Hi all,
I am a newbie here, but not a newbie when it comes to computers. I have had my computer working fine for awhile. Then I decided to move it downstairs to my big screen tv to hook up via S-video. When I went to boot into Windows, it took 2 min because I figured I didn't have my keyboard hooked up. Since then it has taken an average of 1 min to boot into XP when it used to take about 20 seconds.
I have done everything including a clean install (after trying an upgrade), defrag, making sure all cables are secure, reinstalling my keyboard via Ctrl Panel, booting w/ minimal devices attached, and running bootvis to do a trace and optimize. Bootvis showed me that my HD spends about 30 seconds w/ activity before my CPU chimes in. My HD light stays on the whole time (no blinking during the 30 seconds).
Thus since a clean install did not work, I am assuming this is a HD problem. I have two WD drives, my master is 120 GB that I just got a couple months ago and my slave is an 80 GB that is about a year old. I have XP tucked away on a partition on my 120 GB drive so I had no trouble doing a clean install, but since that didn't work, I am thinking my HD is bad. Not sure how this could happen. Everything works fine once in XP, its just it when from 10 seconds on the XP boot screen to 30 and I cannot account for this.
Does anyone have any suggestions? I am really out of ideas. I am thinking of just switching my drives and using my 80 GB drive for XP but it is a bit older, and I just recently had a drive crash on me, so the newer the drive, the more likely I can 1) get a return via warranty and 2) be farther away from a HD crash.
Thanks very much.
Drew
I am a newbie here, but not a newbie when it comes to computers. I have had my computer working fine for awhile. Then I decided to move it downstairs to my big screen tv to hook up via S-video. When I went to boot into Windows, it took 2 min because I figured I didn't have my keyboard hooked up. Since then it has taken an average of 1 min to boot into XP when it used to take about 20 seconds.
I have done everything including a clean install (after trying an upgrade), defrag, making sure all cables are secure, reinstalling my keyboard via Ctrl Panel, booting w/ minimal devices attached, and running bootvis to do a trace and optimize. Bootvis showed me that my HD spends about 30 seconds w/ activity before my CPU chimes in. My HD light stays on the whole time (no blinking during the 30 seconds).
Thus since a clean install did not work, I am assuming this is a HD problem. I have two WD drives, my master is 120 GB that I just got a couple months ago and my slave is an 80 GB that is about a year old. I have XP tucked away on a partition on my 120 GB drive so I had no trouble doing a clean install, but since that didn't work, I am thinking my HD is bad. Not sure how this could happen. Everything works fine once in XP, its just it when from 10 seconds on the XP boot screen to 30 and I cannot account for this.
Does anyone have any suggestions? I am really out of ideas. I am thinking of just switching my drives and using my 80 GB drive for XP but it is a bit older, and I just recently had a drive crash on me, so the newer the drive, the more likely I can 1) get a return via warranty and 2) be farther away from a HD crash.
Thanks very much.
Drew