6130hs occasional slow boot

Occaionally my 6130hs will boot very slowly. It gets to the blue screen where it says averatec then takes two to three minutes to show the icons. It will always do this when I make some change to the system such as software updates. sometimes it will do that even when there is no change i am aware of. I always have my updates prompt me for action and not work silently in the background. when this is occuring there is no hard drive activity, until it gets done thinking about whatever it's thinking about then continues it's boot. Anybody have a clue about this? Rex.

 

rexamillion,

Can you point out where exactly windows is getting stuck, at what screen ?

You could try desactivating all the programs that start with windows, go to start => execute and type "msconfig" without the quotes. In the general tab, check "load basic services only" then reboot. See if it improves. If it does, then you have a problematic service or a program. From there you should active them one by one in order to spot which one is problematic

 

I've had the EXACT same issue, you described it perfectly. I was never able to find an issue, so I did a re-format with the 3 Averatec discs. That was a month ago and it hasn't done it since. I generally turn mine on and off at least twice a day, so I'm satisfied that whatever is causing is no more.

 

It probably isn't related, I saw a post about this being related to long boot times.

Try disabling the Intel PXE blah blah in the boot part of the BIOS. Someone said that reduced their boot times by loads, just a thought.

Cam

Canuck in Deutschland

 

<blockquote id='quote'> quote:<hr height='1' noshade id='quote'>Originally posted by ubercam

 

I should have just tried it again before I placed my last post so you guys wouldn't know what an idiot I am. I got the intel thing disabled. I had been trying to do the right and left arrow and/or the plus and minus to get it to change-that doesn't work.

anyway, I'll try it like this for a while and report back. Thanks again. Rex.

 

Hi guys. thanks for the responses. To "wipeout". the freeze is at the point when all the screen is blue and the word "averatec" is displayed across the screen. I tried the msconfig thing already, it didn't help. I should mention I have 1 gig of ram.
To the others, I saw that thing about the intel pxe, but I couldn't figure out how to disable it. I only could find where I could set the boot priority, and I could place it as last, but that didn't help. I'll look at it again. In the meantime, if anyone can give me detailed instructions on how to disable that, I'd apreciate it, Thanks. Rex.

 

Rexamillion,

I've had this behavior when I had a faulty USB device connected (it has an external cdrom enclosure, the plug IDE=>USB was not seated correctly, thus resulting in a very long delay for recognizing the USB devices.)

Try disconnecting everything, see if it helps.

 

Oh yes, one more thing. I was suspicious of the wireless driver because whenever I went with the newer one from windows,as I would watch the system tray icons, the wireless connection would always be the last thing to load, and that would take forever to make connection. whenever I would use the old driver, the wireless conection would load close to the first items, and would make connection quicker. Not to mention, the tray icons all loaded quicker irregardless of the boot time up to that point. when i downloaded the driver from the averatec site, I got that, plus a nifty icon I didn't have before. Rex.

 

Well, I'm not sure I'm done yet but I figured I'd better report on my progress so far or I'm likely to forget all the steps I've taken.

As some of you (and some previous posts) had suggested, I had already tried to turn on the 32 bit access for the hard drive in bios. It got much worse. when I disabled the pxe thing, it got worse. Before I had placed my first post I had updated the wireless driver with one provided by microsoft update. (the one off the averatec site was version 2.1.2.0, the one from microsoft was version 2.1.8.0. More about that later.

I revisited the idea of disabling things using the msconfig. I had previously only played with the startup group, but now decided to work with the services group. After some of my previous attempts on this problem I found that just rebooting once didn't mean it would boot the same way the next time. the first time I rebooted after turning off the pxe thing, it seemed to help. that was a warm reboot. then when I cold booted it, it was slow every time from then on. so after this, every time I tried something I would reboot 3 times to be sure of the effect. So, to minimize the time I had to deal with all the items in the services group, (A LOT OF ITEMS)I turned off half of the items to see the effect. If it had the right effect, then the offender was in the half I unchecked. then I continued to cut my problem in half each time. from the point that I turned half of the items off, until I got them all turned back on again, the system continued to boot quickly.

Later, the pc started booting slow again, so I did what I had been thinking about doing; removing the norton antivirus. I did that for two reasons. first it seemed as though something was sensitive to any time i made changes to the system. I figured maybe it had some feature that monitored any changes and that made it get bogged down in thinking anytime that happened. the other reason was that, even though I was a loyal norton fan for many years, when I tried to upgrade both of my other pcs to norton 2004 they both went berzerk. I had to uninstall it and go with another antivirus.

