What makes a slow booting PC (brand new)

[knc]

Workstation takes 5 minutes to boot before domain log on screen. Event viewer shows nothing particular.. Am having a windows update problem with it also... only installing a hand full of updates and rejecting most others. I wonder if this could be part of the issue?

Win 7, 4 gb i5 ..

 

[ComputerRepairTech]

did u do a speed test in windows for the hdd.

 

[NYJimbo]

When you are feeling ill and go to a doctor and he asks you what is wrong and all you tell him is "I just don't feel right", what do you think he does ?

He runs a series of tests, all kinds of usual things to get a feel for the patients general health. Most of these things are standard tests and should be done with any patient where you cannot determine what is wrong right away. This way the doctor is sure of certain things and knows what he can likely rule out and during these tests he might get a clue as to what direction to take in making a diagnosis.

Same thing applies to a computer that is "not feeling right".

What have you done besides look at the event viewer ?

 

[knc]

When you are feeling ill and go to a doctor and he asks you what is wrong and all you tell him is "I just don't feel right", what do you think he does ?

He runs a series of tests, all kinds of usual things to get a feel for the patients general health. Most of these things are standard tests and should be done with any patient where you cannot determine what is wrong right away. This way the doctor is sure of certain things and knows what he can likely rule out and during these tests he might get a clue as to what direction to take in making a diagnosis.

Same thing applies to a computer that is "not feeling right".

What have you done besides look at the event viewer ?

Crystal disk is showing healthy...what other tests would you guys run? i picking it up today at 5pm..

 

[ComputerRepairTech]

in other words you did a SMART check and not a speed test?

I like "AS SSD Benchmark" because it checks partition alignment and drivers too. (works for normal drives too)

 

[lan101]

I'd say something hard drive related. I've been finding even a lot of the business grade machines are using mediocre drives.

 

[drjones]

Workstation takes 5 minutes to boot before domain log on screen. Event viewer shows nothing particular.. Am having a windows update problem with it also... only installing a hand full of updates and rejecting most others. I wonder if this could be part of the issue?

Win 7, 4 gb i5 ..

It's part of a domain?

I'll virtually guarantee there's a GPO in place to redirect folders to the server, and this is a known issue with Windows 7 and folder redirection, for some stupid reason.

That GPO can cause workstations to hang at boot, just like you're experiencing.

ETA: check the event logs, I'll bet you see a reference to the folder redirect GPO hanging at boot.

 

[AndyM]

What anti virus is installed on the PC?

Does it take this long to boot if you remove the Ethernet cable prior to booting it up?

Andy

 

[brandonkick]

I'd disconnect everything from the machine save a mouse and keyboard (and I've even seen those make computers throw fits) so maybe try a different mouse and keyboard. Remove everything else, that would be plugged in to the front or back... things like printer cables, headphones, usb thumb drives, ethernet cables and so on.

If you STILL have an issue, I'd simply toss in a new hard drive and install windows on it. You don't have to imput a serial, because your not going to activate. If once you set it up, it boots properly and quickly then you have a bad drive or a software issue.

If the customer just got this machine, and it doesn't have a ton of irreplaceable data/difficult configurations. Nuke and pave the drive that was in the machine (or nuke it and clone the other drive to it since you've already taken the time and effort to set that one up).

This whole process would be much much faster if you had a ready to go syspreped drive on hand. Or a way to deploy a sysprepped image.


If your talking about a machine that you've literally just pulled out of a box, and it's slow. I'm going to bet you've got a drive problem. But really it could be a lot of things, which is why like NYJimbo has suggested you need to do a proper diagnosis.

 

[knc]

Took me forever to find it... Norton endpoint.. yanked it out, went from 4-5 minutes boot, to 2 minutes...to ready desktop.

 

[lan101]

Yeah anything Norton always slows everything down. I especially can't stand the entry level laptops with already slow HDD's along with norton or mcafee it's almost unusable to me lol.

 

[knc]

well weird is 2 identical machines installed and one ran fine with their norton endpoint this one didn't...

 

[lan101]

That is strange for sure.

 

[NYJimbo]

Took me forever to find it... Norton endpoint.. yanked it out, went from 4-5 minutes boot, to 2 minutes...to ready desktop.

Funny you mention that, I have a customers laptop in now running Win 7 Enterprise and 'Symantec Endpoint Protection'. It's fast as lightning, well, that is after I killed all the viruses. What I mean is that SEP is running fast and totally oblivious to what's going on. I can go to known bad sites and it's happy, I can have it visit my "virus server" and it doesn't see a thing. I told it to scan an infected drive and it told me everything was "OK !".

Not sure why its fast but it sure as hell isn't doing anything. Maybe that's why it's so fast.

I told the customer it has to come out and be replaced with something else or they would likely be infected again.

I guess a fast Norton A/V means a dead Norton A/V.

 

[knc]

Funny you mention that, I have a customers laptop in now running Win 7 Enterprise and 'Symantec Endpoint Protection'. It's fast as lightning, well, that is after I killed all the viruses. What I mean is that SEP is running fast and totally oblivious to what's going on. I can go to known bad sites and it's happy, I can have it visit my "virus server" and it doesn't see a thing. I told it to scan an infected drive and it told me everything was "OK !".

Not sure why its fast but it sure as hell isn't doing anything. Maybe that's why it's so fast.

I told the customer it has to come out and be replaced with something else or they would likely be infected again.

I guess a fast Norton A/V means a dead Norton A/V.

Thats just like Vipre AV for me..