PC slow to boot, not windows

mitzibishi · 6 Apr 2012 at 17:01

Ive just installed some RAM into my 2nd PC and now the boot times from power on to Windows booting has upped to about 10 minutes, it hangs on the Asus mobo boot screen. the Windows boot is usual 1 or 2 minutes after that.

i cant understand why its doing this. the ram works fine when in windows & is in the mobos vendor list, its just bog standard Corsair xms2 800mhz.

a few times after hanging it has asked which drive i want to boot from, its set to boot from drive 1 the only HDD in the PC.

the HDD also works fine in windows.

i cant get into the BIOS, if i quickly press for goto setup up it hangs there while searching for drives, usb drives etc then boots to windows

was wondering if my CMOS battery was dying.

wazza300 · 6 Apr 2012 at 17:03

what mb is it? and what dram voltage you using?

mitzibishi · 6 Apr 2012 at 19:25

specs are

CPU Q8200
Mobo P5G41-M
RAM corsair xms2 4gb 800mhz DDR2
i think RAM is running at 1.8v

but i cant get to the BIOS screen anymore to check, if i choose setup or bios it sends me to this setup screen and starts to search for a drive to boot from. it searchs for usb & drives for ages and then lets me choose which drive i want to boot from

other than that it boots to windows fine but just takes ages to get to that windows boot

its not a big problem, just it didnt happen before

Idleman · 6 Apr 2012 at 19:32

You could try a Cmos reset.

mitzibishi · 7 Apr 2012 at 04:28

i did take the battery out for a few mins when i replaced the ram. i may replace the battery, was just asking in case it was a known problem, that could be fixed right away i may change the battery. see if that helps

Buchanan0204 · 7 Apr 2012 at 04:53

If it worked before you put the memory in... wouldn't that mean it's the memory and nothing to do with the battery?

ran memtest to check the memory for errors?

mitzibishi · 7 Apr 2012 at 14:10

the memory worked fine before aswell, i upgraded my main PC ram and took this corsair ram & stuck it in my 2nd PC media centre so i can have 4gb of half decent ram.

and it works fine in windows, its just this asus boot time thats changed.

baffled, i dont know if its searching for something on boot, like i said when i goto setup from the Asus bootscreen it searches for usb drives for ages, then it detects them after about 5 minutes waiting.

my initial thoughts were that it didnt know which drive to boot windows from because a few times it asked me which drive fater the wait. now it doesnt but still overlong boots

Double07 · 7 Apr 2012 at 17:55

I know this is a bit of a stretch but mine does this when I use one of my SATA cables. It has no obvious physical damaged but is clearly broken as it causes everything to hang for ages. windows will eventually boot but we are talking 10x longer than normal. New cable = fine. So possibly change the cables to be sure it isn't that. I know it's unlikely but worth a short to eliminate it at the least.

Buchanan0204 · 7 Apr 2012 at 18:35

Do you have an external drive connected. Happened on my Asus 775 board when I connected an external storage drive.

mitzibishi · 13 Apr 2012 at 15:45

FIXED. ill wrap this up incase someone else has the same problem.

as i suspected it was searching for something.

it was a memory card in one of the front mem card slots. well it wasnt even a memory card, it was the adapter for a micro SD without an SD in it.

if i went to set-up it searched for HDD, DVD, and went through mass storage devices 1,2,3 and hung on 4. it mustv been in 4.

see i wasnt sure what it was in the beginning because i added new RAM, updated bios and mustv put the card adapter in the same day aswell.

so took all the USBs & the card adapter out and it booted to windows no probs.