VERY VERY long pause during boot

[sinkoman]

I'm having this issue with xp, every time I boot up, right after the welcome screen, I have an extremely long pause before the windows startup music plays, and the taskbar and my desktop is displayed. Last time I timed it, came to around 2-3 minutes long. This is really annoying, because it makes it hard to make bios changes, and install programs that require reboots.

I've tried running bootvis, no changes whatsoever.

Anybody know what could be causing this? When I turn my pc on, it makes a quick, splitsecond FLOOP before POSTing. I flipped through my mobo manual, and it said that two quick beeps on bootup means incorrect cmos settings, but i've already shorted my cmos. And it isn't so much of a beep that I hear before the post beep. It's just a split second noise.

I only get the noise after a fresh bootup. Like, I turn off my pc, then boot it up. If I enter my bios and exit, I get the normal POST signalling that all is well, and no split second FLOOP. I'm starting to think that the floop could be another of my components.

I'm going to try to short my cmos again to see if it helps, but any body have any ideas?

 

[psyno]

I don't think the noise and your problems with Windows loading are related. I would try using msconfig to turn off all your startup applications. If that helps, turn half of them back on and so on until you find the problem.

 

[gweedodogg69]

I've had this happen sometimes, even on my PC so I'm like "WTF!" I figured it was because my hard drives were getting hot so I got some HD coolers (since Raptors get a little on the warm side) and I haven't had the problem since.

 

[sinkoman]

I've had this happen sometimes, even on my PC so I'm like "WTF!" I figured it was because my hard drives were getting hot so I got some HD coolers (since Raptors get a little on the warm side) and I haven't had the problem since.

Well i'm glad to see that you also have a raptor, so now porhaps you could answer some questions of mine?

Ok, so I don't think that the heat is killing my raptor, because my raptor is RIGHT (literally. Millimeters from it) infront of BOTH my intakes.

BUT. I'm thinking it's a power thing maybe? I hooked up the sata power plug to the raptor, but the I left the molex empty, assuming that it should be either use the sata power cable if you can, or if you don't have a psu with one, use the molex.

Now I want to know, do you have both the sata and the molex plugged in on yours? I bought my raptor OEM so I don't have any documentation as to whether I should I should or shouldn't. I'll go searching on Western digitals web site for some answers.

I would just try plugging the molex in, but I try to keep my wiring in my case as neat and tidy as possible. I don't want to have to throw off all my organisation, then have to reorganize everything, just to see if this thing works, then only find that it's not the problem.

Also, I shorted the cmos and this time, I took the battery out, just to make sure if was a completely fresh short. I still get the FLOOP on occasion, but I think that's my intakes rubbing against my fan filter when they first start up. That would explain why I don't get the floop when my pc's already on.

 

[psyno]

I hooked up the sata power plug to the raptor, but the I left the molex empty, assuming that it should be either use the sata power cable if you can, or if you don't have a psu with one, use the molex.

Correct. Don't hook up both.

 

[sinkoman]

Yeah. I saw that on the Western Digital site. They said that hooking up both could make the hdd mailfunction.

Oh well. I really don't want to shell out the cash for a hdd cooler. that seems like a bit of a waste, and my hdd is RIGHT in front of my intakes, so heat couldn't be it.

any other ideas?

 

[ComradeBadger]

Open msconfig and tell us what it says under the 'startup' tab.

 

[sinkoman]

Open msconfig and tell us what it says under the 'startup' tab.

I know I know. I try to clean out my startup entries every day, to keep memory usage at an all time low.

nvraidservice (I removed that from startup once, but it gave me allot of issues)
ccApp
ntrayFw (firewall)
NvMcTray
TeaTimer (Spybot SD registry thingy. Whenver something tries to add a new registry entry, or delete one, TeaTimer informs me and asks whether it should allow it to do it's thing or not)
NVRTClK
Adobe Gamma Loader
Adobe Reader Spead launch

Now those last two entries added themselves just yesterday (I reinstalled acrobat reader) and i'm removing them as we speak. I don't think it's startup, because like I said, I try to clean it out every day.

As for ccApp, I set all the norton services I could find under services.msc to manual the other day. I don't think, that's the problem, but do you think it could be? Those norton apps really hog memory. If I leave all the norton services set to automatic, ccapp can take up like, 20,000 (not sure what in. You know when you press ctrl alt delete, and look at all running processes? That number to the right will be 20,000).

EDIT: I removed all the startup entries in msconfig I found, with that nifty little disable all button. Nope. Still got a long pause during bootup. Although I think it was a bit shorter, but that was probably just me EXPECTING it to be shorter.

 

[psyno]

It's in kilobytes. Yeah, Norton really does hog memory...

Anyway, it might be a device/driver problem. Open up device manager and check to see if there are any problems reported. You might also try updating your motherboard, video, sound, network, etc drivers.

How do you connect to the Internet, btw?

