Long bootup delay

mhersh221 · External Since: Dec 04, 2004 Posts: 339

I'm working on an eMachine W3410 which died from lightning.
The power supply was fried and I replaced it. As far as I can tell, that's
all that was damaged. But the machine was a mess. It was still Service Pack
2 with a ton of stuff starting up including 3 antiviruses (Norton 2005,
McAffe, and AVG) all which were out of date. Not to mention Kodak EasyShare
(whould be declared malware), the HP Imaging thing, etc.
I uninstalled all the antivirus programs (had to use the Norton Removal
Tool on Norton), and turned virtually everything off in msconfig. I ran
Malwarebytes and SuperAntispyware. MBam found nothing, SAS a few cookies.
Installed SP3 and 60 some updates. Installed Avira (free), ran it and it
found nothing.
Now my problem is.... when booting up it hangs for at least a full minute
on the Welcome Screen, then the desktop wallpaper shows up. Then nothing
for about another 30 seconds, then the taskbar shows up. And after maybe
another 30 seconds, the desktop icons (only about a dozen of them) will
finally appear. During these "dead" moments there is little if any hard
drive activity. By the time I can get task manager to come up, it is down
to about 2% usage and everything runs fine. Movies, music, slide shows all
work and even a little multitasking works OK.
There's no clues in Event Manager.
If I boot in Safe Mode, everything comes up right away.
Does anyone have any idea what might be hanging this thing up like this?
BTW, it had 512Mb of ram but video uses 128 putting it down to 384 so I
added another 256 putting it up to 768 (640 usable)

--
-- I'm out of white ink --

Paul · External Since: Dec 06, 2006 Posts: 538

Menno Hershberger wrote:
> I'm working on an eMachine W3410 which died from lightning.
> The power supply was fried and I replaced it. As far as I can tell, that's
> all that was damaged. But the machine was a mess. It was still Service Pack
> 2 with a ton of stuff starting up including 3 antiviruses (Norton 2005,
> McAffe, and AVG) all which were out of date. Not to mention Kodak EasyShare
> (whould be declared malware), the HP Imaging thing, etc.
> I uninstalled all the antivirus programs (had to use the Norton Removal
> Tool on Norton), and turned virtually everything off in msconfig. I ran
> Malwarebytes and SuperAntispyware. MBam found nothing, SAS a few cookies.
> Installed SP3 and 60 some updates. Installed Avira (free), ran it and it
> found nothing.
> Now my problem is.... when booting up it hangs for at least a full minute
> on the Welcome Screen, then the desktop wallpaper shows up. Then nothing
> for about another 30 seconds, then the taskbar shows up. And after maybe
> another 30 seconds, the desktop icons (only about a dozen of them) will
> finally appear. During these "dead" moments there is little if any hard
> drive activity. By the time I can get task manager to come up, it is down
> to about 2% usage and everything runs fine. Movies, music, slide shows all
> work and even a little multitasking works OK.
> There's no clues in Event Manager.
> If I boot in Safe Mode, everything comes up right away.
> Does anyone have any idea what might be hanging this thing up like this?
> BTW, it had 512Mb of ram but video uses 128 putting it down to 384 so I
> added another 256 putting it up to 768 (640 usable)
>

The fact that Safe Mode doesn't have the delay, suggests
it isn't necessarily a "broken hardware" issue.

You could try "bootvis", to analyse the time spent while booting.
That is, as long as you can find a copy. Bootvis was written
by Microsoft, but is no longer supported. There is a different tool
for Windows 7, but it looks more complicated. As far as I know,
with Bootvis, it generates the report immediately.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bootvis

Example trace.

http://img.com.com/i/tr/contentPics/t01220030515mci01_G.gif

Paul

Mayayana · External Since: Aug 20, 2011 Posts: 47

In my experience it's very easy to confuse
Windows. XP should start up in a few seconds,
but it's very easy to mess that up, so that
startup seems to pause for long periods as if it
were stumped. Why not just re-install from the
"recovery" partition? EMachines should have that.

Rich/rerat · External Since: Sep 09, 2006 Posts: 15

Menno Hershberger,
Since you did a lot of updates for your PC, have you considered updating the
drivers for your video card, also? It seems by your description, its been
awhile since that has been done, too.

Since you stated the "machine was a mess", it might be time to "bite the
bullet" and reinstall the OS, additional software, and updated drivers, that
you might need. This is after you backup any important data you want to
keep, to a safe location.

