Laptop (on Win7) takes 5+ mins to boot.

Hi, I was referred to this site when I was mentioning this problem to someone and I hope this is in the correct section.

I've had my laptop for 1.5 years (Compaq CQ50 110US)

Microprocessor 2.00 GHz AMD Turion X2 RM-70 Dual-Core Mobile Processor
Microprocessor Cache 1 MB L2 Cache
Memory 3072 MB
Video Graphics NVIDIA GeForce 8200M
OS: Windows 7 64bit

When I boot up the computer, it goes through the BIOS fine and then it goes to the windows logo where it flashes in and out. on my computer it hangs here for around 5 or so minutes before I get to the login screen. Once I reach the login screen, the computer loads the desktop and all of my startup programs fairly quickly.

This is very irritating and I don't know how to diagnose it. I have updated the BIOS, installed new video card drivers from nvidia.com numerous times (with different versions), scanned for malware, defragged my drive, blew out the dust out of my fan. and I had a similar hanging problem on XP which prompted me to format and install win7. I don't THINK it's software related, though i re-downloaded 64 bit versions and installed similar programs that i was using on XP.

Occasionally my computer completely hangs and requires a restart when I'm opening a video file. I've noticed whenever I have Jdownloader (a java app) running and attempt to load a video file i seem to freeze frequently, but I've also frozen without it running. I don't know if this is related to the first problem

What advice do you guys have for me? Thanks!


edit:
My hard drive failed the bios hard drive integrity scan (i believe that's what it was called) with a #2 - 07 Fail. and that is where I am at the moment. I can use my computer fine as I've been using all these months and nothing has changed since knowing that the hard drive scan failed.

 

Well you could try a fresh re-install, which is annoying, but could work.

If that doesn't work, your HD could be dying. I had something similar happen to me on an old Laptop, and it turned out the HD was dying.

 

bios up to date?

chipset and disk controller drivers up to date?

 

I flashed my BIOS to the latest and i installed the latest available chipsets based off the HP site for my laptop. I don't think there was anything regarding disk controller drivers, do you know where I should try for that?

And I previously formatted and freshly insalled already to cure the problem and I ended up in the same situation so I dont' know if it's Windows. Unless I'm using a program that hung both my XP and 7 installations.

 

Well, as soon as you installed Win7, did it hang? If not, when did it start?

 

look around at the official amd support web site for current drivers for your chipset and disk controller.

 

Hm ...
Which programs do you have starting up with Windows exactly?
It's possible a software is responsible, but if it's all the same to you, I'd check in Device Manager what kind of a HDD you have inside your laptop, go to it's manufacturer's website and download the utility for HDD integrity (or something along the lines) checking.

Although, even if all tests come out clean, I still wouldn't put it past the HDD or another device to be at the core of your issues.

Speaking from personal experience, I only have my antivirus (MSE) running in the background as an active protection and starting up with my Win 7 x64 (no other program is starting up).
Boot times are as fast as they can get for my HDD and I have no complaints really.

 

Right now I have minimal things booting up. My firewall previously (which i uninstalled to see if that was the problem) was the only non mandatory program I had at startup.

I also tried going to msconfig and disabling all the non windows services and startup programs and the same thing happened.

My HDD appears to be intact and I also ran a full chkdsk on boot to no avail.

I updated my chipset from HPs download page (two year old drivers though, i couldn't find anything else on amd's page) and can't seem to find disk controller drivers.


My brain is exploding here! thanks for the tips so far

 

How about your VGA? Is that updated to the latest driver?

 

Wait ...
You mentioned something about using msconfig to disable services and startup programs?

Startup programs are ok to disable (I recommend leaving only the antivirus starting up with your OS), but services ... I'd rather leave those alone if I was in your position.

What you can try is checking your chipset in Windows by downloading and using CPU-Z.
Once you identified the chipset, go to it's manufacturers web page (not HP) and download the chipset drivers from there (which is probably where you will find disk controll drivers as well).

HP (and various laptop assemblers) are bad at keeping the drivers for their laptop up-to date.
They almost always update them once or never after the laptop has been released.

The manufacturers of actual COMPONENTS do have a tendency of releasing new drivers on a fairly regular basis though.

One more thing ... you could go into the BIOS and disable startup of checking the network (and similar) devices at boot (but that they still are active for use inside Windows).
This can drastically decrease boot times in several cases.

Furthermore ... you can download and use RealTemp
It checks your CPU/GPU temps accurately (I know you mentioned cleaning out the fans and all ... but still).

 

Ultimate Boot CD - Overview

A good selection of tools, memory tests and manufacturer's hdd tests too. I've found out that Seagate's SeaTools work on most brands of drives. This is a good all-in-one solution to have at hand.

Hiren's has even better selection of tools including bootable windows but since it contains non-freeware software also it cannot be recommended as first tool to get.

 

I've had a problem like this before on two different computers.

In case 1 it was because Windows didn't support the raid storage drivers on my laptop so well, so I ended up removing the two old drives and replacing them with one big one. No more need for raid drivers and thus no more issues with boot.

In case 2, my laptop would sit for several minutes before starting login or sometimes would get to login quickly and then take several minutes before getting into windows. I used the Windows Event Viewer and narrowed the issue down to a buggy and broken HP service timing out when it couldn't find my old printer. After setting that service to delayed start, my problem was solved.