 

[sinkoman]

It's in kilobytes. Yeah, Norton really does hog memory...

Anyway, it might be a device/driver problem. Open up device manager and check to see if there are any problems reported. You might also try updating your motherboard, video, sound, network, etc drivers.

How do you connect to the Internet, btw?

?

Well, my mobo has two ethernet ports on the back. One's running off the chipset, and the other's running off the PCI-E port. So, to prevent IRQ conflicts, and to speed up pci-e bandwith, I use the one running off the NF4 Ultra, and I disabled the otherone in my bios. It's still installed in windows, but you can't see it without going into the cli and setting the device manager to show ALL devices, even those not connected. I left it installed under windows, so if I ever need to use it, just restart and re-enable it.

So, here's how everything goes together. A cat-5 cable goes into the back of my pc, connected to the ethernet port controlled my the mobo chipset. The other end of the cat-5 cable goes into an ethernet port on the wall, in my room. That port in the wall is connected to a sort of console like thing in my moms walk in closet. The connected to my room comes out of the console, and into a router I set up in the console. The router is connected to a cable modem, which is connected to one of the cable tv plugs in the console.

Hehe. The whole setup took me a few days to get up and running, but it works.

As for the drivers, all my drivers are up to date. Infact, I ended up doing two reformats just last week, and when I installed the drivers, I downloaded each and ever single motherboard driver individually, so that I wouldn't be installing drivers I didn't need (the nf4 package that you get off nvidia.com has allot of the stuff they have for download at giga-byte.com) then downloaded the nf4 driver package, and instead of dowloading the 71.89's, I grabbed the 71.84 betas. 89's were giving me way too many problems. Oh and btw, i'm running a 6800 gt.

Think I should try grabbing device drivers for my cd drives? I'm just running off the default ones windows uses when it recognises a new device.

 

[psyno]

No I'm sure the optical device drivers are fine. Try reenabling that NIC or else completely uninstalling it.

 

[sinkoman]

No I'm sure the optical device drivers are fine. Try reenabling that NIC or else completely uninstalling it.

Well, I went into my bios and re-enabled it there, and still got the long boot. Should I re-enable the marvel drivers? I still have them installed, they're just disabled in the device manager.

 

[duffers20]

yeh give that a try, although your description suggests that there is something wrong with your boot sector on the xp partition

 

[ComradeBadger]

Oooo that's a point, tried FIXMBR yet?

Also you tried scanning with multiple AntiVirus and AntiSpyware apps? Tried booting into safe mode and seeing if that has an effect?

 

[sinkoman]

I just tried FIXMBR, but I don't know if I did it right.

I load the recovery console, type FIXMBR, but nothing happened. It just jumped straight to the next line. So I ran a help command on fixmbr, and it says that if it's going to overwrite a non standard partition (or something like that) then it'll give me a prompt.

So I figure I did it right, and that it's not supposed to show any progress (not like chkdsk, which shows you how far it's gone) but just to be safe, I do it again. Then I go back into my bios, disable the stuff I enabled (trying to see if it would help) then boot back into windows, and I still get a bit of a pause (didn't seem as long though).

I've run multiple spyware scans already, to see if that was it, but not a virus scan. I guess I could try that. I really doubt it's a virus though. This is the only problem i'm getting with this pc. Everything else is all hunkydory.

EDIT: I also tried re-enableing that NIC completely, and re-enabling my 1394 controller. Nope.

 

[Asus]

Is this a new install or have you had it going for some time?

I used to have my PC take a long pause when entering windows but after a format it cleared that up. It wasn't any hardware issue but a large registry or something else making windows take it's sweat time setting up.

 

[sinkoman]

Is this a new install or have you had it going for some time?

I used to have my PC take a long pause when entering windows but after a format it cleared that up. It wasn't any hardware issue but a large registry or something else making windows take it's sweat time setting up.

Damn, I REALLY don't want tohave to format AGAIN. I just ended up having to format twice last week, and sure was a pain.

EDIT: Now that I think of it, it was more like two weeks ago. But still, I don't want to reformat. Last ditch.

EDIT EDIT: I tried FIXMBR again. Now that I think of it, I believe I remember FIXMBR having some sort of confirmation the last time I used it (a few weeks ago). Oh well. While I was there, I also ran CHKDSK /r, and it took a LONG LONG LONG time. I booted back into windows, and I still got the pause, but it seemed shorter. Perhaps i'm just getting used to it.

If it's like you said Asus, a registry thing, how would I go about cleaning out my registry? I'll try doing another scan with RegCleaner and NT Reg Optimize, but any other ideas?

 

[ComradeBadger]

Just wondering.. what is the size of your Windows folder?

If it's near 3gb then that's your problem

 

[sinkoman]

Just wondering.. what is the size of your Windows folder?

If it's near 3gb then that's your problem

About 1.52 gb. I just did a manual cleanout of it, and it's still roughly the same size. Anyway how to clean more of it out, or do you think that's not the problem?