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PC tAKES 20 mins to boot.

When I press the power button on my my PC I get a blank monitor screen for 20 mins before it boots up.
I have plenty of hard drive space and it's a reasonably specced computer.
Could a kind techie please help?

Comments

  • ormus
    ormus Posts: 42,714 Forumite
    most likely a serious corruption of the OS.
    do you have a recovery disk?
    if so insert the disk and boot from the cd disk. then follow the instructions to restore or reinstall the OS.

    (be aware that you MAY loose all your personal data).
    Get some gorm.
  • spakkker
    spakkker Posts: 1,322 Forumite
    Part of the Furniture 1,000 Posts Combo Breaker
    When your pc is on go start/run/ and type in eventvwr.msc . This may give you an idea of where the problem is. The top lines are most recent and if you double click you will get a box with info about each line.
  • alared
    alared Posts: 4,029 Forumite
    Do you have a printer connected and if so--which one
  • PZH
    PZH Posts: 1,599 Forumite
    Part of the Furniture Combo Breaker
    ringer wrote: »
    When I press the power button on my my PC I get a blank monitor screen for 20 mins before it boots up.
    I have plenty of hard drive space and it's a reasonably specced computer.
    Could a kind techie please help?

    What operating system are you using ?
    Has it always done this or is it something recent ?
    Have you installed new software/hardware recently ?

    Does the HDD light come on for/during the 20mins during boot up ? ( i.e.. is the PC actually doing anything ? )
    “That old law about 'an eye for an eye' leaves everybody blind. The time is always right to do the right thing.”
  • Saw a similar thing a while back on an old machine, it turned out to be Tesco's internet security package that had died and was slowing the machine right down on startup, when it was removed and replaced with avg and zonealarm it worked fine.
  • BritBrat
    BritBrat Posts: 3,764 Forumite
    I would say you have a hardware problem/conflict.

    Try booting to safe mode and see if it is quicker.

    PRESS F8 just before XP starts to load, keep tapping it untill you see options page.
  • Oliver27
    Oliver27 Posts: 608 Forumite
    Part of the Furniture 500 Posts Combo Breaker
    I had the same issue on my system, it would load some of the bios screen
    then stop with no errors or reason, then 10-15mins later it would boot up as
    normal and run fine with no speed loss.

    Turns out it's related to my lexmark usb printer, if it happens the
    printer is normally in standby as soon as I turn it on, the pc starts
    to load again straightaway so I just leave the printer always on and
    it never happens now.

    Mine appears to be more of a hardware issue, as the delay is before
    the harddisc is even detected in the bios, anyway I can live with it
    not worth replacing my pc for.
  • alared
    alared Posts: 4,029 Forumite
    Same thing happened with my new Lexmark.
    I have to switch the printer on before I boot up or the same thing happens as Oliver27 describe s above.
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