Problem booting...

TelePaul · 06-05-2008 11:28am #1

Hi lads.

Have a brand new Dell Vostro tower with XP. 50% of the time it takes a good fifteen minutes to load windows. I displays the black screen with the windows logo for about ten minutes, then take me to the profile selection screen where it will tell me that windows is loading. If I persevere and wait it out, it'll take another couple of minutes for icons to appear on my desktop, and the taskbar doesn't ever appear. I get messages saying that various devices have failed - Roxio CD creating software and my HP printer.

The weird thing is if I shut down and restart, things load perfectly. I had to restart in safe mode to move stuff across from my old HD and I'm wondering if I inadvertently adjusted something in the boot settings.

This is driving me crazy so I once more bow down to your superior knowledge.

rrpc · 06-05-2008 11:36am

Run a disk test first. Also, how did you connect your old hard disk? If you mapped a network drive and then didn't disconnect it (although it was disconnected physically) Windows may be trying to reconnect to it on start up.

TelePaul · 06-05-2008 12:01pm

rrpc wrote: »

Run a disk test first. Also, how did you connect your old hard disk? If you mapped a network drive and then didn't disconnect it (although it was disconnected physically) Windows may be trying to reconnect to it on start up.

Sorry I'm not the most technically minded - can I ask what a disk test is? I went to my C Drive and right-clicked, wen t to properties, tools, and selected error checking? I restarted so it would take effect. Is this a disk test?

I connected via USB...is it possible to reset boot settings to the factory defaults?

rrpc · 06-05-2008 2:41pm

Yup, that's a disk test.

The USB disk would not have caused a boot problem unless you booted from it and left the system to boot from the USB disk after it was disconnected. Is that the case?

How much of your old system did you copy from the USB disk? If you copied system files, then you may have screwed up your new operating system.

TelePaul · 06-05-2008 4:28pm

rrpc wrote: »

Yup, that's a disk test.

The USB disk would not have caused a boot problem unless you booted from it and left the system to boot from the USB disk after it was disconnected. Is that the case?

How much of your old system did you copy from the USB disk? If you copied system files, then you may have screwed up your new operating system.

I just moved mp3s, pictures, one or two cubase files (it's a music recording program). How would I know if I've left the USB disk there? Sorry for my ignorance.

rrpc · 06-05-2008 8:59pm

TelePaul wrote: »

I just moved mp3s, pictures, one or two cubase files (it's a music recording program). How would I know if I've left the USB disk there? Sorry for my ignorance.

I think if you set the computer to boot from the USB disk, you'd know, so we can discount that.

It certainly sounds like you've copied a machine state from another machine because you are reporting issues that would occur if you had done so.

On the other hand, that's difficult to do with XP, so to be honest I'm stumped.

I'm wavering towards telling you to do a repair install of Windows, but maybe someone else might have a fresh view on this?

TelePaul · 06-05-2008 9:03pm

It's still entirely under warranty. I might just call Dell. It's weird that it happens EXACTLY 50% of the time - once I turn it off and turn it on again, it laods fine.

The one 'strange' thing I did was start windows in safe mode to take ownership of a folder on the old HD. That was it.

TelePaul · 07-05-2008 2:57pm

Would there be any point in running some scans in safe mode? It laods okay in safe mode.

rrpc · 07-05-2008 4:04pm

TelePaul wrote: »

Would there be any point in running some scans in safe mode? It laods okay in safe mode.

Which would follow if you've screwed with the drivers by somehow copying another machine state. Safe mode loads with minimal drivers installed.

TelePaul · 07-05-2008 7:32pm

rrpc wrote: »

Which would follow if you've screwed with the drivers by somehow copying another machine state. Safe mode loads with minimal drivers installed.

Okay. Supposing I HAVE done something wrong regards moving of drivers. What's the best way to fix this, preferably without having to re-load everything?

rrpc · 07-05-2008 8:20pm

TelePaul wrote: »

Okay. Supposing I HAVE done something wrong regards moving of drivers. What's the best way to fix this, preferably without having to re-load everything?

