Very long boot up process?

Question

Very strange boot up process that took literally 5~6 minutes. Other than the boot up, the PC works perfectly fine.

Things I have tried:

• CHKDSK (No errors)
• Reset BIOS (HDD 1st)
• Defrag

Link to video of boot up process: http://img585.imageshack.us/i/aa5.mp4/

NOTE: The last part of the video is what I am asking about. Not the BIOS loading. Video has been sped up for quick viewing purposes.

Answer 1

You could give Soluto a try and see what it thinks is taking up all the boot time. You can get it here http://www.soluto.com/

Answer 2

. I believe that the bar across the lower screen in your last video frames is visible when the system is waiting for you to choose which OS to boot. As I recall, the default is to pause for 30 seconds, then go with the default choice. Usually, on a machine with only one OS choice, the time delay is set (by the user) to maybe 3 seconds. Yours may be set a lot higher.

Check it on XP by clicking: My Computer > System Properties > Advanced tab > Startup and Recovery > Settings and look at "Time to display list of operating systems".

If it's a big number, that's your problem; set it to 3 seconds, then shutdown and reboot to test our hypothesis.

If it's already a small number, well, that's not it...

;-) .

Answer 3

Use Process Monitor to enable boot time logging, then filter through the report to find the offending process, software or driver.

http://www.msigeek.com/6231/how-to-enable-system-boot-time-logging-using-process-monitor-tool

Answer 4

You might want to check Windows Event Explorer. However it seems to me like one of two common reasons:

1. A faulty driver (not verified software, e.g. antivirus or unsuitable device driver)
2. An attempt to bring up the network, get an IP from DHCP, which is unreachable.

Solutions (to id the issue):

1. Revert/rollback drivers installed before the issue appeared.
2. Try to deactivate the network adapter in the BIOS/OS and uninstall all apps which are not built-in to Windows and modify the network management in some way.

Moreover you can press F8 after the BIOS POST screen and before Windows starts loading to call the boot menu. Select "safe mode" and check whether some drivers take too long to load or the system boots up in a reasonable amount of time with this set of only "basic" libraries.

You could also check if the hard drive LED is active during the whole boot process. Probably some active hard drive check on every boot?

Answer 5

I'm making a slightly educated guess here, but it may be a problem to do with hibernation - that loading bar is usually when your system is trying to recover from hibernation and apparently there's some glitch there that slows things down

Not sure of a solution but try turning off hibernation to see if it helps then turn it back on again.

Answer 6

Windows hibernation can cause many issues for a laptop. I would suggest disabling it, or reducing the amount of allocated space for the hibernation.

You could also try disabling system restore. [If you are gutsy about this, that is.]

Another solution may be to do a disk check. My computer -> Right click on hard drive with windows installation -> tools -> disk check

tick both boxes, and restart computer.

Or you can try to clean up your computer using the built in windows tool. Computer-> right click on hard drive, and under the display that shows hard drive usage, click the disk cleanup button. Select any option you wish, and see if that helps.

Hope something helps you.

Answer 7

Ok this is very strange. I played around MSCONFIG's settings and then restarted the PC and it magically fixed itself. I rebooted 4 more times to verify and its back to normal. Very very strange. I am not sure what I actually did. But thanks to everyone for answering. I guess u learn something new everyday after all...