Restarts Suddenly Taking Awhile -- Black Screen after Windows Spla

[Guest]

I've got a fairly high end PC that I normally don't have any trouble with.
It's got a 3.6 gigahertz processor and 3 gigabytes of RAM. NVIDIA 6800GT
video card.

I'm running XP Pro SP2

Recently, on restarts, the following occurs:

Machine shuts down
BIOS and other information comes up, goes past
Windows XP Pro splash screen comes up with the progress bar, this finishes
rapidly
Screen goes totally black -- meanwhile, I can hear the hard drive doing
stuff for a few seconds, then it goes quiet.

After exactly two minutes, the "welcome" screen flashes by for a couple
seconds and everything will appear as normal.

To the best of my knowledge, performance once the machine is up is as good
as ever -- just takes a LOT longer to get to the desktop than it did
previously. This is a machine that used to take about 45 seconds from cold
boot to ready state.

Any ideas? I've updated video drivers already. I did not fully uninstall
the drivers and do all that, because I was hoping to avoid it.

 

[Rock]

I've got a fairly high end PC that I normally don't have any trouble with.
It's got a 3.6 gigahertz processor and 3 gigabytes of RAM. NVIDIA 6800GT
video card.

I'm running XP Pro SP2

Recently, on restarts, the following occurs:

Machine shuts down
BIOS and other information comes up, goes past
Windows XP Pro splash screen comes up with the progress bar, this finishes
rapidly
Screen goes totally black -- meanwhile, I can hear the hard drive doing
stuff for a few seconds, then it goes quiet.

After exactly two minutes, the "welcome" screen flashes by for a couple
seconds and everything will appear as normal.

To the best of my knowledge, performance once the machine is up is as good
as ever -- just takes a LOT longer to get to the desktop than it did
previously. This is a machine that used to take about 45 seconds from
cold
boot to ready state.

Any ideas? I've updated video drivers already. I did not fully uninstall
the drivers and do all that, because I was hoping to avoid it.

Is it also slow booting into safe mode? Does this occur in all user
accounts or just one? What changed in the system (hardware and software)
between the time it booted quickly and now? You could do some clean boot
troubleshooting.

Clean Boot Troubleshooting

How to Troubleshoot By Using the Msconfig Utility in Windows XP
http://support.microsoft.com/?id=310560

How to perform advanced clean-boot troubleshooting in Windows XP
http://support.microsoft.com/?id=316434

How to perform a clean boot in Windows XP
http://support.microsoft.com/?id=310353

 

[Guest]

It seems to be with all user accounts, and yes, it doesn't matter whether I
choose safe mode or not. Still slow.

 

[mikeyhsd]

might give this a try.
delete the contents of the prefetch folder.
just the contents, not the folder.
its a sub folder under windows.
xp will rebuild the contents as you work later.

of course our favorite net nanny will tell it will not help.
but unless someone tries there is no way to tell./



(e-mail address removed)



I've got a fairly high end PC that I normally don't have any trouble with.
It's got a 3.6 gigahertz processor and 3 gigabytes of RAM. NVIDIA 6800GT
video card.

I'm running XP Pro SP2

Recently, on restarts, the following occurs:

Machine shuts down
BIOS and other information comes up, goes past
Windows XP Pro splash screen comes up with the progress bar, this finishes
rapidly
Screen goes totally black -- meanwhile, I can hear the hard drive doing
stuff for a few seconds, then it goes quiet.

After exactly two minutes, the "welcome" screen flashes by for a couple
seconds and everything will appear as normal.

To the best of my knowledge, performance once the machine is up is as good
as ever -- just takes a LOT longer to get to the desktop than it did
previously. This is a machine that used to take about 45 seconds from cold
boot to ready state.

Any ideas? I've updated video drivers already. I did not fully uninstall
the drivers and do all that, because I was hoping to avoid it.