USB connectors, and/or the Ethernet connector on the inside of the case). Double check to see if any of these pieces might be inside the actual connector, such as the USB or Ethernet ports. If they are they could be shorting the system, and causing the problem.

Also, double check all the connectors to the motherboard to make sure that you put things back in their right place, and in their configuration (USB header from the case to the USB header on the motherboard and NOT the Firewire header if you have it, plus if the USB header has individual connectors be sure that they are connected to their proper pins in their proper order, which is: VCC (might be listed as Power or +5), D-, D+, Ground (or GND). For IDE connectors you need to make sure the stripe is facing the power connector on any IDE drives, and if you have a floppy drive that stripe is usually faced away from the power connector (however if take a look at the floppy drive you will sometimes see numbers listed on the connector, with 1 being on one side, and that is where the stripe side of the cable connects to).

rian222 · Aug 25, 2009, 11:23 PM

I never removed the motherboard when I was taking it apart. I was checking out my hardware on the inside to see if that might be the cause of the network issue, and I noticed the SATA cable going to my cd-rom was also unplugged, and I had been trying to figure out why it wasn't working so I could boot from a CD. I don't use my cd-rom very often. So I plugged that in and I realized one of the little levers that locks my RAM into place was open, so I clicked it shut, and put it back together. The only thing I ever had to actually take out was my GFX card, and I unplugged my HDD cables. But I checked to make sure they we're plugged in properly, and tried removing the RAM one by one, and I even unplugged the cd-rom again, but everytime I boot up it was slow. It usually boots normal for like the first three screens. The first one is the specs of my GFX card, the second one is my blue bios screen, and the third one is the one that asks if I want to boot from a CD. After I don't boot from a CD, the next screen is Windows Boot Manager, and the text scrolls across the screen very slowly until it's finally all loaded. After that, no matter what OS I boot into, it takes a long time. Currently, I'm doing a memory test, but it's been just over 24 hours and it's only 78% complete. I still can't figure out what the problem is.

Tyrsonswood · Aug 26, 2009, 12:18 AM

Does the BIOS screen tell you what speed the CPU is running at, and is that correct? If that flashes by to fast go into setup and check that, speed of ram etc. Maybe something got changed in the bios or it got corrupt.

OldBuzzard · Aug 26, 2009, 01:14 AM

re-re-recheck your SATA cables. I had one SATA cable to an HDD that just did not want to stay connected. It would work loose, and even though the system would detect it, it would boot just like you are describing. I eventually replaced that cable and have been problem free since then,

One other thing that has cause me problems is after I have run the MSCONFIG/BOOT 'fix' for the VISTA/WIN 7 TDR problems. When you do that you also specify your max memory. If for some reason you don't get it right, or in my case select the wrong OS (I have 8 OS's on my system), the memory amount will default to 256M. When that happened a time or two, Windows took forever to bootup as well.

Tipstaff · Aug 26, 2009, 12:09 PM

Try having your Ethernet cable disconnected from the computer, and any un-needed USB devices as well during bootup to see if that increases your load time.

rian222 · Aug 28, 2009, 06:12 AM

I've rechecked my cables several times, and I don't have anything non essential plugged into the computer. I was looking in bios, and I noticed that it has spots for 6 IDE drives. Two are taken up for my HDDs and one for my cd-rom. The first slot has the option for IDE Master 0, and the other 5 only have options for extended IDE drives. Slots 3 and 4 are taken up by my HDDs, and 6 is taken up by my cd-rom. When I look in my computer, I only see 4 sata ports. The one that I think is port 5 was what I used to have my cd-rom in; however, when I tried to put it back in a long time ago, I bent one of the pins, and have been using slot 6 ever since. I can't seem to find the other 2 sata ports anywhere, if they exist. Could this be my problem?

procupine14 · Aug 28, 2009, 03:52 PM

Not 100% sure that that would be causeing your problem but its always worth a try I suppose.

deBelly · Aug 28, 2009, 10:33 PM

So, it starts to hang after you get into Boot Manager? It does sound like a problem with Windows. Try to change boot device priority in BIOS. Did you try to boot with just one HDD? Do you have an old HDD that you could format and make a clean installation?
Anyway, I dropped all kinds of stuff (I don't even count screws) on my motherboards and never did any damage.

rian222 · Aug 29, 2009, 01:20 AM

Yeah, it hangs at the Boot Manager, and then from there on out, no matter what HDD or OS I chose. I tried changing the boot priorites, plugging in one HDD at a time, and switching the cables around. Same thing every time except it fails to boot when I plug in just my secondary HDD. But that's understandable I think.

deBelly · Aug 29, 2009, 11:23 AM

How many OS do you have in your boot.ini?

rian222 · Sep 1, 2009, 07:59 PM

I can't seem to find that file. Where's it located?

deBelly · Sep 2, 2009, 08:57 AM

Sorry, I'm still on XP and I forget how different Vista is. Instead of boot.ini Vista has Boot Configuration Data (BCD) store which appears to be more complicated to manually work with. More info here. There are tools like Easy BCD, but I don't know if that would be useful.

