Help with slow boot process

[Xerapis]

I tried taking out the other ram.  No joy.

Double-checked the motherboard manual.  It's in the right slots.

HDTACH read:
WDC WD2500KS
Tested on 2006-08-29 at 21:50
Random access: 13.2ms
CPU Utilization: 7%(+/-2%)
Average read: 53.0 MB/s

No cables in the wrong way.  Floppy drive not even connected.

[Lt.Dan]

Bloody hell, for $450 you could buy a cheap computer with Vista installed then use the back-up disks to upgrade your existing PC.

[Trippy]

Have you double-checked that you don't still have StarForce installed?

[Xerapis]

Yes.  NOOOOO Starforce.  Ran the uninstall, triple-checked the drivers folder, checked the drivers again through the device manager, and even cleared out the registry with regedit.  Had to change the permissions first.  Fuckers.

It's dead, Jim.

And I had the slowdown before the Starforce.  Not that Starforce is innocent, by any means.  It DID kill my external drive.

[Trippy]

Out of ideas at the moment then.

[Yegolev]

RMA + buy something else?

[Wolf]

Why don't you just pick up the whole thing and get it to where you bought the new harware? Let them figure it out, that's what their job is, right?

[Trippy]

Why don't you just pick up the whole thing and get it to where you bought the new harware? Let them figure it out, that's what their job is, right?

Well, since it otherwise seems to be working fine they'll probably just say "working as intended".

[Engels]

Xerapis, did you try simply using your old ram? Its not clear from your post if you simply stuck to the new ram or went back to the old one. Also, post the specs on your ram sticks. Often times a ram mismatch can cause system slowness, although most of the time it simply will refuse to boot. Scraping the bottom of the barrel in terms of solutions, I know.

[Brolan]

Stuff to try:

USB - You tried eliminating USB devices during the boot, right?  If not, boot with each disconnected and see if that helps.

BIOS - Do you have the newest firmware for your motherboard?  If not, try updating.  You can also try reloading the BIOS defaults and doing a cold boot.

Windows - Do you have the newest drivers for your devices?  Try to update as many as possible.

Good luck!

[Flood]

Just to chip in here.

I don't want to cover any old ground since everyone gave you good advice, and some of the guys are extremely knowledgeable about computers (Much more so than me).


That being said, my gut tells me to tell you to make sure all your devices and components have the correct and/or most recent drivers and firmware installed.  Sometimes something real oddballl can cause your rig to hang or drag.  (I just updated my DVR's firmware for example)

I'd do some Google-Fu on your mobo's BIOS and possibly SATA drivers, and do some research to see if there's a "proper" way to install or config your mobo.  Again as an example - I am a DFI user, and when doing a fresh install of OS and system drivers if you install the Nvidia IDE drivers at all it gives you the haunted rig and makes your comp display all sorts of erratic symptoms. 

My feeling is cables plugged in wrong, something not updated or something not configured properly in your BIOS.  Doesn't seem like a component thing, seems like Windows trying to smooth over something in it's system files to me.  *shrug*

 

[Lantyssa]

It's SATA...brand new (for me) Western Digital 250g.

I recently got a SATA drive to replace my IDEs, but before using it had to do an emergancy backup of my friend's machine.  It took forever, but seemed to work without any other problems.  When the drive couldn't be seen by his motherboard I figured out the problem...

Have you tried setting the HD's jumpers from SATA2 to SATA1?  I would think your board could handle it, but it is a similar enough problem it could be worth trying.

[Furiously]

Have you tried defragging your harddrive recently? Your swap could be all over the place?

I went in and turned off quicktime and messenger and I think I saved about 7 seconds on my boot time.

[Engels]

What chipset is the motherboard? I ask because some NForce chipset motherboards want to load their own IDE drivers, which work with non-raid SATA drives, and this has been known to cause some issues.

[Trippy]

Some nice tips on speeding up your boot process.

[Strazos]

Ooo, some nice things in there, thanks.

[Reg]

Getting rid of that prefetch crap made a huge difference for me even after the boot was completed. Normally when I exit from something memory intensive like Civ 4 my PC spends a couple of minutes grinding away as it deletes the swap file. After getting rid of the prefetch folder and setting it to only cache system files that happens a whole hell of a lot faster too. I guess not having all that trash preloaded into memory means my swap file is smaller.

[sinij]

They accidentally leaked the pricing for vista yesterday.  Vista "Ultimate" is $450 US.  That's crazy.

So what do you get for all that money other than more DRM support?

[Strazos]

Which one is the version that a gamer will need?

[caladein]

Which one is the version that a gamer will need?

Well, if you take each of the three versions you'd probably be looking at (Home Basic/Premium and Ultimate) and compare their summaries to say... XP Home, Pro, and Media Center's it'll probably be:

Home Basic -> XP Home, i.e. avoid like the plague
Home Premium -> XP Home + MCE
Ultimate -> XP Pro + MCE

That's of course grossly oversimplifying it, but my money is on Home Premium being the sweet-spot for most here (although I'm sure Home Basic would play Halo 2 ). I'm still going to be a lemming and get Ultimate once SP1 comes out of course.