PC Taking long time on boot

[Drake5]

My mates PC is a 3.2GHZ P4, 3GB DDR2 PC.

It was taking a very long time to turn on, about 20 mins. At first I formatted it hoping it'd fix the boot issue but it didn't, even after formatting it still took a very long time to turn on.

This can't be a driver issue or virus because it was doing it right after a full format, so I'm thinking it's got to be hardware related? But what could be causing this?

Cheers

 

[Drake5]

Nothing audible from the hard drive, but it does make sense it could be a failing HDD. Their has only been a brief clean of the case, i.e some internal fans and around the CPU heatsync.

Would you guys suggest buying a new HDD and applying some new thermal paste to the CPU?

Cheers

 

[Drake5]

The HDD is sata - Not IDE. A new computer would certainly be out of the question.

I think I'll get a 2nd hand HDD from the MM to see if it makes any better. Also the computer in general is just slow, I know P4's are old but with 3GB RAM it should be fine.