pd123

I have a Dell 600sc server with XP Pro. All of a sudden it takes a very long time to boot. When I turn on the computer, it begins like normal but hangs for about 3 minutes, then it starts to boot, at this point it boots at a normal speed. I tried restoring to a previous date, it made no difference. I installed nothing new since on the system for a long time and I checked for any virus and found none. Other than a very long time to boot nothing seems wrong with my system. I am editing this because there are other things wrong, my USB printer failed and I have a Phantom "G" drive. When I swapped my printer connection with the scanner connection, the scanner now fails but the printer works.

InfiniteNothing

Scandisk maybe? Just a guess

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pd123

Good idea, I will try it, I haven't done that in awhile, I will also defrag.

SecretIkon

you probably have some softwares running at startup that would cause a slow boot.

_=DeltaForce=_

You might need more Ram

pd123

I tried as suggested Scandisk, I also defragged. I have nearly a gig of ram. If there was software running to cause a slow boot, I think the slow boot, actually dramatically slow, seems as if the computer is timing out, happens before any drivers are put in and before any software loads. I see the loading XP Pro, then the computer times out for a few minutes, then I hear the speakers click like I normally do but I should hear that minutes earlier but when the sound drivers load computer continues to boots normally. The only thing that is abnormal is between when XP loading screen comes on and before the sound card kicks in.

AlpineJay

You sure it's not an issue of spyware or some sort of a backdoor/Trojan virus? Some viruses I've seen can and will take up to 250MB of your system memory all at once as well as the majority of your CPU resource. Try doing a virus scan as well.

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pd123

It crossed my mind so I just restarted in "safe Mode" and reran Spybot. It came up with the things but they didn't lood suspicious to me. I fixed them and there is no difference. I wish to avoid having to format and make a clean install but I hav no other ideas, thank everyone for their suggestions, I am trying them all.

GilbertsGrape

was this computer on a network at anytime and not is is not on a network?
Sometimes if you have a NIC and it is enabled but you dont have a netwoek to connect to the PC may take a long time to boot looking for the network that isnt there. Does that make sence ...... or if you changed your network settings and told your PC you where part of a domain and really there is not a domain to connect to.

Dman33

Is there anything in the event log during the bootup time? (Warnings/Errors)

Also, when you boot in safe mode, does it do the verbose mode sequence? (I know this works on W2K, not sure with XP but this is where you see each driver being loaded on a text screen) If so, does it hang during that process? What is the driver filename it pauses at?

Do you have XP SP2 installed?

SecretIkon

It could also be that you have a disc in your rom drive. That could affect boots also. Or could be a sign of your harddrive losing life(this maybe possible)?

pd123

Dman33, I think you are on to my problem, it does hang during safe mode boot. I don't know what you are saying by "verbose mode sequence". I see a lot of things on the screen when it boots is safe mode. When you ask, what filename it pauses on, would that be the last thing on the list? BTW, the computer is not on a network with other computers. It is networked to two other ReplayTv's but that never seemed to bother the computer.

Dman33

I will have to look into the behavior of XP Safe Mode, but in Win2K when you do Safe Mode you will see all of the drivers being loaded in real-time on the screen as windows boots up. Then the GUI comes up and the logon prompt.

In many cases if you get the system freezing or locking on bootup you can do the safe mode and see where on the list it is delaying.

Does windows operate normally once you are all booted up? You might want to make sure your drive is not near full, has been defragged, and your environment variables are still valid paths.

pd123

Once I am booted up, the system behaves perfectly. Yesterday when I ran scandisk, I also defragged. The main drive is 80gig and only 25gigs are being used, the other drive is 160gig and about 25gigs are being used. Just as you say, when I do Safe Mode, I do see all the drivers being loaded, but it freezes for a few minutes before it continues. As was suggested, I ran Spybot in safe mode, all it found were 2 things, one was related to Verizon and the other thing didn't look suspicious to me. To recap, here is what I have done to try to fix this problem, I did a system restore and went back to a date 3 days ago (before I had the problem), I ran Spybot in Safe Mode, ran a Trend antivirus, ran scandisk and defragged. I have not installed any software recently, a day ago I updated my driver for my modem. One thing I did, but I don't think it had anything to do with my problem, I changed a fan that wasn't running for a few weeks. I kept getting an error because a fan had stopped running, at bootup the error said the backup fan wan't running, to press "F1" to continue. Two days ago I replaced that fan but I don't recall for sure, but I think the problem started before I replaced the fan. thank you all for advice.

AlpineJay

Can you tell us what's running on Windows Task Manager and how much resource it's taking? That would help me and others get some more info as to what may be going on.

pd123

I Dell Pentium IV, 2.8ghz with 640meg ram running XP Pro, my current cpu usage is 4%, I am currently running 7 Internet Explorer windows (not an unusual number of windows for me), that is everything showing when I open Windows Task Manager. When I go to start>run>msconfig and I choose StartUp, I have 17 things that start up. I will try an experiment, I will take all the checks out, restart and see if that helps.

