PC Prob - Slow Startup?

Been having a prob with my PC recently which did actually occur as well in my last system, but went away eventually (and never returned), but this one's been doing it for the past two weeks now to the point of annoyance/concern...

Anyway, everytime I boot-up my PC (cold & warm boot), the BIOS always locks up at the RAM check section for a few sec to verify my 2gb of RAM, where previously it was instantaneous...

Is this something to worry about? Couldn't find much to Google aside from people having actual Windows loading slow-downs and all...

RAM is still under warrenty, so if there's a chance it's a fault with that, I can get it replaced no prob. Will probably do a RAM check with memtest if I can find my OEM copy of Nero Express laying around.....




Guess I may as well use this thread for another thing that's been bugging me which I'm trying to avoid formatting my PC and doing a clean-start up for, basically, WinXP takes a good 2 minutes some once the Welcome screen hits to load/process everything, and all I got the thing to load is my Firewall, A/V, SoundBlaster control panel (I prefer it to the standard WinXP one), and a few files associated with the Japanese IME panel...
(and I've got it all under control via Spybot, love that program)

Maybe my memory (my brain, not the RAM) is just fuzzy, but I never recalled WinXP taking freaking ages to load-up before, more-so with a Welcome screen that just sits there looking at me for 10-15sec before my desktop displays...


Just figured I may as well see what I can do about this system before it possibly breaks, costing me some cash.

The two problems are not necessarily unrelated. If you are experiencing RAM / CPU / motherboard problems and WinXP problems, I'd work on the hardware first. You can't reasonably expect XP to work correctly if the hardware is failing.

So, the RAM checks. You said it yourself, if it's taking several seconds to check 2 gig of ram, then there's probably something wrong. I would take out a module and see how it boots. If that was ok, I'd swap in the other module and see how it boots. If still no problem, I'd suspect that the newest RAM module was slower that the original module, meaning that the entire memory subsystem has slowed down to compensate. If the slowdown is apparent on both modules, I' d take them to a mate's computer that uses the same memory and test it out there, just in case you have a motherboard / CPU failure.

Assuming that the XP slowdowns are seperate from your memory issues, how long since you've defragged the computer using something like Perfect Disk? The included defragger in XP is ok, but Perfect Disk can get in and defrag your page file and other system files. How long is it since you've done a cleanup of all the temporary files on your machine? The sheer volume of these little buggers can substantially slow down the file system.

Also have a look in the system logs, particularly the Application and System logs for errors in the startup. Also, have a good hunt through your system's startup with MSConfig and see just how much junk is in there.

If it all seems to be ok and your machine is running slow, get a S.M.A.R.T event viewer and have a look at the error logs of the hard disk. You may find that the HD is on the way out - which could be causing the hand at the start, if the BIOS is having trouble actually autodetecting the HD.

Keep us posted.

Neil

I had slow boot times, maybe a 30 seconds before windows would start to boot. I got a new HD recently, reinstalled and it takes less than that to boot all the way to the desktop now.

It sounds like Windows is about ready for its routine reformat reinstall treatment. Go on, spoil yourself!

With the RAM check taking longer than normal. I had a similar problem some time ago. Turned out that the bios battery had gone flat and the bios had reverted all settings back to defaults which included setting the 'Quick Boot' option to disabled instead of enabled which is what I had set it to. When it's set to disabled it does a more 'in depth' memory check on boot. Everything else went to the 'auto' settings which meant that everything still worked, but the telltale sign was the longer boot time because of the extended ram check. Maybe something similar has happened to you.

Hope this helps.

Will try that, no clue why I didn't bother trying that since I do happen to have 2 1gb chips here.
(dual-channel setup and all, gotta love it)


I got a 160gb HD (Maxtor brand, and yes I know they're prone to running hot) that's got a good 60gb free on it, and according to a quick analyze from the WinXP one (too cheap to purchase a defragger ;/), everything's looking good aside from a couple video game files.
(which are from games that prefer to store 2-4gb's worth of data in a single large file)


My Startup is fine, already had it tidied up long ago with SpyBot, and it still appears that way in both that & MSConfig.

Where-abouts can I check the system logs btw?


Any idea on where to get a freeware tool of the sorts?



I would, but I want to make sure my RAM isn't flawed first, else installation issues may occur. ;/
(that and I need to buy me a DVD burner, cause I'm tired of 5+ CD's worth of backups)


My mobo doesn't have the said option and does it on its own accord.

Control Panel -> Administrative Tools -> Event Viewer


I seem to remember the latest Hiren's Ultimate Boot CD having a tool to look at that.

As far as a routine reformat goes, I've had a single XP install last 4 years. I managed to trash the MBR and partition table one day, so I started from scratch. That install went through two laptops (a Dell to an Acer), and if it wasn't for the fact that my new Acer that I bought last week didn't have a ready collection of drivers, that install would have gone into a third machine.

I find XP to be like a car: if you do lots of maintenance (regular defrags, cleanouts and registry fixups), it lasts and lasts.

A good defragger is worth it's weight in gold. Perfect Disk, for example, can defrag your swap file. Since the swap file rows as needed into empty space, it is quite liable to get heavily fragmented and kill system performance, and there's nothing the default XP defragger can do about it.

That's how I been trying to treat the thing, I hit up the ol' A/V scan (now if only AVG Free wasn't expiring permanently next year), SpyBot/Ad-Aware for spyware, and CCleaner for doing a lot of the hardwork for me regarding registry clean-up/temp files that are more like perma-temp files.

Now to actually get off my lazy butt, shut this PC off, and do some mem-stick swapping...

[EDIT] Seem to have no probs with the Event Viewer, so I guess my HD being a problem may be out of the question.