--
Rich/rerat
(RRR News) (message rule)
((Previous Text Snipped to Save Bandwidth When Appropriate))

"Menno Hershberger" wrote in message

I'm working on an eMachine W3410 which died from lightning.
The power supply was fried and I replaced it. As far as I can tell, that's
all that was damaged. But the machine was a mess. It was still Service Pack
2 with a ton of stuff starting up including 3 antiviruses (Norton 2005,
McAffe, and AVG) all which were out of date. Not to mention Kodak EasyShare
(whould be declared malware), the HP Imaging thing, etc.
I uninstalled all the antivirus programs (had to use the Norton Removal
Tool on Norton), and turned virtually everything off in msconfig. I ran
Malwarebytes and SuperAntispyware. MBam found nothing, SAS a few cookies.
Installed SP3 and 60 some updates. Installed Avira (free), ran it and it
found nothing.
Now my problem is.... when booting up it hangs for at least a full minute
on the Welcome Screen, then the desktop wallpaper shows up. Then nothing
for about another 30 seconds, then the taskbar shows up. And after maybe
another 30 seconds, the desktop icons (only about a dozen of them) will
finally appear. During these "dead" moments there is little if any hard
drive activity. By the time I can get task manager to come up, it is down
to about 2% usage and everything runs fine. Movies, music, slide shows all
work and even a little multitasking works OK.
There's no clues in Event Manager.
If I boot in Safe Mode, everything comes up right away.
Does anyone have any idea what might be hanging this thing up like this?
BTW, it had 512Mb of ram but video uses 128 putting it down to 384 so I
added another 256 putting it up to 768 (640 usable)

--
-- I'm out of white ink --

Retired · External Since: Dec 16, 2010 Posts: 4

"Rich/rerat" wrote in

> Menno Hershberger,
> Since you did a lot of updates for your PC, have you considered
> updating the drivers for your video card, also? It seems by your
> description, its been awhile since that has been done, too.

I tried to update the driver from device manager (just now at your
suggestion) but after searching it said the current driver is the right
one. I suppose if I could dig up more info on what the built in graphics
hardware actually is, I might be able to update from the manufacturer's
site,
>
> Since you stated the "machine was a mess", it might be time to "bite
> the bullet" and reinstall the OS, additional software, and updated
> drivers, that you might need. This is after you backup any important
> data you want to keep, to a safe location.

I have all his documents backed up but he's decided to take it home the way
it is. Among other things, he'd have to reinstall Office and he's not sure
he has the CD anymore. He'll bring it back if more problems arise.

--
-- I'm retired. I was tired yesterday. I'm tired again today --

Retired · External Since: Dec 16, 2010 Posts: 4

Paul wrote in

> Menno Hershberger wrote:
>> I'm working on an eMachine W3410 which died from lightning.
>> The power supply was fried and I replaced it. As far as I can tell,
>> that's all that was damaged. But the machine was a mess. It was still
>> Service Pack 2 with a ton of stuff starting up including 3
>> antiviruses (Norton 2005, McAffe, and AVG) all which were out of
>> date. Not to mention Kodak EasyShare (whould be declared malware),
>> the HP Imaging thing, etc. I uninstalled all the antivirus programs
>> (had to use the Norton Removal Tool on Norton), and turned virtually
>> everything off in msconfig. I ran Malwarebytes and SuperAntispyware.
>> MBam found nothing, SAS a few cookies. Installed SP3 and 60 some
>> updates. Installed Avira (free), ran it and it found nothing.
>> Now my problem is.... when booting up it hangs for at least a full
>> minute on the Welcome Screen, then the desktop wallpaper shows up.
>> Then nothing for about another 30 seconds, then the taskbar shows up.
>> And after maybe another 30 seconds, the desktop icons (only about a
>> dozen of them) will finally appear. During these "dead" moments there
>> is little if any hard drive activity. By the time I can get task
>> manager to come up, it is down to about 2% usage and everything runs
>> fine. Movies, music, slide shows all work and even a little
>> multitasking works OK. There's no clues in Event Manager.
>> If I boot in Safe Mode, everything comes up right away.
>> Does anyone have any idea what might be hanging this thing up like
>> this? BTW, it had 512Mb of ram but video uses 128 putting it down to
>> 384 so I added another 256 putting it up to 768 (640 usable)
>>
>
> The fact that Safe Mode doesn't have the delay, suggests
> it isn't necessarily a "broken hardware" issue.
>
> You could try "bootvis", to analyse the time spent while booting.
> That is, as long as you can find a copy. Bootvis was written
> by Microsoft, but is no longer supported. There is a different tool
> for Windows 7, but it looks more complicated. As far as I know,
> with Bootvis, it generates the report immediately.
>
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bootvis
>
> Example trace.
>
> http://img.com.com/i/tr/contentPics/t01220030515mci01_G.gif

He's taken it home on a trial basis. If he brings it back, I'll look in
to that.

--
-- I'm retired. I was tired yesterday. I'm tired again today --

Retired · External Since: Dec 16, 2010 Posts: 4

"Mayayana" wrote in
email.me:

> In my experience it's very easy to confuse
> Windows. XP should start up in a few seconds,
> but it's very easy to mess that up, so that
> startup seems to pause for long periods as if it
> were stumped. Why not just re-install from the
> "recovery" partition? EMachines should have that.

Yes, it has a recovery partition. For the time being the guy has decided to
live with it and took it home. But he's aware of the option. There's a lot
of time involved in those restore jobs. Service packs, etc.

--
-- I'm retired. I was tired yesterday. I'm tired again today --