Extremely long boottime

Orfu

Hi,

I'm new to this forum, hope im posting in the right place.

My problem is as follows: Everytime i boot windows, my pc displays the pentium 4 logo for an abnormally long time.. I didn't have this issue before.. the only problem is i don't know why it suddenly happened.

After having displayed the pentium 4 logo for so long, my pc goes on booting, which takes a normal amount of time from then on.

I hope my problem is clear, i searched the internet for possible solutions, and I thought it might have something to do with my dvd/cd drive? I temporarily added an extra harddrive a while ago, and i unplugged a cable temporarily, to be able to use the harddrive (master/slave).

Orfu

Orfu

I've timed my boottime, in segments and it comes down to this

doing a cold start:
computer shows pentium 4 logo for 2:18
after that, it takes another 42 seconds to hear the windows startup sound.
then it takes an additional 1-2 minutes before all the programs have been executed into windows.

hope this helps.. i havent had a reply yet

kryyst

Anytime your Post screen is taking a long time to process it's because it's having issues identifying hardware - normally drives. I would suggest going into your bios and making sure that the drives it's showing are the ones physically attached in your machine. If they all match up correctly then double check that you have any jumbers (master/slave) set apropriately on each of the drives.

As for your windows boot time the most common reasons for it to take so long to apply settings are network issues or just a massive abundance of programs that are auto loading at start. To clear up network issues if you are running DHCP then go into your network settings and make the address static that can speed up times.

For the auto loading, well just depends. If you have about 10 icons next to your clock on the start bar I'd say you have to much crap loading and can cut it back. Also if you have a lot of programs in your Start folder you should go through there and remove ones you don't need.

Beyond that the regular virus/spy-ware and disk defrag should also be considered.

Orfu

thanks for your reply.

I'm not so good with all these bios things. Which drives should be set as master or slave, and which devices should be primary boot device, secondary boot device, etc. Im positive my computer is completely clean when it comes to viruses/spyware.

I also have more than 10 icons next to my clock yes.. but theyre mostly programs i really need, like sound manager, ati tray, my mouse driver, antivirus, keyboard driver, wireless network thing, antispyware, daemon tools, and a program called winroll, which adds a functionality i really like.

edcentric

During the first phase of the boot the OS is looking at hardware. Common reasons for delays are often related to having the system look for hardware that is no longer there. Maybe it is still looking for your other CD, in some cases you may have it looking for a hard drive raid array that doesn't exist.

Go ahead and open your bios at boot. If you can't find what you are looking for or get confused you always have the 'do not save changes' option when you close it.
Tell us what mobo you have and maybe we can help with settings.

Orfu

thanks alot Ill check my bios again, could you give me any hints as to what i should be looking for? Does mobo mean; which type of bios I have?

thx alot for all the help. i really appreciate it.
I think this may have been caused by a harddrive that i temporarily had added instead of my cd/dvd-rw station. Maybe i didn't adjust the master/slave settings correctly. Does anyone know which devices should be put as primary master, prim slave, sec master and sec slave?
if any of you ever need help on software problems, thats where i may be of assistance! pm me anytime!!

kryyst

Your first drive will be primary master. After that it doesn't really mater much. Just ensure that if you have more then one drive on an ide channel one is master the other is slave. If your PC (and most do) supports Cable Select then the first drive on the ide ribbon will be master and the second will be slave.

I would check in your bios where ever it has the drives defined. There is a good chance that they aren't set to auto detect and it's being told that a drive is different then what it actually is. This will really screw up your post times.

Orfu

I'm using phoenix awardbios

settings are as followed:
IDE Primary Master: ST3200021A
IDE Primary Slave: IDE DVD-ROM 16X
IDE Secondary Master: Pioneer DVD RW DVR-
IDE Secondary Slave: None

somewhere else i found that my first boot device is set to: HDD0

I can't figure out how to put anything for secondary slave.. it's on auto but its still set to none. and manual wont do anything either... should i open up my pc to check whether anythings not connected correctly? or something?

Orfu

Right now im guessing could this have something to do with daemon tools??
I went to that website, checked out the forum, and saw similar problems..

And something about having to disable IDE drives for daemon tools to work properly?? idk. any tips?