Very slow to get to the desktop !!!

[shoesup]

I recently acquired a Packard Bell Legend (166MHz) from a friend of mine. His complaint was that the computer was very slow. I discovered that when I turned on the PC, it would take forever to get to the Windows 98 screen. By that I mean, after booting-up, the PC scrolled through the start-up sequence, I saw a message that said “checking for installed components”, then when you would think that it should just bring up the Windows 98 welcome screen, and go to the desktop, it would hang for about 5 minutes – then the desktop would come up !!!! Finally !!!! I installed a 10GB HD and a controller card, the installation worked perfectly – but I still have the same problem. From power-on to seeing the desktop, it’s abut 6 minutes !!!

What’s going on here ??? Can anyone help me with this problem ???

Thank you.

[Cricket]

Hi G.W. Kremer,

Does it have a NIC (Network Interface Card) installed?

When you installed Win98, did you do a clean install or an upgrade from Win95?

Is the internal Zip Drive recognized by Windows? Don't boot up with a disk in it.

Does everything look okay in Device Manager?

Cricket

[shoesup]

Cricket:

Yes, I installed a network card card in the PC before I had these
problems and all worked fine.

When Win 95 was there, I used a Windows 98 (bootable) - "clean" version of Win 98 (CD).

I sinse then took out the internal zip drive, and successfully placed it into another PC, however the zip software is still on the HD of the PC in question.

I can't look at Device Manager - because I can't get to the desktop tp do so !!! It hangs at the Win 98 welcome screen.

Please help.
Thank you.

[Cricket]

Hi G.W. Kremer,

Boot to Safe Mode and see if you can uninstall the Zip Drive software from there. Either use Windows Explorer and go to the Iomega folder and look for the uninstaller or use Control Panel's Add/Remove Software. It's best to use the software's uninstaller if possible.

Also, go into Device Manager (you can enter Device Manager while in Safe Mode) and remove any instance of the Zip Drive from there.

Did you format the hard drive and then fresh do a fresh install of Win98? I'm just unclear about this.

Was it a Iomega Zip Drive or Tape Drive? I just noticed you mentioned both types of devices in your 2 threads.

Cricket

[shoesup]

Thank you very much for your help. I still did not resolve the problem.

It's an IOMEGA Ditto Easy tape drive. The drive fits into a bay that would support a CD-ROM drive.

Yes, initially I instaled a controller card, and added a 10GB HD to the system.

I did format the HD, and clicked yes for FAT 32 and larger capacity.

After that, I put my Win 98 SE CD into the drive and re-botted.
The CD successfully started, and the installation was successful.

The PC worked great, however I noticed a very slow time (from computer on to the Win 98 desktop). The time from PC on to the point at which the desktop finally came up was about 7 minutes !!

I just shut the PC off and made very sure that all the power cables and ribbon cables were connected OK. THEY WERE.
I can get into the Safe Mode by holding down the CTRL key, then choosing option 3 (safe mode). After about 2 minutes, it goes to the desktop - but, without CD ROM support !!!

Do you think it's a display adaper problem ??? I tried two different monitors, but the same problem - the PC just hangs at the Windows 98 welcome screen - and, it never goes to the desktop !!!

Do you think I should just format the HD all over again, and re-install Windows 98 (full version) ???

Help !!!

Thank you.

[GaryRouth]

Since a Win98 installation can be done in less than an hour, why not powerdown, remove the Zip tape drive, remove any network cards, sound cards, and modems - and check that the memory is seated OK (and later double check that it's listing the correct amount at POST time [Power-On-Self-Test]. Then enter Bios Setup, set the 1st boot option to the Cd-rom drive, start computer without Cd-rom support, and use fdisk again: create one Primary Dos Partition and make it active. Reboot & let Win98 setup format the disk with FAT32 (Y to "Large Disk Support?") and install fresh. Your boot delay could be either a networking issue (especially if your sharing an Internet connection and using DHCP) or the machine has too little RAM. Even on a P-166, you'll want at least 64mb or RAM to have things move along.

Try restarting the system several times before you fine-tune video drivers, and add the other cards in. If you get the delay with just the Standard VGA driver (which is what you'll have until after the Win98 install is finished), then it's definitely not a video driver issue. The Standard VGA driver should be fast: it doesn't have much to do - only 16 colors.

Interesting, these old PB Legends: each one seems to have a surprise.
. . . Gary

[Hmm . . . one more thing, might want to enter Bios Setup and check on ALL the settings - or if you're not sure what to use, you can try the "Use Default Settings And Exit" option]

[Harry]

I would definitely try to run your computer without the network card or network drivers. In my case, it was also taking like 3 times as long to startup but certainly not as long as you. To correct that slow startup, I just removed the Network Drivers.

And Ram makes a huge difference when you don't have enough. I had a friend who only had 32 megs of Ram and was running an anti-viral program plus Norten Utilities system check on startup. It took him like 5 minutes to bootup until I finally convinced him to get more ram. You knew exactly what was going on and that he was low on ram because you could hear the hard drive working like a steam engine on the startup.

The other thing I think helps, though I'll accept it if someone says I'm wrong, is that if you have a smaller partition for your boot drive, then you can get a faster bootup. My bootup partition is only 1 gig and I absolutely swear I'm getting a faster bootup time. Though it might also be because I'm using a smaller drive now.

All my drives are only 5400 rpm but my smaller 3 gig and 4 gig work a lot faster than my 60 gig drive. Maybe using a smaller drive for your bootup might help too. It does seem to boot faster on the smaller drive. And for me, since my smaller drives are definately faster, though I can't say absolutely for startup, I have decided to use the smaller drive for my bootdrive and then use the 60 gig drive as my secondary drive to store larger documents.
It makes more sense to me. I had it the other way before using my 60gig Maxtor as my master bootup drive and got a little frustrated at how slow it felt.

[eshort]

just a thought--i have an "old" IBM PII-233/64 ram...with the original HDD (2 gb-5400 rpm) AOL took 12 seconds to load---changed the hdd to a Fujuistu 20 gb 7200..now AOL loads in 4 seconds..altho only 8 gb HDD capacity is shown (Norton Utils) due to old BIOS.

[GaryRouth]

G.W.K. - any luck yet?

. . . Gary