Try to use event viewer.

Open it by pressing the start button, type 'event', press enter.

Expand "Applications and Services Logs" list.
Expand "Microsoft"
Expand "Windows"
Expand "Diagnostics-Performance"

Click on the Log file (it's called "Operational") to load its information into the primary panel.

Now many of these warnings should simply be startup and shutdown notifications. Look around at the various startup warnings (you can sort by this, it's called Boot Performance) until you see something that says something like:

"This startup service took longer than expected to startup, resulting in a performance degradation in the system start up process: "

That should be the cause of your problem. If you can get into services try disabling it. You'll most likely see many of these over the course of several months (the log goes on for a long time), but the one you care about should be the one that caused an excessive startup degradation time of several hundred thousand milliseconds, not anything like a 1000 ms degradation (because thats only 1 second and within the realm of a random event).

Otherwise, to verify it is a service or startup program causing the problem, try booting into safe mode and see if you get the delay. If you do, there is a fundamental issue with the interfacing between windows and your hardware (such as bad raid drivers). If it works properly and at good speed, then we know it is a service or startup program.

 

Is your hard drive an SATA drive? If not, verify that it's not running in PIO mode. You should be able to check that in the Device Manager. The only time I've had issues like that is when a chipset driver or something flakes out and the drive runs in an ancient compatibility mode.

 

Thanks so much for ALL of the useful advice so far!

I tried what Storm Effect suggested and looked into the event log and and other than a few svchost and explorer.exe slowdowns of 1000ms there was nothing unusual.

I did not get a chance to update my chipset or disk controller drivers yet because I got occupied with my drive FAILING the bios hard drive integrity scan (i believe that's what it was called) with a #2 - 07 Fail.

I've been hesitant to upgrade any drivers for the drive upon knowing this (and I'm not too familiar with a RAID driver is even though I've seen the term a few times). My disk is a SATA and there was nothing unusual in the device manager. I ran chkdsk in a reboot with the parameters /f and /r a few days before I did the bios drive check.

What should my next course of action be? Is there a way to repair this or is this typically the sign of a failing hard drive?

 

Ok, so in this case it looks like your hard drive is failing.

A RAID driver is just a driver for windows that lets windows understand multiple hard drives that are in RAID mode. RAID mode entails the drives are either working together to increase performance (RAID 0) or are being cloned to create a 1:1 copy of all data for redundancy and security (RAID 1). As implied, RAID mode usually entails you have multiple disks installed in your system.

Just so you know, chkdsk /r implies chkdsk /f. So chkdsk /f runs the first 3 components of chkdsk, chkdsk /r runs the first 3 and an additional 2 components that scan the surface of your disk (Thus a /r takes MUCH longer).

I'm not sure what model hard drive you have, but at work I run a generic Hitachi Fitness test on computers where I suspect the hard drive is dying.

The download for that is at this site:
Downloads | Support

Scroll down to Drive Fitness Test and download the CD iso file. Then burn the iso file to a CD using the Windows 7 iso burner (right click on the iso file and select Windows 7 ISO Burner).

Reboot the computer and make sure to boot it to the CD.

At this point the CD may not be able to load, if that occurs, you will need to run a different drive health test using something like HDTune inside windows.

So barring that, you should now be in the Hitachi Fitness Test menu.

You have two options, you want to use the keyboard to select option 2, ATA Only. (Don't worry, this will work with SATA)

Now the software will check to see what disks are on your system. Use the keyboard to select your hard drive from the list. Then confirm what hard drive it is. Choose to run a test on the drive and select an ADVANCED test, not a regular quick test. A new window will pop up and you just need to press enter on the button that says start testing. (I'm not sure what it actually says, should be apparent). It will popup saying the mouse has been disabled and then start the test.

The test will take a few hours, but if it fails you will be greeted with a big RED screen. If it passes you will see a big GREEN screen. There will of course be other information listed, but really it's as simple as Red or Green.

If the test comes back RED, we just confirmed that your hard drive is going bad. This confirms the test in the BIOS.

At this point, your drive is still alive, but it will continue to degenerate until it fails completely. I'd highly recommend backing up all your data. After that, if you still have a warranty on the computer, inquire with your manufacturer about getting a new hard drive. Otherwise, go ahead and jump onto NewEgg and find yourself a nice new notebook hard drive. You'll be seeing prices at around 100 dollars for high-end 500GB 7200 RPM drives down to 40ish dollars for 250GB drives.


In most notebooks, drive replacement is as simple as adding more ram and will not void your warranty. Unscrew the panels underneath your laptop until you uncover the hard drive, and then remove all screws keeping it in. Then pull out the drive and the remove the cable. Reverse the steps to put a new drive in. Then boot up the computer. It will report NO OPERATING SYSTEM FOUND _

Now either use a USB key or DVD with Windows 7 loaded onto it (It's very VERY easy to do this, even if you don't have installation media, Microsoft has provided a tool to take a Windows 7 ISO file and "burn" it to a bootable USB drive) and run through the installer! (After rebooting of course, not while sitting at the OPERATING NOT FOUND screen)

Sorry if my instructions are confusing, this is essentially what I do at work all day is fix computers, so it might be missing steps because I'm visualizing this all in my head.