45 min start up!

[wintomato]

My brother is a new devotee to what we call broadband here in the UK. Something has happened to his pc that means it takes about 45 minutes to start up, and when it does he can open documents, but can't copy them or move them.
I would suggest reformatting but he has real important files he needs to recover. He has tried putting another drive on and copying the entire disk over, but has the same problem with the other drive.
He has tried a virus scan with Norton with the latest update, on the disk and on the boot sector, but it has come back with nothing.
Even in DOS he can see the files but it won't let him do anything with them.
He is running XPHome.
This sounds like it could be a virus. I have suggested reformatting, using FDISK /MBR and completely cleaning it up, but we need those files.
Is it a virus? How can we irradicate it and/or recover the files.
These are all the details I canget at the moment and would appreciate any comments.
I am currently trying to talk him through booting from the cd and doing a system restore or repair
Yours desperately
Win

[Datamage]

When the PC starts up, have you tried opening Task Manager and seeing if there are any dogdy processes running. Check for any processes that are taking up a huge amount of your CPU, like from 20-90 units and close them. If thye run everytime you start your PC, delete them from the hard drive.

[TimPoet]

Have you tried running a scan for viruses? If you don't have a program loaded, go here http://housecall.trendmicro.com/ and scan the computer online for free. Also check for a trojan by going here http://www.moosoft.com/thecleaner/ for a 30 day free trial of The Cleaner.
Now this problem is a complete puzzle to me and I have no idea if it is a malicious program, but at least this way you can rule it out.
HTH

[gladiator]

I put win2000 Pro on my comp and it too is slow, it does not take 45 minutes to boot up but longer then I like and very slow to access any programs. I pulled up my task manager there were a lot of things in there but it looked like only the "system idle process" was using any of the CPU at the time.
I also tried to use MSCONFIG to see what was booting up But I guess windows 2000 does not use MSCONFIG.

[wintomato]

thanks guys.
He has tried a virus scan using norton, but nothing came back. He has trouble connecting so I don't think he can download the scanners yet, but I already advised him about the trend thing that I saw on another thread.
The task manager is a good idea and I don't think he's tried that yet.
I know he is trying to install another hard drive so he can boot using that as a primary and copy the important files over. I'll post our findings.
thanks again

[Cricket]

Hi wintomato,

To save the important files off that hard drive, take it out of your brother's computer and install it as a slave drive in another WinXP computer that is running well and has an updated virus scanner. You can then move the files off the hard drive and then format it and do a re-install of WinXP.

Cricket

[wintomato]

Thanks Cricket. I don't believe he could get access to another WinXP machine, and so tried setting it as a slave on a win98 but it always wanted to boot in XP and then have the same problems.
He has now tried 3 different drives on this pc all having the same problem, which would tend to point towards the motherboard (?) I told him to try resetting the CMOS and perhaps flashing the BIOS, are these correct, I guess he can download the BIOS stuff from the manufacturers website.
Would flashing the BIOS change anything? How is it done?
Any other suggestions?
I guess this is still potentially pointing towards a virus?
thanks