Slow reformat and Boot Up
I need to ask some questions if I may, A buddy brought his computer over and said it takes for ever to boot up, so instead of goofing around I reformatted it, well guess what it took 30 hours to reformat and load windows, I now have windows loaded but it is real real real slow, I tried new cables, new hard drive and still the same thing, any help PLEASE.
By the way it is a Dell 4600 512Ram XP Pro
By the way it is a Dell 4600 512Ram XP Pro
0
Comments
What is the reported speed of the CPU in the bios? Could be that the settings got screwed up and it's set to run way under speed. I'd suggest doing a bios reset setting everything to default and making sure that it's all reporting correctly. Then check from there. If things are still painfully slow. You could make a linux or windows live CD and see how well that runs, that would remove the harddrive from the equation. However if there is something wrong with your IDE bus it'd still be painfully slow and likely not work at all because it should also effect your CD-ROM.
How does the system sound overall? Are the fans all running at full speed, does the harddrive spin up to a nice quiet humm etc...
Ok let me start at the beginning, all fans run and sound good, hard drive spins nice, bios was just updated but how do I convert it back, I think I will try that and see.
If by updated you mean flashed, then going back could cause more problems. However resetting it to defaults is usually pretty easy. There should be a set of 3 post jumper on your mobo hopefully called CMOS RESET or CMOS or BIOS. If you move the jumper from the 2 posts it's currently covering to the other 2 and reboot that'll reset your bios. Then power off flip the jumper back and reboot into your bios. Inside of the bios there should be a safe mode default setting. Start with that and see if that makes your life better.
It's not uncommon after you've flashed a bios that they've added new settings into it for different cpu/ram configs and your original timings are no longer valid.
YES the BIOS was just flashed, so should I do this or will it cause more problems, also can I just take the battery out on will that reset the BIOS.
also the only jumper I see is Clear Password.
So do you think resetting BIOS will help.
Could it be my cable to dvd rom and maybe slow getting info to hard drive, just a thought.
PROBLEM SOLVED< HERE IS THE SOLUTION>
You need to enter bios setup (F2 at system startup) and check the entry for CPU Information. This item has an entry for processor speed on many Dells. It can be set for Normal or Compatible, and should be Normal. If it has been set to Compatible the speed is drastically reduced.
Thank you for any one who helped.