So, I uninstalled the norton antivirus and also the service called norton wmi, and also rolled back the wireless driver since I wasn't too comfortable with that either. I installed Avast antivirus. It cold booted quickly three times in a row, so I figured I now had it. I created a restore point. Since I felt I had found the problem, and being a tinkerer, I thought now I would try disabling the pxe thing; bad move. It immediately started booting slow, even when I turned that back on. Although I would think that things in the bios wouldn't effect things in the registry, I tried restoring back to the restore point I had created. That didn't help. there was another previous restore point which was created automatically by the norton wmi program uninstaller. It restored back to before that program was uninstalled, but my fast boot was back.

So, I uninstalled the norton wmi again, reinstalled the windows updated version of the wireless driver, and reinstalled avast antivirus. It rebooted 3 times fast so I went to make a restore point. As soon as I rebooted, it started booting slow again, as if the creating of the restore point did it. Sooo...,I restored back to that same point that was created by that uninstall program I mentioned. this time I rebooted three times after every change, and created a restore point at each point. each step was: uninstall norton wmi, install the wireless drivers from the averatec site, even though they have the same version number as what was installed. I have not installed any antivirus yet, so I can evaluate this more. I know I can't wait too long for that. Well anyway, I put all this in here so maybe it can benefit someone else, or maybe it may trigger a thought in someone else. Thanks, Rex.

 

you should probably use the drivers right from www.ralinktech.com heres the direct link for the xp driver:

http://www.ralinktech.com/drivers/Windows/IS_STA_2500_D-3.0.1.0_U-2.3.2.0_012005_1.0.0.8.exe

These give the best performance and best reliability. I have absolutely no problem with these drivers. Although some people in the forums at ralinktechs website still seem to have problems here and there even with the updated drivers, but that could be caused by anything.

Your problem seems to be deep, my suggestion would be to reinstall windows, preferrably from a full xp disc if you have one, you can use the key on the bottom to activate it. Then to get everything working again the drivers for everything are on the third recovery disc. I just did this to my machine because i was having an infinite shut down time, among some other things. Now it works faster and better. and maybe even a little cooler (just gaugring from feel on the left hand rest). Hope this maybe helps.

 

I tried those drivers from ralink. They seemed to work ok. I guess I would do the recovery disk before I did a full install. Does anyone out there have any personal stories about using the recovery disks, or any advice? Thanks, Rex.

 

<blockquote id='quote'> quote:<hr height='1' noshade id='quote'>Originally posted by rexamillion

 

no problem with recovery disks; change in the bios boot from cd, put in the first cd and it does it automatically for you, takes 15 minutes, it will prompt you for the other disks. You will lose any files you had and any changes to the interface you made or other programs you loaded of course.

 

to Wipeout. my previous post where I begin with the words;"oh yes one more thing" is wherre I talk about the driver thing. this is a separate issue from the other. To be more specific; the pc was taking about 3 minutes to get to the point where icons would appear. that is the main issue I have had, to which most of my posts refer. the other issue is that once the icons would appear then the items in the system tray would load differently depending on which wireless driver I was using. It wasn't exactly my choice to upgrade the wireless driver the first time as it came with a windows update. As I would restore back to earlier times working on the other problem, I would be using one wireless driver or the other depending on where I restored to. i would notice that with the original drivers, as I said, the wireless would connect quicker, and the system tray would fill out quicker. so, I mentioned this in case anybody had an opinion about it. Rex.

 

Oh ok, my mistake.

 

The key on the bottom of the laptop will only work with an xp home version. I tried to use it with a pro disc that i also have, but it didn't work. Although the xp home disc i have is older (pretty much from when xp came out), so there could possibly be the chance that microsoft has added some sort of protection to later discs, but i kinda doubt that. One thing to watch is make sure that you enter the key absolutely correct, otherwise it will not work.

 

To Radcomm, or anyone else who wishes to respond. I saw your (and other's elswhere)statement that you could do a full install from another xp disk then use the product kep from the laptop. I installed another xp that I had, but it would only let me enter the number that came with the disk. Is there another way to do it? Or, can you change it when you register with microsoft. I have been holding off on registering because I don't want to have to remove that xp from the other pc I have it installed on. Thanks, Rex.

 

What exactly is the Intel PXE blah blah blah for in the boot process?

 

As told by Goooogle...


"PXE explainded

PXE is part of an Intel initiative called Wired for Management.

