Brain Teaser

Solved! Thank you one and all for your ideas an inputs. I finally spoke to an ASUS tech support person who immediately told me they were 'aware' of the issue I was having. They gave me an RMA number and said they would replace the board. I've always sworn by ASUS boards, but this is the first time I swore at one of them. Let's hope that this solves my problem, and perhaps this thread will help someone in the future. Thanks again.

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Embarrassed to say, but I'm a computer repair teacher and can't figure this one out!

New installation of Win7 (64bit) on an ASUS mobo (P8P67), 1TB hard drive, plenty of RAM. Installation proceeds normally with a reboot during install. I set a restore point immediately. I install a few drivers, set a restore point and reboot. All OK. Repeat a few times with more drivers -- no problem. Add a few more drivers and, upon reboot, the system hangs for 5 minutes (really!) before Windows log on screen. I go back to the restore points I created, all the way back to the first one, and the problem is the same. 5 minute lag during boot. During this 5 minutes, the screen is dark with a blinking cursor. Safe mode boots normally. I've installed several times trying different driver sequences, but still wind up stuck. I would REALLY appreciate any advice. Thanks in advance.

Additional information:

Thanks for the reply. The computer case is a generic one -- the motherboard is ASUS P8P67 with 8GB RAM. Hard drive is a Seagate 1TB; power supply is 450 watts. I used the driver disk that came with the board the first time and ran into this problem. The second (and 3rd and 4th) times I loaded Windows (Win 7 Home Premium, 64-bit), I used drivers from the ASUS site and then started using drivers directly from the manufacturers (Intel chipset, ATi graphics, Realtek audio, etc. Every time the same result.
That's why I started creating restore points along the way, so I could figure out which driver was causing the system to hang. The thing that gets me is that when I restore the system to the point immediately after a clean install, the problem shows up. When I created that restore point, the boot time was about 30 seconds. When I go back to that point, the boot time is 5 minutes. I wish there was a program similar to the old Bootvis that came with XP that analyzes the boot process and identifies lag times. I've looked in the Event Logs after one of these long boots and everything in there is in the 1-6 second range -- nothing that would account for 5 minutes. Another data point: If I select VGA mode (low resolution) the system boots quickly to normal desktop. Is it the video card? No! I tried 3 different PCIe cards and even an old PCI card, with no improvement. Any more ideas? Thank you.

 

Some computers require you to install the drivers in a certain order. I know you tried to install in different orders but you might go to your computer's manufacturer's website to see if they have any info on that. Or give us the manufacture name and model # of your computer so that the experts here can help you further.

 

I agree with TTRanch. I have to load my drivers in a particular order, rebooting after some, then loading the next for it to work.

 

Chipset driver generally always comes first. Although it may seem meticulous, perhaps you can try installing one driver at a time (or uninstall one at a time) to determine which one is causing the hang up.

And as for the restore point - that does not delete program data nor driver updates (although it does recover them) as far as I remember.

It might be worth considering running a disk check utility to rule out the possibility of one or more bad sectors, as well.

 

Agree. Restore points are useless in more than 50%

 

Thank you for your ideas. I didn't mention it, but I did test the hard drive and it passed, and I tried 2 different drives just in case. I have been installing the chipset driver first, but how would you un-install it? I assumed the restore point would get me back to the system as it existed at that time, without the driver.

Anyway, I just found another point that might help us figure this one out. The owner of the computer (it's not mine -- I'm doing a favor, go figure!). He now tells me that this 5 minute delay only started after he brought it to the Geek Squad to fix what turned out to be a bad hard drive. After they replaced the drive and installed Windows, apparently they did something else, because when he got it back it was taking the 5 minutes to boot. He brought it back to them and they refunded his money, and said they didn't know what else might have been done (the hard drive was a warranty unit). He tried to reload Windows and when the problem came up again, he gave it to me to look at. Now I'm thinking the Geeks may have flashed the BIOS. I've changed just about everything else (hard drive, RAM, video cards, etc.) so I'm thinking it must be something on the motherboard itself. ASUS boards are difficult to flash, but it's about the only thing I haven't tried. Thank you again for your input.

 

To uninstall chipset drivers, go to Device Manager and look under system devices (there are also chipset drivers for the USB Host Controllers under Universal Serial Bus in Device Manager).



I believe Best Buy also uses refurbished material (similar to Staples, who uses Nexicore for their parts depot), so I'd throw caution to the wind on that hard drive. Bad sectors may not show up (btw, which program(s) did you use to verify?), but there could be other problems, such as ones related to the drive's logic board or motor.

It is possibly a motherboard issue as well.