Slo boot. Black screen for 10 minutes

[Guest]

I have recently re-installed Windows XP (home edition) on an old Dell
Dimensions 4100. To install I did the following;

Changed the Boot order to make the CD ROM number 1
Reformatted the C-drive and performed a Clean Install

Changed the boot order back to the defaults.

Now the startup is very slow. It starts with a black screen for 10 minutes,
then the wallpaper for 10 minutes sits, and then launches normally.

Other symptoms:

Windows Defrag utility won't work (although Perfectdisk runs and says my
C-drive does not need to be defragged).
Bootup is equally slow in safe mode
The bootup problem is the same whether I'm running plain 'ol XP or XP sp2

The problem is the same whether on a Fat32 formatted disk or a NTFS

Any thoughts? Did I change the bio by accident? Thanks.

Greg

 

[Roberto]

I have recently re-installed Windows XP (home edition) on an old Dell
Dimensions 4100. To install I did the following;

Changed the Boot order to make the CD ROM number 1
Reformatted the C-drive and performed a Clean Install

Changed the boot order back to the defaults.

Now the startup is very slow. It starts with a black screen for 10
minutes,
then the wallpaper for 10 minutes sits, and then launches normally.

Other symptoms:

Windows Defrag utility won't work (although Perfectdisk runs and says my
C-drive does not need to be defragged).
Bootup is equally slow in safe mode
The bootup problem is the same whether I'm running plain 'ol XP or XP sp2

The problem is the same whether on a Fat32 formatted disk or a NTFS

Any thoughts? Did I change the bio by accident? Thanks.

Greg

Was it working OK before you re installed XP ?
Do you have any peripherals attached during boot, if so does
unplugging then improve OS load time
Have you applied updated drivers from the Dell site [ not generic MS
ones]
That box came with 256MB RAM as standard ,how much is in there now.

rgds
Roberto