Insted, maybe you could try to repair BCD store using startup repair options. It's described here.

rian222 · Sep 2, 2009, 04:22 PM

Thanks, I'll look into those later today probably when I have time after work. When I bought my computer, it came with Vista pre-installed on it, and I decided to install XP on it after. XP wrote over Vista's bootloader, and I had to reinstall it using VistaBootPro or EasyBCD. I can't remember which. Could that have had something to do with it?

sahara_mafia · Sep 2, 2009, 05:05 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by rian222

Thanks, I'll look into those later today probably when I have time after work. When I bought my computer, it came with Vista pre-installed on it, and I decided to install XP on it after. XP wrote over Vista's bootloader, and I had to reinstall it using VistaBootPro or EasyBCD. I can't remember which. Could that have had something to do with it?

if u have data on the pc back it up and try fix the files but
i think u should install xp again this time format it fully
it should save a lot of time

rian222 · Sep 12, 2009, 01:36 AM

So I tried reinstalling Vista, and it went without errors. However, when I was erasing all my partitions and trying to format them, it took like 5 mins. I clicked the format button, and it went grey, then my computer loaded for about 5 mins, and it became clickable again. It was weird cause my computer has been doing everything at about a tenth the speed it should, and I know it would probably take a while to format a 350gb hard drive. I'm not sure it even formatted. And when it finished installing Vista, the problem was still there.

IvanV · Sep 12, 2009, 01:57 AM

Try listening to the hard drive very carefully. If it makes clicking sounds, or spins up often, it may be that you have a faulty PSU plug (loose, or really faulty). It happened to me once, and I know of some other people as well. For some weird reason, the system refused to crash, it was just slow as hell when it had to access the hard drive (not that I had it like that for long, I saw something was wrong and restarted and then I noticed the clicking and spin-ups; scared me senseless, I thought that the drive was failing).

EDIT: Also, you may try to reset the CMOS. I lost two days trying to figure out why my new build refused to boot 2 out of 3 times (I tried two different hard drives, OS install media, live CDs... I also updated the BIOS so I thought that I had it covered, but no) so now I recommend that for any sort of weird problem.

Aug 22, 2009, 11:54 PM	#1
rian222 HardwareHeaven Lover Join Date: May 2006 Posts: 177 Rep Power: 0	Slow Boot Up Hello. I had a problem with my network recently and I found out that I had to reinstall Vista. I had the computer taken apart before I came to that conclusion becuase I was trying to figure out if the problem was with the hardware. When I was putting it back together, I dropped a screw about two inches, the one that holds my gfx card in, onto my motherboard. I picked it up and finished putting the computer back together, and booted on the Vista CD right away. I realized it was loading everything really slow. So when I got the first opportunity during the installation, I rebooted the computer regularly, and it took about 5-10 minutes to boot into my regular setup. Idk if this is from canceling the installation, which I doubt. The network issues I was having, which I also doubt. Or because I dropped the screw on the motherboard. I was wondering if anyone can help me narrow down the problem so I can find a cheaper solution than buying a new motherboard. Should I continue trying to reinstall Vista? Any help would be appreciated, thanks. Primary HDD - Windows Vista Home Premium x32 Secondary HDD - Windows XP Pro x64 GFX Card - Geforce 9800 GT RAM - 3GB DDR2

Aug 23, 2009, 01:17 AM	#3
Tipstaff HardwareHeaven Extreme Member Join Date: Jul 2002 Location: Real capital of Canada: Toronto Posts: 5,610 Rep Power: 113 System Specs	Re: Slow Boot Up Did you remove the motherboard at any time during this, or disconnect any of the case connectors, or data cables (floppy, SATA, IDE) to the motherboard? If you removed the board, double check that you put the board back in correctly. Most metal back plates that manufacturers provide have small pieces of metal sticking out of them into the case, and the idea is that these touch the tops of certain areas to help with the grounding (they usually touch the PS2 connectors, USB connectors, and/or the Ethernet connector on the inside of the case). Double check to see if any of these pieces might be inside the actual connector, such as the USB or Ethernet ports. If they are they could be shorting the system, and causing the problem. Also, double check all the connectors to the motherboard to make sure that you put things back in their right place, and in their configuration (USB header from the case to the USB header on the motherboard and NOT the Firewire header if you have it, plus if the USB header has individual connectors be sure that they are connected to their proper pins in their proper order, which is: VCC (might be listed as Power or +5), D-, D+, Ground (or GND). For IDE connectors you need to make sure the stripe is facing the power connector on any IDE drives, and if you have a floppy drive that stripe is usually faced away from the power connector (however if take a look at the floppy drive you will sometimes see numbers listed on the connector, with 1 being on one side, and that is where the stripe side of the cable connects to). __________________ >><< Last edited by Tipstaff; Aug 23, 2009 at 01:23 AM.

