booting takes 1 hour!!!!

  • Thread starter Thread starter brian
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brian

Hello,
I have a slight problem and hopefully someone out there
can give me some advice. I have a dell inspiron 8200 with
512mb ram and I believe a 1.2 gig pentium 4. Sometimes
the machine boots in about 2-3 minutes and other times it
take about an hour. When taking an hour the hard drive
light is on constantly. It never freezes or gives an
error message. Does anyone know what causes this?
Thanks,
Brian
 
Sounds like it could be a failing hard drive. Have you run any diagnostics?
What's the make and model of the HD?
 
Hi, Brian.

There are many possibilities. One is that your hard drive may be dying.
:>(

There may be errors on the surface of the disk that requires many attempts
to read the sector, then many more retries on the next sector, ad infinitum.
If the disk is truly bad, the program should give up quickly, but when it is
borderline, the program will eventually be satisfied with this sector and
then try the next one. But the problem might not be on the drive itself,
but in the cable or connector.

If you are on a network, your computer may be searching for a non-existent
connection. Or if you've removed a drive or other hardware, it may be
searching for something that is no longer there. When it FINALLY gives up,
the bootup continues normally from that point, unless the missing whatever
is critical to your machine - and it apparently is not, in your case.

In any case, your problem is most likely in the hardware, not the operating
system or software.

RC
 
Download a diagnostic utility from the drive manufacturer's web site.
Normally these will create a bootable floppy and run the test from there.
 
brian said:
I have a slight problem and hopefully someone out there
can give me some advice. I have a dell inspiron 8200 with
512mb ram and I believe a 1.2 gig pentium 4. Sometimes
the machine boots in about 2-3 minutes and other times it
take about an hour.
Click to expand...

Another point to check is to see if you have an antivirus set to do a
check at boot, which may be a cursory one usually or a thorough one say
twice a week.
 
I also have a Dell 8200 Dimension with 1 GB Ram and a Pentium4 2.24
that I've experienced the same problem for the last 18 months.. I've tried
everything that I could read or access including updating all my drivers,
change some entries in the Registry, and make some adjustments that
were recommended in some of the help-type websites for XP..

I have WinXP Pro and it has been very frustrating since it always took
about 3 to 5 minutes for the shutdown or reboot process.. Nothing that
I did helped the problem..

All during this time I've had Zone Alarm Pro as my firewall, and E-trust
Antivirus and used AdAware and Spybot to keep my system clean.. Then
for some reason I installed AVG 7 Anti-virus and used it with the E-trust..

After a few months, for some reason I couldn't get AVG to update the
signature files and I finally decided to uninstall it and stay with
E-Trust..

When I did, during the uninstall process, a window popped up and asked
me if I wanted AVG to 'reset my Windows to it's default settings'...
Luckily I said Yes and the uninstall completed and required that I reboot
the system..

It was amazing!!! After that happened, when I reboot now or shut down
it is amost instantaneous.. It takes literally a few seconds for the two
shutdown images to come up (shutting down and saving data) and the
computer shuts down.. It now takes no more than 15 seconds or less
total time..

I don't know what the 'reset Windows to it's default settings' did but it
evidently did something that WinXP has caused the slowdown... I don't
know if it will help you but I'd install AVG and then uninstall it to see
if the same thing could happen for you..

Jack
 
The best thing to do on any new Dell purchase, is spend
about an hour "De-Dell-ifying" it. They ship PC's with many
applications and tools that just bog the thing down. Dell is
nearly unbeatable for pricing, but their images leave a lot to
be desired.
Just last week, I did this DeDellifying process on one of
my son's friend's 1100 notebook. Afterwards, he had a
quick/snappy boot up and shutdown & the memory usage
went down considerably.

Dell is particularly bad about Startups & Watchdog apps.

JR said:
I also have a Dell 8200 Dimension with 1 GB Ram and a Pentium4 2.24
that I've experienced the same problem for the last 18 months.. I've tried
everything that I could read or access including updating all my drivers,
change some entries in the Registry, and make some adjustments that
were recommended in some of the help-type websites for XP..

I have WinXP Pro and it has been very frustrating since it always took
about 3 to 5 minutes for the shutdown or reboot process.. Nothing that
I did helped the problem..

All during this time I've had Zone Alarm Pro as my firewall, and E-trust
Antivirus and used AdAware and Spybot to keep my system clean.. Then
for some reason I installed AVG 7 Anti-virus and used it with the
E-trust..

After a few months, for some reason I couldn't get AVG to update the
signature files and I finally decided to uninstall it and stay with
E-Trust..

When I did, during the uninstall process, a window popped up and asked
me if I wanted AVG to 'reset my Windows to it's default settings'...
Luckily I said Yes and the uninstall completed and required that I reboot
the system..

It was amazing!!! After that happened, when I reboot now or shut down
it is amost instantaneous.. It takes literally a few seconds for the two
shutdown images to come up (shutting down and saving data) and the
computer shuts down.. It now takes no more than 15 seconds or less
total time..

I don't know what the 'reset Windows to it's default settings' did but it
evidently did something that WinXP has caused the slowdown... I don't
know if it will help you but I'd install AVG and then uninstall it to see
if the same thing could happen for you..

Jack
Click to expand...
 
R. McCarty said:
Dell is particularly bad about Startups & Watchdog apps.
Click to expand...

Sad really. They didn't used to be that way. HP and PB used to be the
kings of crap startup items you dont want. It's a shame you have to tune
up a brand new Dell when you get it, but yes, its worth it. Heck, it's
like buying new car and then having to clean it out. I'm sure the techs
at Dell hate it but I'm also sure the marketing dept wins out in the
boardroom. Heck, if I got a Dell and had to immediately spend hours
getting the thing to work properly I'd ask for for money for time spent.
When they refuse heck, challenge part of your credit card bill. Tell
your credit card company you want a $120 credit on your Dell because it
didn't work properly when bought new. Fight back.
 
Hello,
I have a slight problem and hopefully someone out there
can give me some advice. I have a dell inspiron 8200 with
512mb ram and I believe a 1.2 gig pentium 4. Sometimes
the machine boots in about 2-3 minutes and other times it
take about an hour. When taking an hour the hard drive
light is on constantly. It never freezes or gives an
error message. Does anyone know what causes this?
Thanks,
Brian
Click to expand...

what happens in safe mode?

mebbe a service is have issues starting?

try creating and logging on with a new user?

check the event viewer?

to log your boot, open boot.ini with any text editor and add the
switch /bootlog after /fastdetect. the boot log will live in
%systemroot%/ntbtlog.txt
 
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