Very Long Boot up times

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Dedatorv

n00b
Joined
Apr 19, 2004
Messages
26
I've recently built a new computer here are the specs

AMD Athlon X2 4800+
Asus A8N-SLI
1 Gig of DDR400
1 74GB Raptor and a Seagate 120GB IDE HD
eVGA 7900GT
Win XP Home

For a while it was working perfectly, A couple weeks later the boot up process took an insane amount of time, it would take about 1 min 45 seconds of showing the windows loading screen with the scrolling blue bar. Once it would actually get to windows and load a few programs it would reset itself.

I could boot into safe mode and do everything fine. I thought it was some sort of spyware or virus, scanned it with plenty of software and found nothing. I decided to use CCleaner and get rid of any possibly problems with that, that seemed to have fixed it for some time. Bout a week or so later it happened again, the long boot up time followed by reseting after windows is loaded. Went into safe mode and did everything all over again, the only problem is that it didnt fix it and nothing would.

So I just said screw it and I am sick of dealing with the problem. Disconnected my IDE drive so I could format my raptor and have it labeled as C Drive. Formatted, everything was fine, after installing some basic things it all seemed okay. So I reconnected my IDE drive and installed some more things and when I reset my computer the boot up process takes forever again. I've timed how long it takes and it is around 150 seconds, I've tried using a bunch of software to analyze it and see what drivers are being loaded that could possibly be causing the issue but I cant tell. I can get into windows fine, it wont reset itself after I formatted it but the boot up process takes forever still.

Anyone know some options or software that can tell me whats going on? Is it some driver having problems? Or is it some virus that has been on my IDE drive?
 
I've tried Bootvis, ran it, looked at all the drivers loading, Couldnt quite fully understand everything going on with it. I ran the optimization with it but it didn't help out at all. I have a feeling that there is some driver or virus that could possibly be causing this.
 
agreed bootvis can really help.
The XP boot process multi tasks and this helps optimise where bottlenecks can occur by optimising what loads and when so timeouts are avoided better.

Another thing that can make the boot slow is using IP blocker software.
I'm using Protowall for protection from known undesirable parts of the web and the blocklists include Zone Alarms sites.
Zone Alarm can sometimes take minutes to time out before it loads and holds up my boot process while it does so.

Check what is loading on boot with Autoruns, many things can be disabled with no problem and you might find some software in there you didnt know was on your system.
Scan for Spyware etc.
 
This is a fresh install, I mean I have only installed the necessary things like mobo drivers, firefox, graphic drivers etc. So there is nothing that is on start up.
 
Any yellow ! in device manager? If you haven't already I would download all the latest drivers for your hardware and install them. Whats on the CD's supplied with your hardware is likely outdated anyway.
 
alphanumeric said:
Any yellow ! in device manager? If you haven't already I would download all the latest drivers for your hardware and install them. Whats on the CD's supplied with your hardware is likely outdated anyway.
Click to expand...

Thank you so much! That was it. For some reason the second LAN port on the mobo was detected but did not have the drivers installed, I dont know why it bothered detecting it. Just disabled it, reset and was back to windows in under 30 seconds!
 
Ugh, I thought my computer was in okay condition. Now it is back to crapping out on me.

After a while of using it, my computer decided to take an extremely long time booting up, I realized that I had my thumb drive plugged in the whole time. Could that have made the boot process very long?

Anyways, I am back to the old problem I had.

For a while it was working perfectly, A couple weeks later the boot up process took an insane amount of time, it would take about 1 min 45 seconds of showing the windows loading screen with the scrolling blue bar. Once it would actually get to windows and load a few programs it would reset itself.

I could boot into safe mode and do everything fine. I thought it was some sort of spyware or virus, scanned it with plenty of software and found nothing.
Click to expand...

This time I figured out what was causing my problem. I installed the AMD Dual Core Optimizer and let the computer reset itself, Thats when it all started again. It would take ages for it to detect my IDE drives, once it found them it would display all of the drives at once then would take almost 2 minutes to load windows. Once windows login was shown and windows started to actually load programs it would reset itself.

So I have found the source of the problems. The AMD Dual Core Optimizer, I thought I could just boot to safe mode and get rid of the problem.

Nope, got into safe mode and attempted to uninstall the optimizer then I get a message about it saying that the "Windows Installer Software was not properly installed or you are running in Safe Mode" error. Meaning I cannot uninstall the optimizer. What can I do to get around it?
 
Are you using the Nvidia SATA/IDE drivers? IF you are this is your problem. When you install the Nforce drivers, dont use the sata driver, just install the NIC, and SMBus drivers. Format 1 more time, and just install those "2" that I told you, and you'll be good to go.
 
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