relatively new Packard Bell takes hours to turn on

Sniipe

Ok there is a serious problem going on here. Its my parents machine. Its windows 7 (home premium - 64bit, i5 processor 3.2ghz, 3gb ram; model = ixtreme M5800) and only a few months old.

I'm only after logging into windows. I tried booting in safe mode which took ages. Stalling around avg sys files. A google told me that there could be an issue with them...

Knoppix booted in and deleted the files in the drivers folder as well as the AVG folder. I downloaded AVG again and removed AVG using their installer... or so I think.

Right now I'm just after clicking remove AVG - the AVG window went away with no confirmation that it completed. I've just enabled windows defender and updated the latest optional security update. With that update its creating a restore point. It looks like this might take ages as well.

I'm beginning to think that there could be some hardware fault. What should I try next? If the current operation takes ages I'll let it complete then perhaps download some memory tester... or is there something else I should look at? Also to note I've currently got no anti-virus.

Nothingbetter2d

an extremely slow boot up following the removal of av software often suggests damaged or corrupted registry due to a bad uninstaller.

your options in this case is really to just do a fresh install of your os.

the fact u have win7 means u can do a fresh install "without" reformatting cos all your old files will get put into a folder called "windows.old"

my general experience with win7 is that it has a very finicky program installer but sp1 release candidate for win7 does seem to improve its reliability.

Capt'n Midnight

Nothingbetter2d wrote: »

an extremely slow boot up following the removal of av software often suggests damaged or corrupted registry due to a bad uninstaller.

your options in this case is really to just do a fresh install of your os.

the fact u have win7 means u can do a fresh install "without" reformatting cos all your old files will get put into a folder called "windows.old"

my general experience with win7 is that it has a very finicky program installer but sp1 release candidate for win7 does seem to improve its reliability.

system restore is faster than a reinstall

then retry removing the AV in safe mode, but only if you are sure you have no malware on the machine

there are some offline av scans can't remember which c ones provide the bootable cd though

Sniipe

Thanks for the reply lads.

Things still take hours, I'm nearly ready to move on to a re-install / restore...

I've installed avast and spybot. Avast found 1 virus (medium threat) and spybot found 7 malware items which were removed. Currently Avast is doing a boot time scan. A scan alone will take 2 hours. If that doesn't find anything then it will be another few hours till windows boots up.

If I do a re-install I will have all my files but won't they all be in .old folders? And I seem to remember that you have to call the username something different...

Where do I go about doing a restore? No DVD's come with PC's now a days, do I have to burn something?

When I'm in windows things work well enough, except when I have to install big stuff like Avast - which took hours. Spybot installed normally.

Very confusing.

Fysh

Sniipe wrote: »

Thanks for the reply lads.

Things still take hours, I'm nearly ready to move on to a re-install / restore...

I've installed avast and spybot. Avast found 1 virus (medium threat) and spybot found 7 malware items which were removed. Currently Avast is doing a boot time scan. A scan alone will take 2 hours. If that doesn't find anything then it will be another few hours till windows boots up.

If I do a re-install I will have all my files but won't they all be in .old folders? And I seem to remember that you have to call the username something different...

Where do I go about doing a restore? No DVD's come with PC's now a days, do I have to burn something?

When I'm in windows things work well enough, except when I have to install big stuff like Avast - which took hours. Spybot installed normally.

Very confusing.

A repair install should shunt your existing installation into a Windows.old directory, but TBH from the sound of the problem you're having I'd suggest a reinstall, as per the following:

Check you've got your Win7 Product Key from the laptop's Certificate of Authenticity. Check if you have either reinstall media or the means to create it (some vendors give you tools with which to create installation media of your own, others just provide a recovery partition). Download and burn a Linux liveCD - something like Ubuntu should do the trick. Download any drivers you need for Win7, along with any software you want to install before connecting to the internet (eg AVG, MSE, Avast, etc)

Connect an external hard drive to the laptop, and boot from the Live CD. Back up any files from your Windows partition that you want to keep by copying them to the external hard drive.

Check your back up from another computer to be sure that the files are accessible and have not been corrupted during the transfer.