Aug 25, 2009, 11:23 PM	#4
rian222 HardwareHeaven Lover Join Date: May 2006 Posts: 177 Rep Power: 0	Re: Slow Boot Up I never removed the motherboard when I was taking it apart. I was checking out my hardware on the inside to see if that might be the cause of the network issue, and I noticed the SATA cable going to my cd-rom was also unplugged, and I had been trying to figure out why it wasn't working so I could boot from a CD. I don't use my cd-rom very often. So I plugged that in and I realized one of the little levers that locks my RAM into place was open, so I clicked it shut, and put it back together. The only thing I ever had to actually take out was my GFX card, and I unplugged my HDD cables. But I checked to make sure they we're plugged in properly, and tried removing the RAM one by one, and I even unplugged the cd-rom again, but everytime I boot up it was slow. It usually boots normal for like the first three screens. The first one is the specs of my GFX card, the second one is my blue bios screen, and the third one is the one that asks if I want to boot from a CD. After I don't boot from a CD, the next screen is Windows Boot Manager, and the text scrolls across the screen very slowly until it's finally all loaded. After that, no matter what OS I boot into, it takes a long time. Currently, I'm doing a memory test, but it's been just over 24 hours and it's only 78% complete. I still can't figure out what the problem is.

Aug 26, 2009, 01:14 AM	#6
OldBuzzard DH's oldest Geek? Join Date: May 2003 Location: Cincinnati, OH Posts: 2,330 Rep Power: 91 System Specs	Re: Slow Boot Up re-re-recheck your SATA cables. I had one SATA cable to an HDD that just did not want to stay connected. It would work loose, and even though the system would detect it, it would boot just like you are describing. I eventually replaced that cable and have been problem free since then, One other thing that has cause me problems is after I have run the MSCONFIG/BOOT 'fix' for the VISTA/WIN 7 TDR problems. When you do that you also specify your max memory. If for some reason you don't get it right, or in my case select the wrong OS (I have 8 OS's on my system), the memory amount will default to 256M. When that happened a time or two, Windows took forever to bootup as well. __________________ When looking for a reason as to why things go wrong, never rule out sheer STUPIDITY

Aug 26, 2009, 12:09 PM	#7
Tipstaff HardwareHeaven Extreme Member Join Date: Jul 2002 Location: Real capital of Canada: Toronto Posts: 5,610 Rep Power: 113 System Specs	Re: Slow Boot Up Try having your Ethernet cable disconnected from the computer, and any un-needed USB devices as well during bootup to see if that increases your load time. __________________ >><<

Aug 28, 2009, 06:12 AM	#8
rian222 HardwareHeaven Lover Join Date: May 2006 Posts: 177 Rep Power: 0	Re: Slow Boot Up I've rechecked my cables several times, and I don't have anything non essential plugged into the computer. I was looking in bios, and I noticed that it has spots for 6 IDE drives. Two are taken up for my HDDs and one for my cd-rom. The first slot has the option for IDE Master 0, and the other 5 only have options for extended IDE drives. Slots 3 and 4 are taken up by my HDDs, and 6 is taken up by my cd-rom. When I look in my computer, I only see 4 sata ports. The one that I think is port 5 was what I used to have my cd-rom in; however, when I tried to put it back in a long time ago, I bent one of the pins, and have been using slot 6 ever since. I can't seem to find the other 2 sata ports anywhere, if they exist. Could this be my problem?