Markel

Are any unused IDE devices disabled in the BIOS? If not, they can hang up the boot for a while.

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pd123

How could I tell if there are any unused IDE devices? If you mean things like cdrom, dvd, scanner, printer, everything hooked up to my computer is used and I haven't changed that hardware in a long time. However, I did recently add a device (a caller id) that goes between the phone line and the computer. The purpose of that device is, besides showing who is calling, it lets calls ring through while I'm online. I can't see how that will affect the booting of my computer, but perhaps I will disconnect it and see how the computer boots up.
BTW, I disabled everything in my startup and it had no effect.

Markel

The typical IDE devices are hard drives and optical (CD/DVD) drives, (and possibly other drives such as Zip). Most computers support 4 IDE devices on 2 IDE channels (usually identified as the Primary and Secondary devices on a channel in the BIOS settings). Your hard drive is almost always the Primary device on the first channel. If you have a single CD or DVD device, it will likely be either the secondary device on the first channel or the Primary device on the second channel. In the BIOS, it is possible to disable unused IDE channels, which keeps the hardware from scanning (and waiting to "hear" from) any unused IDE channels at startup. If you go into the BIOS page that displays the IDE devices, you can set unused channels to disabled.

eSDee

Pull the network card and restart.

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pd123

The problem is related to a USB1 port and I have a phantom "G" drive, also my printer hasn't worked since the problem began. It appeared to me I had a virus so I installed Norton antivirus and there was no virus, I then went back to a Norton Ghost image from last August and the problem was all still there. I then swapped the USB connection with my scanner and the printer started working but the Scanner now failed. So the problem is with the USB and my amature guess is that the compute hangs when it tries to install the USB port and it isn't recognized or maybe when it looks for the phantom "G" drive. I wonder why I show a "G" drive in "My Computer" PS. Just to get the phantom "G" drive to stop showing, I went into Device Manager and disabled it, but it is still there, just hidden.
Does anyone have any advice?

pd123

I went to Device Manager and under DVD?CR-ROM drives is listed 3 drives, the first two belong there, the other says, "VOBID InstantDrive CD SCSI CdRom Device". I deleted that drive and the "G" drive in My Computer went away, but upon reboot it came back. Here is everything hooked up to my computer, Epson USB printer, CD Writer ("E" drive), DVD writer ("F"drive), USB scanner. Then there is the normal "A" drive, "C" drive and I have another harddrive "D" drive. There are no other drives and there never were any other drives hooked up to my computer.

Markel

Some CD/DVD software adds a virtual drive that allows you to open an image as a CD/DVD. If you right click on the "phantom" drive letter, does it give you a "mount image" option? If so, that's likely the source.

pd123

Markel, when I right click, it has all the same options as the other drives, nothing about "mount image" option.
Here is a little info as to the order, it is my regular "C", then "D", the the my normal "E" (that is my cd drive) then "F" (that is my dvd drive) then the phandom "G" drive.

moosehead

Do you have Alcohol 120% (it's a cd image ripping and burning program) installed? It adds a virtual drive by default when you install it. If so, I wouldn't think that it has anything to do with your problem while starting up. When you're starting up and it just stops for a while, is it always pretty much the exact same amount of time? If so, its very very likely that it's waiting for something to time out, especially since it sounds like it runs at a normal speed once it has booted. Also, it sounds like you exhausted quite a few software problem possibilities. You're probably on the right track with that USB thing. Maybe your system's USB controller bad.

You could try disabling the USB controller and see if that makes any difference during booting. You should be able to do this in the BIOS. Depending on what type of BIOS you have, it might be in a section called "Integrated Peripherals". BUT, if you're using a USB keyboard and mouse, you'll be kind of stuck once you get into Windows unless you have PS/2 adapters and have PS/2 enabled in the BIOS (maybe you can't actually disable it, i'm not sure).

Give that a try and see what happes.

one more thing, the Alcohol 120 virtual drive will look just like a real physical drive when you look at it's properties...I suspect that virtual drives from other programs would too...all the mounting options are actually in the Alcohol 120% program, and you can disable it in the programs options

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pd123

The closest thing I have to what you described is Norton Ghost. Perhaps I had that phantom drive and I didn't notice it, but I don't think so. I really think it is a hardware problem, though I ran a diagnostic when I started up and before Windows loaded and it found nothing. I don't think it's software because when the trouble began about 2 weeks ago, I did all the troubleshooting I could think of and as a last resort I restored a Ghost image from August and the problem didn't change. I did have an issue when I restored Ghost, I got some sort of error message saying something like the image had some kind problem and I should check the image integrity. Even though I got that error, once the computer is booted, other than one of my USB ports not working, the computer runs fine, in fact very well. If I can't solve the problem entirely, I plan on doing a fdisk, reinstalling XP and if that one USB port is still out, I think I can have my 2 USB devices (my printer and scanner) both share the one USB port that works using some sort of hub.

brainsmile

did you turn on the computer? Try pushing the power button.