Half hour XP bootup!!?!?!?!

[3DMike]

Recently I had to install a new CPU after cracking my T-Bird, due to financial constraints I had to go for a Duron, but hew it is a 1300.

This worked fine and I stress tested the CPU for 3 days solid with no problems. Yesterday I tried to change video resolution, from 800*600 up to 1024*768, the screen went black and stayed black. After a reboot the problem remained however I could boot fine into safe mode. Trying to boot normally I got as far as the "Loading XP" screen then the screen went black again. After many attempts I couldnt get to the login screen.

I tried everything including a repair installation of XP and eventually after waiting with a black screen for 35 minutes I got to the login screen!

So what the heck is making windows take over half an hour to get to the login screen?

HELP!

[Lusankya]

Well I think the first problem you had may be the resolution.. might have been out of range for the monitor to show.

We reset one at a comp here at work and the monitor wouldn't work.. had to uninstall and reinstall the display drivers to eliminate the settings

[3DMike]

Reinstalling the vid drivers was one of the first things I tried. When in safe mode I installed the drivers, rebooted and got into windows normally. Funny thing is I could change resolutions down, but when I tried to switch up again it all went black. When I rebooted It started taking 30mins + to boot!

Thanx for replyingthough.

Next?

[CaptBill]

Are you sure that the video card and/or driver is XP supported.

[3DMike]

Well...... The Vid drivers worked fine the day before and I reinstalled the same version so I dont think thats the problem.

Last night I downloaded bootviz from the ms site and used it to trace the boot sequence. Very odd..... After a good scan disk and defrag it now Only takes 25 minutes to boot but for 24 of these minutes there is no droive activity, no cpu usage, no drivers being loaded, no services started or anything. All the work is done, it just sits there doing nowt for ages then gets to the login screen....

Got me beat.

[Yodums]

Try doing a clean format. I think your Windows XP install got corrupted or something. Does everything run smooth in Safe Mode? Do you have DMA enabled and not running your HDD through a PIO Mode?

[DreamingWolf]

Another thing to consider is whether the old bad vid drivers are still being referenced in the registry. If they are then the wait is the system trying to start/access them and waiting for each one to time out before moving on to the next file.
I bring this up because a couple of weeks ago I uninstalled windows messenger and outlook express started taking FOREVER to load. when I finally found a page that showed me the regfix, it explained that outlook by default tries to access messenger and the delay was the prog waiting for a response until it hit the timeout limit.

Hope something helps, nuthin worse than waiting to get going on the 'puter.:cool:

[3DMike]

Well its fixed. I think.
I ran bootviz and found that the video initialisation was taking over 2000 seconds (33 mins)!! I had already tried reinstalling the drivers but tried again, stil no luck so I used a different version (det 29.42) and all came good. Only problem now is that 29.42 doesnt work with Warcraft 3 for some odd reason.

The drivers that came with the card are alegedly not DX8.1 compatible but will let me run WC3, but now screw up the boot sequence. The 29.42 detonators are meant to be DX8.1 compatible but wont work with WC3. Go figure.

I highly reccomend boot viz for diagnosing boot problems and generally speeding up restarts. Bootviz (http://www.microsoft.com/hwdev/platform/performance/fastboot/default.asp)

Thanks for the suggestions guys. I think Im nearing the time for a complete reformat and reinstall though, its getting a bit flaky.

M

[DreamingWolf]

As someone who has toasted my OS at least a dozen times. I highly recommend Disk Image (or its equivalent). Put all your latest drivers on disk or CD, format, reinstall w/ all latest drivers and progs you always use, and make an image.
Now when I oops, at least I format and reset to a full blown setup that's already configured how I like it:D :cool: