PC Booting WAY too slow.. Memory?

**BabyPooh** · August 13th, 2006, 10:23 PM

I was having a problem with my laptop, the battery was brand new and it was not charging it kept shutting my system down when I had the ac adaptor plugged in to charge it, obviously a problem with the power switch on the motherboard. So i took it to circuit city and they supposedly fixed it.

The next day. The computer turned on and froze. I shut it off and rebooted. It rebooted SO SLOW it took almost an hour and it didnt get to the desk top. The computer screen comes on with the brand of the computer details, when I press the power button, and it gives a black screen and a big long line like this shows IIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIII and slowly each line becomes a solid line and i realise that half an hour later it finally reaches destination desktop. I reformatted, and it took almost 3 hours just to friggin re in stall xp. I would like to know what is going on, is this a Memory problem, is the CPU fan not working or is my hard disk failing. Circuit City has me paranoid, I have no idea what they did on the internal insides of my laptop ( HP Pavilion zv5000 with XP Home) but if anyone has had this experience before or can help me so that I can try a few tips before taking it in and blowing money on it to fix it ID appreciate it! Ive got a few good years in fixing computers, this has me really baffled though Thanks!

**CCT** · August 14th, 2006, 07:10 AM

Welcome to WinDrivers:

IF they had the case open they MIGHT have dislodged the cpu heatsink and you are getting seriously underclocked - or memory mods are loose or dirty or any number of things.

You should have just gone back to them and asked.

In any event, if you are comfortable opening it up, check those things and every other connection.

gl

**BabyPooh** · August 14th, 2006, 12:37 PM

I spoke to a tech today and he said it sounds like the hard drive is failing and that it wouldnt be cpu because cpu would have the system shutting down, and he doesnt think its memory. Anything I can do?

**CCT** · August 14th, 2006, 02:29 PM

I find it hard to believe that when you took it in for service they didn't boot it up before working on it. In which case they knew it ran OK before they 'fixed' it.

Likewise, after they 'fixed' it they would have tested it.

So - take it back and demand they RE-fix it.

My opinion anyway.

**street1** · August 14th, 2006, 05:38 PM

Originally Posted by CCT

I find it hard to believe that when you took it in for service they didn't boot it up before working on it. In which case they knew it ran OK before they 'fixed' it.

Likewise, after they 'fixed' it they would have tested it.

So - take it back and demand they RE-fix it.

My opinion anyway.

Seems like a winner to me CCT.If the Circuit City that was used
is as good as the ones in Georgia.......I better not say.

**BOB IROC** · August 14th, 2006, 06:38 PM

Originally Posted by street1

Seems like a winner to me CCT.If the Circuit City that was used
is as good as the ones in Georgia.......I better not say.

Definately take it back and at the very least demand your money back that you paid for labor and find a more reputible computer repair place in your area than Circuit City or Best Buy to get an accurate diagnostic if you can.

It could be a harddrive and it could be the memory or CPU. If you know the brand of Hard Drive you can usually get diagnostics from the manufacturer or I like to use this one from Gateway as it is not brand specific.

You can also check www.majorgeeks.com for other diagnostics to test components like Memory, motherboard, CPU. I downloaded a version of Hiren's Boot CD and it has some nice utilities to run some diagnostics that may be of some help.

**BabyPooh** · August 14th, 2006, 08:02 PM

Thanks. The only thing I did today was once the computer finally got to desktop after 3o minuts of waiting agony, was go to the device manager and to the ATA IDE controllers i clicked on primary and its advanced properties, I wanted to check teh transfer mode to see if it was on plo which can cause slow hard drive i heard, so it wasnt, it was on DMA Mode. So then I went to use the windows cd again for recovery and wasnt quite sure what to do to be honest, so I tried to check the ntoskrnl.exe and couldnt access that, it was denying me. Then when I rebooted sadly, it said the NTLDR is missing. Ouchie again. So I started to reformat again this time installin xp pro instead of home and it took 3 hours to format the C drive........ i started at 5 and its 8 now and its only at 63 percent. I wonder is there anything I can do once windows is finished and I get to the desktop..............should I download the stuff that u recommended to me and try those? Should I scan for viruses and use a registry clean?

**BOB IROC** · August 14th, 2006, 08:07 PM

well if you are doing a fresh restore then the registry should be cleared out if you are formatting the drive. As far as viruses go unless you have a boot sector virus then those should be wiped with a format and restore as well.

Its hard to tell what could be causing the slowness without a diagnostic. It could be heat issues, does your BIOS give temp readings of the computer components? It probably doesn't but it doesn't hurt to ask.

I would make a CD of that Hiren's boot CD and run a few of the utilities and see if it can find anything wrong with the hardware.

**BabyPooh** · August 14th, 2006, 08:15 PM

is there a place on hirens page where I can download that cd.. i didnt find a download link

**BOB IROC** · August 14th, 2006, 08:18 PM

Originally Posted by BabyPooh

is there a place on hirens page where I can download that cd.. i didnt find a download link

yeah, I see that now too. Try here http://maxt.dk/archives/2006/08/01/hirens-bootcd-83/ I just googled for "Hiren's Boot CD 8.3"

**BabyPooh** · August 14th, 2006, 08:42 PM

Thanks! Ill download it now and put it on the laptop once windows is completed installing. Ill keep ya posted!

**BOB IROC** · August 14th, 2006, 08:52 PM

OK, it is a boot CD so it runs many utities in DOS Mode. Think there are some Windows Utilies on there too though.

**BabyPooh** · August 15th, 2006, 12:09 PM

Wow.
So It took like 3 hours for XP Pro to complete erasing the old stuff off the drive. Once it completed the computer booted up like a rocket. The white line shoots across fast, No more hangs. Interesting isnt it. It is almost as if the XP home I was using before was corrupted, the cd or the one that was already in the system. Now Im going crazy finding the sound drivers lol.... sheesh@!