Vista S L O W Boot

Rezident

Rezident

Rezident

Soldato
Joined
29 May 2007
Posts
4,926
Location
Dublin
Vista used to boot up in a minute or two. Now after a fairly large Windows update the other day it takes AGES.

Goes through the POST mostly ok (except sometimes it doesn't pick up one of my drives) but when it gets to the plain black blank screen just before the Vista logo appears, it just stays blank for a full six or seven minutes!

Eventually goes to desktop but what on EARTH is taking Vista so long? Any ideas?
 
Try disconnecting any USB hard drives and if your keyboard is PS/2 then disable the Legacy USB option in the BIOS. I had this problem with my old pc and doing this fixed it in my case. Of course if you have a USB keyboard, disabling legacy USB may deny you access to your BIOS, so be careful with the option.
 
JRAID might be Jmicron Raid controller? perhaps a driver became corrupted, or something to that end? have you got a RAID array?
 
remember to backup any important stuff it's possible either the hd is failing (depending on the errors- post them here) or as Vader suggested or something has got corrupted.
 
VaderDSL said:
JRAID might be Jmicron Raid controller? perhaps a driver became corrupted, or something to that end? have you got a RAID array?
Click to expand...

No I don't use RAID but I think my mobo has the Jmicron RAID controller alright.

The error says 'The driver detected a controller error on \Device\hardsisk2\DR2' - that might be the drive that doesn't show up properly anymore, my E: drive. Sometimes it's just not there in My Computer.

Right now, it is there but I can't access it and it doesn't show how much of it is free, as it does for my C: and D: drives?:confused:
 
If it's very slow and you're having problems on POST with hard-drives then I think you have found your fault.

You can try scandisking them but I'd say one was damaged / bad blocks. Time to back up your data asap and get it replaced or RMA'd.


M.
 
check the cables to the drive are plugged in propperly to both the drive and motherboard. - It would suggest that the slow boot up is due to this drive. If it appears - backup any stuff you can off it, and run scan disk on it.
 
ok Windows Explorer keeps crashing. Restarted Vista - it took nearly ten minutes! No games will play, even CCleaner will not run? Only Firefox and chrome :confused:

ok I'll try scandisk, thanks.
 
sounds like one or more drives are on the way out.

try with only the working drive connected.
try a new drive.
 
Thanks for all the replies, I think the E: drive is dodgy alright. Ran disk check on C: drive anyway, vista said it couldn't do it while its in use, so scheduled one for the next restart. Restarted, Vista checked C:, said 'the volume is clean Windows has finsihed checking the disk.
..'

and just stayed there, refused to boot into Windows?!

Tried it many times. Windows will not go past the disk check:confused: If I restart it just does the disk check again perpetually but never goes past it.

If it is just the E: drive that's dodgy and the C: drive is fine, why can't I boot into Windows?
 
on boot up windows trys to connect to all the hardware, maybe some files it needs are stored on the e: drive. perhaps a gaming tool such as steam is stored with your games, which windows will try and load.

unplug the e drive. This should enable you to gain stable access to the OS.

Get a external drive caddy -usb approx £15 and chuck the dodgy disk in.. maybe then you can start to do any recovery if you need too.
 
ok that worked thanks. Got into windows. Ran disk check on the E: drive but it's been running all yesterday and through the night and is still running now!

Found a guide:

http://maximumpcguides.com/windows-vista/how-to-use-check-disk-in-windows-vista/

that says you should never stop disk check once it's started - is that really true? Could it really take days? It's only a Samsung 500 gig drive.

Thanks again.
 
A disk check on a 500gb will not take days from my experience.

That sounds like a very long time. What is the progress bar looking like?
Have there been any errors found what are they?
 
psd99 said:
A disk check on a 500gb will not take days from my experience.

That sounds like a very long time. What is the progress bar looking like?
Have there been any errors found what are they?
Click to expand...

The progress bar flew along to about a centimetre from the end in a few seconds then stayed there for hours and overnight and is still there. However, the app is still running, i.e. it is not 'not responding' like usually happened when apps crash in Vista.

No errors found so far. Just worried by that link that said Never to stop a disk check. Pretty sure there's something wrong with the drive though, I added some large video files to it and whenever I tried to play one of them media player would crash then windows explorer would crash and Vista went haywire. One of the videos is over 3 gigs but it works fine on my other drives?
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top Bottom