Computer hangs at startup ... for 5 minutes!!

[Guest]

I have a desktop computer with Abit motherboard(SG-80), with a pentium 4 cpu,
3ghz and running a new Vista Business operating system. It worked fine for a
week, but when I asked it to perform a "restart" from the START button,
rather than SHUT DOWN and then start up again, it now shows the first boot
screen with the "Main Processor: ..." and hangs with that one line for five
minutes and then proceeds to boot properly and as far as I can tell works
fine after that, until I shut the computer off and try to start it again, and
it takes another five minutes before it proceeds to finish booting. There is
nothing that can be done on the keyboard to change the time interval it
seems.

Any thoughts as to what needs to be done to solve this problem? Is this a
Vista problem, virus, or something else that has changed the BIOS? I cleared
the cmos but the only thing that that did was to put the date and time back
to default.

Thanks,

Blue Vista

 

[Guest]

Hi bluevista,

Your system is hanging in the part of the POST procedure where the system
RAM is being assessed. To check this out, remove all but 1 stick of RAM and
reboot. Repeat this procedure for each individual stick. When you try to boot
up with the faulty stick, you should notice a delay. The sticks that are
working correctly should boot up much quicker than the faulty one. The only
solution for you in this case is to replace that RAM stick. Be sure to match
the others in your system.
Dwarf