As explained in Intel's site:

“Over the last several years, the PC industry has rallied around the Wired for Management (WfM) initiative. This has resulted in millions of PCs enabled with built-in features that offer valuable manageability functionality, including instrumentation, use of the network as a boot device, remote wake-up, and power management. These standards-based features have also been embraced and supported by numerous suppliers of manageability software and operating systems.”

Check the intel site (http://www.intel.com/labs/manage/wfm/index.htm) for details.

PXE was born to support Pcs mainly as fat clients, enabling the installation of the OS from the network. Although, PXE is used here as a way to boot the diskless thin client."

If that dosent make it crystal clear!

 

To all: this is an update to what I have been doing to the laptop. As i mentioned in my last post I used another copy of xp to get the laptop going. I was kind of forced into it. I tried using the recovery disk. It got partway through it and I started getting errors. Of course now i had to do something else because once the process starts it damages your previous installation.

I did find out that you can use the key you want to. I haven't done that yet but the instructions are at the following link: http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;en-us;810892

New install seems to be very stable. the down side is getting the drivers and all to work. there are drivers on the last cd, as others have said. some of mine were out of date, and there was no driver for the wireless. the other thing is that you lose the free software that comes with the original install, such as: microsoft works, norton antivirus, the dvd player software, and probably others. Another note for those who might be considering doing this not only should you make a copy if all your personal data, you gamers should make a copy of any files that your games make to track your progress through the game or you will have to start the game from the beginning when you get back up.

Once I get the laptop as close to the point I would like, short of registering it, I plan to make a backup of it as it is, then try the restore disk again. but that way if that fails, I can quickly get back to where I am now.

As to the recovery disks; I thought maybe the disk was just hard to read, and that maybe if i made a duplicate, the duplicate would be easier to read. I duplicated it on my wife's pc. I had to clean the disks several times to get a good read. I made two copies on two different brands of disks just to make sure. As soon as I try that I will let you all know how I fared. Rex.

 

Rex:
I found that the drivers on the restore discs were the exact same as the ones on the web. There are other drivers/software that you can get to update some things. Some are listed in my previous posting about "redoing the OS" :
http://www.notebookreview.com/forums/topic.asp?TOPIC_ID=11691

ABout that other software that you loose, imo Microsoft works really sucks, since i have an office bundle that didn't matter, if you can get microsoft office software instead of works you should. Norton was a trial version anyway, in three months you would have needed a new subscription. As for powerDVD, you can get trial versions here: http://www.gocyberlink.com/english/index.jsp
And most dvds include the interactual player, so you could use that, even though powerdvd is better. I think i may have an older version of powerdvd kicking around somewhere, just have to find it.
Really, that burning software and video editing soft, also sucked, it didn't handle any dvd capability, (even though the drive is a dvd burner) and it was really limited. THere are better programs out there from companies like Adobe and Nero.
Again the best thing for the wireless driver is the one from ralink (www.ralinktech.com its the 11g version).
I also think that averatec will send you new restore discs either free, or for a small fee (since they don't seem to work for you), they may also send you a full version of xp if you asked them to(you bought it with the laptop, so they have to be able to give you a full disc). Hope that this helps some more.

Oh yeah: use the omega drivers for video drivers: they make a huge difference. (www.omegadrivers.net)

 

Well, I got the recovery disks to work, so I used that to restore back to "normal". I am glad I made the duplicates. Though the original disks would still not work, the duplicates would. I had noticed before that the combination drive in the 6130 often would have trouble reading or recognizing some disks. I also put back in the ralink driver for the wireles and the omega driver for the video. These drivers seem to work really well and they come with extra utilities you don't get otherwise. I noticed a difference in the way my display looked. Also, for anyone who needs ms office, they should check out "open office". It is available free from download.com as well as other places. My pc seems much more stable than it was before. As I had said in a previous post, the install with the other xp disk was also fast and stable, I just hated to lose the software that came with it, not to mention the registering problem.

When I first got this laptop and fired it up, I immediatly put zone alarm on it. As soon as I connected to the internet, everything was trying to update at once. the windows, the antivirus, the zone alarm. I was having updates being installed at the same time I was having updates downloading. some updates require a restart of course. It locked up several times, and I had to shut it down by removing the battery three times. No doubt that is what damaged the original install. By the time I redid the install today, I had service pack 2 available on cd. I would recommend to anyone who is just getting a pc to find a way to limit whatever gets to update, and when, so it is done in an orderly fashion. I also have removed norton and replaced it with Avast antivirus. it is also free and available from download.com.