3 minute boot up delay at motherboard logo screen

[oxfordbrent]

About a year ago I built my first computer. The boot up process has always been pretty fast. Recently It slowed way down, only at the first screen that is displayed when it's turned on. Here are my computer's specs:

Intel D865PERL Motherboard
P4 2.4 gig Pentium Processor
1 gig of ddr-sdram
80 gig C: drive
9 gig D: drive

I recently uninstalled some of my unused programs to free up some space on my hard drive. Also, Norton Internet Security was giving me an error code and Symantic web site said the only solution was to uninstall, clear the registry, & reinstall. I did this and havn't had any problems with NIS since.

I went to Intel's web site & researched ways increasing boot speed. Here is what I've tried:

In the bios, made the hard drive the 1st to boot, made sure "rapid boot" was enabled, disabled boot scan for periferals, disabled silent boot, disabled the boot scan that has something to do with a network.

Also, I unchecked "automatically search for network folders and printer" in the Folder Options, View of the Task Panel.

I have run SpyBot & Adware 6 hand have nothing of this sort clogging up the system and my hard drive is defragged.

Does anyone have any suggestions of what else I could try to aviod the 3 minute delay I get on the Intel motherboard logo screen?

Thanks...

[InnocentRetard]

Have you checked to see if any of your components are loose of any sort? Also have you checked to see if your temperatures of your system are normal. Usually the start-up time can increase with high temperatures. But your system seems to be pretty fast, The ram wouldnt have to do with anything, I think. Also do a defrag and disk clean-up

[oxfordbrent]

I haven't physically opened it up and checked, but I've run some diagnostics in SiSarah and all components seem to register.

I've defragged & disk clean up, but that didn't change anything. I have Intel Active monitor that checks temps & I've received no alerts.

[Statica]

Originally Posted by oxfordbrent About a year ago I built my first computer. The boot up process has always been pretty fast. Recently It slowed way down, only at the first screen that is displayed when it's turned on. Here are my computer's specs: Intel D865PERL Motherboard P4 2.4 gig Pentium Processor 1 gig of ddr-sdram 80 gig C: drive 9 gig D: drive I recently uninstalled some of my unused programs to free up some space on my hard drive. Also, Norton Internet Security was giving me an error code and Symantic web site said the only solution was to uninstall, clear the registry, & reinstall. I did this and havn't had any problems with NIS since. I went to Intel's web site & researched ways increasing boot speed. Here is what I've tried: In the bios, made the hard drive the 1st to boot, made sure "rapid boot" was enabled, disabled boot scan for periferals, disabled silent boot, disabled the boot scan that has something to do with a network. Also, I unchecked "automatically search for network folders and printer" in the Folder Options, View of the Task Panel. I have run SpyBot & Adware 6 hand have nothing of this sort clogging up the system and my hard drive is defragged. Does anyone have any suggestions of what else I could try to aviod the 3 minute delay I get on the Intel motherboard logo screen? Thanks...

If you are experiencing slowdowns a the mobo log (and NOT THE STARTING WINDOWS XP LOGO) then it is safe to assume that you have a h/w issue going on that has little to do with Windows itself. Check for any hardware virus by going to housecall.antivirus.com to be safe.

Does the delay occur during detecting IDE devices? That is usually the most notorious area for having delays - in detecting IDE devices. Make sure that your hard drives are properly identified in your BIOS and if they are disable detection and try. Also check to see if you have any unused devices starting up like onboard RAID etc.

[mairving]

I would make sure that it is set to quick boot and that it doesn't test your RAM every time upon boot. Once you make sure that is turned off and you still have the problem, then I would disconnect one of the hard drives and try booting without it. Then try disconnecting other stuff until you get your answer.

If I had to guess I would say hard drive.

[john ranger]

Very Slow Boot When Networking

On some XP Pro installations, when connected to a network (peer-peer in this case), the computer boot time is over 1:40. The system seems to freeze after logging in and the desktop may not appear or will freeze for a minute. As timed with the utility, Bootvis.exe, the problem was with the driver mrxsmb.dll, adding over 67 seconds to the boot time. Turning off and restoring file and printer sharing eliminated 65 seconds from the boot time.

Alt-click (or right-click) on Network Places > Properties.
Alt-click on Ethernet Adapter connection > Properties.
Un-check "File and Printer Sharing for Microsoft Networks" > OK.
Reboot.
If you need file or printer sharing, repeat the above, re-check the box and re-boot again.

