Slow Boot Up - Won't boot Up

[Jack Bruss]

We can't get my wifes computer to boot up. It acts like it's going to boot,
but it is verrry slow, and gets to her wallpaper screen, but just stays
there for hours and goes no further. This just started happening last
night. We did manage to boot up in safe mode, but couldn't do anything
there, because it was very very slow. We have McAfee running on the
machine, but we can't get to it to run a virus scan now. We replaced the
cmos battery, but no change.

This computer is about 4 years old, a Duron 1 G chip on an Asus mb. It's
been running fine for the past 4 years, but it has been getting slower over
the past month.

Any ideas on what to do next?

Thanks,

Jack

 

[Roberto]

We can't get my wifes computer to boot up. It acts like it's going to
boot, but it is verrry slow, and gets to her wallpaper screen, but just
stays there for hours and goes no further. This just started happening
last night. We did manage to boot up in safe mode, but couldn't do
anything there, because it was very very slow. We have McAfee running on
the machine, but we can't get to it to run a virus scan now. We replaced
the cmos battery, but no change.

This computer is about 4 years old, a Duron 1 G chip on an Asus mb. It's
been running fine for the past 4 years, but it has been getting slower
over the past month.

Any ideas on what to do next?

Thanks,

Jack

Start by doing a clean boot
MS Article ID: 310353

rgds
Roberto

 

[Jack Bruss]

Well, we got the computer booted, ran McAfee, Spybot, and Adware, and found
nothing. The computer runs very very slowly, and doesn't even open some
programs - they just hang. I looked at Task Manager, and even with no
applications listed the CPU usage jumps from about 5% to 50 or more just by
moving the mouse around.

Any ideas?

Thanks

 

[Roberto]

Well, we got the computer booted, ran McAfee, Spybot, and Adware, and
found nothing. The computer runs very very slowly, and doesn't even open
some programs - they just hang. I looked at Task Manager, and even with
no applications listed the CPU usage jumps from about 5% to 50 or more
just by moving the mouse around.

Any ideas?

Thanks

Are you saying it still runs slowly even after doing a clean boot as
per the
MS Article ID: 310353 ?

Also it's best to do an independant virus scan, I like
sysclean http://www.trendmicro.com/download/dcs.asp
and here for the latest pattern file
http://www.trendmicro.com/download/viruspattern.asp
smitfraud http://www.ik-cs.com/programs/virtools/SmitFraud.exe


rgds
Roberto

 

[Malke]

Well, we got the computer booted, ran McAfee, Spybot, and Adware, and
found
nothing. The computer runs very very slowly, and doesn't even open
some
programs - they just hang. I looked at Task Manager, and even with no
applications listed the CPU usage jumps from about 5% to 50 or more
just by moving the mouse around. ..

If you know the computer is clean and it is still slow to boot after
doing the clean boot, then it is quite possible you are having hardware
issues. First, see if the drive is using PIO transfer mode instead of
some flavor of DMA. Here is a page by MVP Hans-Georg Michna that
explains that:

http://www.michna.com/kb/WxDMA.htm

You might want to go through at least some of the general hardware
troubleshooting steps at the link below such as testing the hard drive,
cleaning out any dust bunnies, etc.:

http://www.elephantboycomputers.com/page2.html#Hardware_Troubleshooting

Malke

 

[Jack Bruss]

Well, we solved the problem by installing a new, second, hard drive, and
made it the boot drive. Everything is fine now, except I don't know the
exact cause of the problem. But having a second hard drive is a good thing,
so all is well.

Thanks for all the help,

Jack