Desktop sometimes takes ages to boot

[AndyCan]

I have a desktop that will sometimes, boot fine into windows at normal speed. Some days however it can take a while, like 10 mins sat on the windows loading screen and then on a few occasions it took like an hour! I figured it was a faulty hard drive so changed it. But it is still doing it. I'm pretty sure it also had 2 different images on there which work fine on other computers so im sure it has to be hardware but can figure out what. Anyone seen this before, know what it could be?

[mdench]

Dodgy piece of ram maybe? Dodgy sata cable?

[mac_shinobi]

BIOS Setting with ref to running in compatability mode instead of using AHCI, Chipset / sata drivers , power management settings ( Lenovo use there own power manager app / drivers and it over rides windows settings ), too much starting up with said machine

 

What spec is it / make and model ?

[AndyCan]

its a decent Acer. We have 2 others here on the same image which work fine so it cant be a driver or software problem. I'll try a RAM test and a bios reset and maybe switch the sata cable too

[Danp]

I quite often have to do this to some of our machines, this is my process.

 

Remove ram, compressed air into slots, re-fit, test using Memtest86+ - Advanced Memory Diagnostic Tool

 

Hour later, boot to Windows and run CrystalDiskInfo - Software - Crystal Dew World to check the hard drive.

 

If I have the time, I tend to run a chkdsk on the drive to with the repair function.

[SYNACK]

its a decent Acer.

 

Oxyoron much

 

Have had this before, check the SATA cable as it could be loose or faulty and causing issues like this. Run the vendor check tools on the hard drive and possibly upgrade the bios to the latest version.

 

The other thing you can do is pull the power cable then hold in the power button for 20 seconds just to completely discharge the internal stuff and make sure it has forgotten any issues it may be having.

[ricki]

Hi

 

Please can you be more specific with problem. What is the os? Is it on a domain? What is the nic card and is it a 1 gig card and do you have the lastest drivers on the machine?

 

Richard

[cpjitservices]

Is it Windows Updates..... after an update here our machines tent to take longer to boot.

[PeteSeddon]

Check event viewer, if you are seeing any big long lists of red crosses after a particular slow log on, plug the errors you get into eventid.net and see what comments people are putting.

 

I had a very similar problem with a machine that was trying to update group policy from a particular DC in our domain, but it could not resolve it after a number of retries. Sometimes, it would pick another DC that it could resolve and it logged on lightning fast. To resolve it, i just removed it from the domain and re-added it and did an ipconfig /flushdns.

 

I am making the assumption that this machine you are having trouble with is on the network, however.