Hard drive causing long start-up and shutdown times?

stev1212

stev1212

stev1212

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Hey guys, Recently built a Shuttle system! specs:
Core i5 3550 3.3ghz
8 gigs corsair memory (1600mhz)
HD 7850 2 gig.
Western digital caviar black 1TB.

After building the system all was good until i started getting some sleep/hibernation issues. Basically you'd put it to sleep come back 3 hours later press any button on keyboard (even the actual power button) the fans would come on but the screen would remain black. Forcing me to do a hard shutdown.
To fix this i updated my bios and all my drivers (got them for the shuttle site)

This fixed my sleep issue but has caused ANOTHER problem. 50% Of the time when i start windows i get to the login screen, enter my password and it just hangs. If you leave it for 10 mins it logs into my desktop but it's just a blue background with no icons just the start bar. I know its my HDD not loading the data as you can literally hear no HDD movement and watching the activity LED it just flickers very occasionally. Any idea what i can do here? It seems that im stuck with either one problem or the other!

It is possible that these arent actually related and that i just haven't experienced a hibernation issue YET on the new drivers so bare that in mind.

Any help appreciated as always guys!
 
Yeah thats right :)
If you check QUICK SCAN (right hand side) then it will just scan the top sectors I think. (quickest but less accurate)
Leave it unchecked for a full deep scan (best but longest), it'll take a while in this mode though due to the size of the drive.

HDTUNE has been a brilliant program for me :)

Edit : Also check in the HEALTH tab for Yellow and Red highlighted rows.
 
rhysduck said:
Yeah thats right :)
If you check QUICK SCAN (right hand side) then it will just scan the top sectors I think. (quickest but less accurate)
Leave it unchecked for a full deep scan (best but longest), it'll take a while in this mode though due to the size of the drive.

HDTUNE has been a brilliant program for me :)

Edit : Also check in the HEALTH tab for Yellow and Red highlighted rows.
Click to expand...

Doing a deep scan now buddy :) Looking at it's progress should be done in 2-3 hours. Il post back here with the results! If this comes back OK am i right to assume my problem is with software interfering with the HDD at boot?
 
Quite possibly. You can check your startup processes to see what is running when Windows loads (MSCONFIG in Start>Run) to rule out that. Disable anything you don't recognise and try a reboot.. after the error checking ;) If its fixed, you'll know its something at startup and you can reenable one at a time until it comes back.

Or post a screenshot of the MSCONFIG Startup tab and we can tell you what to disabled.

Also like I said in my previous post.. check the HEALTH tab of HDTUNE. That'll tell you if the drive is having spinup problems or other trouble.
 
rhysduck said:
Quite possibly. You can check your startup processes to see what is running when Windows loads (MSCONFIG in Start>Run) to rule out that. Disable anything you don't recognise and try a reboot.. after the error checking ;) If its fixed, you'll know its something at startup and you can reenable one at a time until it comes back.

Or post a screenshot of the MSCONFIG Startup tab and we can tell you what to disabled.

Also like I said in my previous post.. check the HEALTH tab of HDTUNE. That'll tell you if the drive is having spinup problems or other trouble.
Click to expand...

Health tab says everything is OK. Il let this error scan run then post up the MSCONFIG screenshot :)
Thanks again mate :)
 
sleep resume problems are usually bios or memory related as it saves the sleep state to memory and resumes from it not the hdd,i very much doubt its hdd

try using very latest bios or beta bios and manually setup your memory voltages/timings
 
Ok guys, here are the results!

HTUNE.png


Here is my start up apps:

msconfig.png


Any ideas? :)
 
Could try a different anti-virus? Sometimes they can cause the system to have long start-ups and shut downs. Avast and Microft Security Essentials are fine for me.
 
HDD seems ok according to that error check.
Uncheck the following and reboot:
Google Update
Steam
Apple Push
iTunes
I'd also consider unchecking the AV too (Bit defender), just to rule it out.
what are the 2x micosoft entries? 5th and 9th entries down..
Also what's at the bottom of the list?

Failing all the above copy this sfc /scannow into a run command and press enter.
It'll find and fix any problem system files.
 
rhysduck said:
HDD seems ok according to that error check.
Uncheck the following and reboot:
Google Update
Steam
Apple Push
iTunes
I'd also consider unchecking the AV too (Bit defender), just to rule it out.
what are the 2x micosoft entries? 5th and 9th entries down..
Also what's at the bottom of the list?

Failing all the above copy this sfc /scannow into a run command and press enter.
It'll find and fix any problem system files.
Click to expand...

5th and 9th entry down are just 'Microsoft Windows operating system'
I've unchecked the ones you said. But as i said in my orginal post this only seems to happpen 50% of the time so il try a few boots/shutdowns etc :)
Last entry is 'Razer blackwidow' and 'Razer lachesis'
 
Last edited:
Orcvader said:
Could try a different anti-virus? Sometimes they can cause the system to have long start-ups and shut downs. Avast and Microft Security Essentials are fine for me.
Click to expand...

The problem seems to be the HDD not actually doing anything. It just sits there and doesn't seem to realise it should be loading data. I know AV can slow down comps but this is an entirely HDD based problem.
 
I THINK i 'might' have solved a small part of it. Just ran MEMTEST X86 my ram had about 8 errors. I've RMA'd it and some new ram is on the way. Possible that ram could cause this?

Thanks for all the help btw gents :)
 
Yup could have been a RAM problem, thats what I was going to suggest testing next :)
Hope you get it solved. Do you have spare RAM to test in the meantime?
 
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