__________________

Correcting System Hang at Startup

If your system hangs about 2 or 3 minutes at startup, where you can't access the Start button or the Taskbar, it may be due to one specific service (Background Intelligent Transfer) running in the background. Microsoft put out a patch for this but it didn't work for me. Here's what you do:

Click on Start/Run, type 'msconfig', then click 'OK'.
Go to the 'Services' tab, find the 'Background Intelligent Transfer' service.
Disable it, apply the changes & reboot.

-----------------

Turn Off Indexing to Speed Up XP

Windows XP keeps a record of all files on the hard disk so when you do a search on the hard drive it is faster. There is a downside to this and because the computer has to index all files, it will slow down normal file commands like open, close, etc. If you do not do a whole lot of searches on your hard drive then you may want to turn this feature off:

Open My Computer.
Right-click your hard drive icon and select Properties.
At the bottom of the window you'll see "Allow indexing service to index this disk for faster searches," uncheck this and click ok.
A new window will pop up and select Apply to all folders and subfolders.
It will take a minute or two for the changes to take affect but then you should enjoy slightly faster performance.

--------------------------

Clean Your Prefetch to Improve Performance

This is a unique technique for WinXP. We know that it is necessary to scrub registry and TEMP files for Win9X/ME/2000 periodically. Prefetch is a new and very useful technique in Windows XP. However, after using XP some time, the prefetch directory can get full of junk and obsolete links in the Prefetch catalog, which can slow down your computer noticeably.

Open C(system drive):/windows/prefetch, delete those junk and obsolete files, reboot. It is recommended that you do this every month.

[andyms18a]

replace the comos battery on the motherboard as it may be going flat and having to redetect your hardware on bootup all so get a copy of bootvis from
http://www.softpedia.com/public/cat/12/2/12-2-1.shtml run the test and see wot the hold up is

[Stomper]

Sounds similar to a problem I was having on boot up. Am using Win2K and when booting up there was a considerable delay right after the log in screen appeared. I could type in my password and hit enter but the system wouldn't proceed with the boot up until after a couple of minutes but then all would go normally. I noticed no other problems.

I solved my problem with a Microsoft hotfix. Seems tech support there is aware of the problem and has created a hotfix for it but has not yet fully tested it so has not made it readily available for download. There is an article in the Microsoft Knowledge Base about this problem but unfortunately I'm unable to locate it right now. (Sorry.) The article includes instructions and a link for getting the hotfix file. (But rather than use that, I called Microsoft support.) You have to give your email address to the tech support rep. and he/she will email you a password and a website address. Then you go there to download the hotfix file after which you unzip and install it.

After installing this hotfix, my problem with delay at boot up was solved. If you're using Win2K, perhaps this information applies to your problem as it did to mine.

[oxfordbrent]

Success!!

First, I would like to thank everyone for all their input. Thanks so much for helping me out!

Did 3 different things before hooking it up and turning it on again, so I'm not sure which change I made fixed it. I opened it up and the first thing I did adjust the comos battery. I don't think it was making good contact and may have been the problem.

While I had it open I change out the floppy drive. This was just an aesthetic change. The one I had in the case was taken from an old HP Pavaillion I had and the face of it really didn't match or fit well in my new homemade rig.

I also tried a different jumper setting for my DVD Burner & CD Burners. The arrangement I had before was no jumper on the DVD Burner and Slave setting on the CD Burner :I:. All I did was add a jumper to the DVD Burner ::I. I didn't have a jumper on the DVD Burner before because someone told me it would run better without one, (I don't know if this is true or not?) I still can't get XP to recognize my old CD Burner as a slave or master (I tried both), but that's a post for the Hardware forum I suppose.

Anyway, it boots up ever faster than before. The pre-windows "Intel" screen that was shown for 3 minutes is only a flash before it moves into the XP boot up. I will implement some of the other recommendations everyone had just to tweak it some.

Thanks Again...

[glc]

You must use a jumper on your optical drives. If you are using a standard 40 wire cable, use master/slave, if 80 wire cable, use cable select and make sure the correct end is in the motherboard (usually blue or some other color, but NOT black). This is assuming they are sharing the secondary IDE cable.

[oxfordbrent]

I had the master/slave configuration right as far as I could tell, but I used the cable that was in my old HP Pavillion to connect the optical drives, which I now realize was a 40 wire IDE cable. I didn't realize it was different the the 80 wire IDE cable that came with my motherboard. I switched out the 40 wire cable for the 80 wire cable and changed the jumper setting on both burners to cable select. XP now recognized the "F" drive. Thanks for the help...