Aug 28, 2009, 03:52 PM	#9
procupine14 Why is it Beeping!?!?! Join Date: Apr 2007 Location: USA, Missouri Posts: 1,287 Rep Power: 35 System Specs	Re: Slow Boot Up Not 100% sure that that would be causeing your problem but its always worth a try I suppose. __________________ Laptop: HP dv6000 - Vista Ultimate (32-bit) - AMD Turion 64 X2 TL-60(2.0GHz) - NVIDIA GeForce Go 7200 256MB - 4GB Kingston DDR2 667 - 160GB 5400RPM SATA Hard Drive HTPC: Vista Ultimate 64-bit - AMD Athlon 5200+ x2 - 4GB OCZ DDR2 800 - 250GB Seagate Barracuda - Samsung EcoGreen 1TB - Hauppauge single tuner HD - ASUS Radeon HD4550 512MB - ECS RS485M-M mobo - Creative X-fi soundcard - Seasonic 300W SFX PSU Other PC: Vista Ultimate 64-bit - AMD Athlon 4200+ X2 - 4GB Crucial Ballistix DDR2 800 - 250GB Seagate Barracuda - HIS 4850 512MB - DFI Infinity NF570 SLI-M2/G - CoolerMaster 400W PSU

Aug 28, 2009, 10:33 PM	#10
deBelly HardwareHeaven Lover Join Date: Oct 2008 Location: Croatia Posts: 235 Rep Power: 24 System Specs	Re: Slow Boot Up So, it starts to hang after you get into Boot Manager? It does sound like a problem with Windows. Try to change boot device priority in BIOS. Did you try to boot with just one HDD? Do you have an old HDD that you could format and make a clean installation? Anyway, I dropped all kinds of stuff (I don't even count screws) on my motherboards and never did any damage.

Aug 29, 2009, 01:20 AM	#11
rian222 HardwareHeaven Lover Join Date: May 2006 Posts: 177 Rep Power: 0	Re: Slow Boot Up Yeah, it hangs at the Boot Manager, and then from there on out, no matter what HDD or OS I chose. I tried changing the boot priorites, plugging in one HDD at a time, and switching the cables around. Same thing every time except it fails to boot when I plug in just my secondary HDD. But that's understandable I think.

Aug 29, 2009, 11:23 AM	#12
deBelly HardwareHeaven Lover Join Date: Oct 2008 Location: Croatia Posts: 235 Rep Power: 24 System Specs	Re: Slow Boot Up How many OS do you have in your boot.ini?

Sep 1, 2009, 07:59 PM	#13
rian222 HardwareHeaven Lover Join Date: May 2006 Posts: 177 Rep Power: 0	Re: Slow Boot Up I can't seem to find that file. Where's it located?

Sep 2, 2009, 08:57 AM	#14
deBelly HardwareHeaven Lover Join Date: Oct 2008 Location: Croatia Posts: 235 Rep Power: 24 System Specs	Re: Slow Boot Up Sorry, I'm still on XP and I forget how different Vista is. Instead of boot.ini Vista has Boot Configuration Data (BCD) store which appears to be more complicated to manually work with. More info here. There are tools like Easy BCD, but I don't know if that would be useful. Insted, maybe you could try to repair BCD store using startup repair options. It's described here. Last edited by deBelly; Sep 2, 2009 at 09:05 AM.

Sep 2, 2009, 04:22 PM	#15
rian222 HardwareHeaven Lover Join Date: May 2006 Posts: 177 Rep Power: 0	Re: Slow Boot Up Thanks, I'll look into those later today probably when I have time after work. When I bought my computer, it came with Vista pre-installed on it, and I decided to install XP on it after. XP wrote over Vista's bootloader, and I had to reinstall it using VistaBootPro or EasyBCD. I can't remember which. Could that have had something to do with it?

Sep 12, 2009, 01:36 AM	#17
rian222 HardwareHeaven Lover Join Date: May 2006 Posts: 177 Rep Power: 0	Re: Slow Boot Up So I tried reinstalling Vista, and it went without errors. However, when I was erasing all my partitions and trying to format them, it took like 5 mins. I clicked the format button, and it went grey, then my computer loaded for about 5 mins, and it became clickable again. It was weird cause my computer has been doing everything at about a tenth the speed it should, and I know it would probably take a while to format a 350gb hard drive. I'm not sure it even formatted. And when it finished installing Vista, the problem was still there.

Sep 12, 2009, 01:57 AM	#18
IvanV HardwareHeaven Extreme Member Join Date: Dec 2004 Posts: 3,522 Rep Power: 102 System Specs	Re: Slow Boot Up Try listening to the hard drive very carefully. If it makes clicking sounds, or spins up often, it may be that you have a faulty PSU plug (loose, or really faulty). It happened to me once, and I know of some other people as well. For some weird reason, the system refused to crash, it was just slow as hell when it had to access the hard drive (not that I had it like that for long, I saw something was wrong and restarted and then I noticed the clicking and spin-ups; scared me senseless, I thought that the drive was failing). EDIT: Also, you may try to reset the CMOS. I lost two days trying to figure out why my new build refused to boot 2 out of 3 times (I tried two different hard drives, OS install media, live CDs... I also updated the BIOS so I thought that I had it covered, but no) so now I recommend that for any sort of weird problem. __________________ Feed the porkers and don't touch the buttons!