Run a repair install. It will reinstall drivers etc. but won't change any of your installed programs or data files.

TelePaul · 07-05-2008 9:41pm

rrpc wrote: »

Run a repair install. It will reinstall drivers etc. but won't change any of your installed programs or data files.

And is this as easy as inserting the XP disc and pressing 'repair'? I've actually never had to do this before.

TelePaul · 08-05-2008 10:23pm

Okay. This is getting annoying. I put the XP OS disc in and selected update/upgrade (the one which lets you keep programs and documents but reinstalls windows files). All well and good, got about three quarters of the way through. Then a window pops up saying that the soundcard I use for music recording has not passed the Windows Logo test (I checked the soundcard manual which just tells me to press yes to continuing). But I can't actually select yes to advance or no to cancel as the screen freezes.

TonyM. · 08-05-2008 10:55pm

http://windows.about.com/od/troubleshooting/ss/scandisk_3.htm

TelePaul · 09-05-2008 9:35am

TonyM. wrote: »

http://windows.about.com/od/troubleshooting/ss/scandisk_3.htm

I can't actually boot windows to run a scan disk.

muggyog · 09-05-2008 9:34pm

Did you not say it boots OK every second time?

TelePaul · 09-05-2008 9:55pm

muggyog wrote: »

Did you not say it boots OK every second time?

It did, yes, before I ran into my current problems. It booted every second time, sequentially - I'd turn it off when it stalled and turn it right back on, and windows would load almost instantly the seocond time.

muggyog · 09-05-2008 10:15pm

So now it wont boot? If you take out the CD does it go back to its old ways?

What was the outcome of the disk test you did?

This is a brand new PC, did it have the problem the first time you started it?

You could remove the sound card and do another repair install ( put the card back afterwards when everything is well ).

rrpc · 10-05-2008 9:10am

You can boot on the CD and run a repair install that way. It's probablythe better option in any case because if there's a driver problem in Windows, it will prevent the repair install running properly within Windows.

As muggyog said, you can remove the sound card while doing this and then reinstall it when the repair is finished. Download the latest drivers for it before you do this.

There's a full walk through of the procedure here

TelePaul · 10-05-2008 11:18am

rrpc wrote: »

You can boot on the CD and run a repair install that way. It's probablythe better option in any case because if there's a driver problem in Windows, it will prevent the repair install running properly within Windows.

As muggyog said, you can remove the sound card while doing this and then reinstall it when the repair is finished. Download the latest drivers for it before you do this.

There's a full walk through of the procedure here

Thanks alot for your help lads. I've actually just rebooted windows from scratch, I abandoned the repair installation. I've re-installed most of the programs from resource disks and when things are in order, I'll set a system restore point before I try to move my old HDs files across again.

I don't think the sound card is a huge problem - it's just a USB interfcae which is designed for low latency. If i had known that getting windows to complete the repair install was as easy as removing the sound card, I'd have been grand. But I'll know for next time.

Thanks for the help again, I'll let you know how the transfer goes the second time around.

TelePaul · 12-05-2008 6:12pm

Problem's back. Reformatted HD, fresh install, and as soon as I start installing new software things start acting up. I have a bunch of system retsore points, I guess I can go through them and try to discern the problem.

muggyog · 12-05-2008 7:18pm

When you say 'acting up', in what way?

This is all very strange for a brand new PC. Have you installed hardware? Some specifics on the sound card/USB interface would be useful.

TelePaul · 12-05-2008 10:02pm

muggyog wrote: »

When you say 'acting up', in what way?

This is all very strange for a brand new PC. Have you installed hardware? Some specifics on the sound card/USB interface would be useful.

The screen froze and when I went to restart, Windows once more started taking a long time to load. Soundcard is a TAscam US 122 - it uses a protocol known as ASIO - Audio stream in/out.

Problem booting...

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