Reboot, then start from your Windows install media/recovery partition. Erase your existing partition, create a new partition, then do a clean install. Install drivers in the order recommended by your vendor (usually something like chipset > Reboot > graphics > reboot > anything else, rebooting where necessary).

Test to see if problem is still reproducible.

If no, success!

If yes, move to hardware diagnostics (starting with hard drive).

Sniipe

Ouch Fysh - that seems harsh, but if it has to be done then I'll follow your instructions.

Fysh

Sniipe wrote: »

Ouch Fysh - that seems harsh, but if it has to be done then I'll follow your instructions.

From what you've said it's not the only possible way to fix this, but it does have a high probability of resolving the problem you're having. It's possible to spend hours or even days trying to fix this sort of problem, and you have to measure the value of spending all that time to recover a broken installation against the value of the time it will take to wipe and start again.

Backing up your data depends on the amount of data - call it 1-4 hours, unless you've got 20+GB (eg massive iTunes collection/load of ripped DVDs or something like that) to back up. A Win7 install on current supported hardware should take less than an hour (I've seen an installation take as little as 15 minutes). Installation and configuration of drivers, OS patches + software post-install is 1-2 hours, assuming your broadband connection is decent and you're not installing thousands of packages.

So even at the outside, you're looking at maybe 7 hours. That's the bar by which other potential solutions should be measured, taking into account the time you've already spent on this.

If you don't want to go for the full-on reinstall process just yet, here are a few other things you could try that may shed light on the problem:

• Try using Autoruns to see if anything untoward is loading during startup and hogging system resources;
• Download and run Memtest86 overnight to see if there are any memory issues;
• Download and burn the Windows 7 System Repair disc and use this to boot to a recovery console & run chkdsk, or try to use System Restore.
• Contact Packard Bell support and see if they have a diagnostics CD you can use to check your hardware.
• Identify the hard drive type used in your system (should be easy enough to do from the POST screen, or from going into BIOS if needed) and download the diagnostic cd from the manufacturer's site to test the drive that way.

Good luck!

Sniipe

Thanks Fysh;

I am curious, so I think I will opt for the long drawn out approach.

Nothingbetter2d

i highly recommend u make an image of your c drive once your done fixing it for future fixes as it speeds up the repair process

Sniipe

current process:
I've copied everything of value and am so annoyed with wasting time on the machine that I created the Packard Bell Factory Restore DVD's. (and another for applications and drivers for good measure). This took hours. Not to burn but to start the process to burn the DVD's.

I boot the machine up and throw in the recovery disk 1. Up pops Packard Bell background and the timer cursor... its like something is trying to load... its been like this for hours... On a recovery disc??? I think something is up. What could cause something like this? I've asked my dad to fish out the receipt. In the morning I'd say that it will be ready to restore.

If its restored in the morning and still going slow to boot up I think I'll bring it back to the store. What do ye think? (Bought for my parents from PC World in October)

Also will I bother running diagnostic stuff before I do it? ie could PC world come back and say it was a virus? What I mean to say is could a virus persist after a restore?

Fysh

It's possible there could be a rootkit causing the problem - some of them can be pretty nasty in terms of surviving normal cleaning processes. However, I'd suspect it's more likely an OS configuration or hardware failure issue.

Memtest86 for ~24 hours, followed by hard drive diagnostics would be my advice. If either of them show signs of failure you should be within your rights to invoke warranty repairs (though it's possible it could be a processor/motherboard issue, which is a hard one to prove without being able to swap in a known-working component to test); if you get no evidence of hardware failure you'll be in a position to say that you've taken all reasonable steps to solve the problem and the unit is defective. Not sure whether PC World will want to know, but you can certainly make their life difficult if they try to fob you off...

Sniipe

Thanks again Fysh, I will try Memtest86 and see how that goes. I'll keep ye posted here in case anyone else has a similar problem.

Sniipe

I added in 2 hard drives and wanted to take them out to back them up on a separate machine. When I did this I restarted the computer and everything is running smoothly now... How is that so when neither had anything to do with the OS...

Gobsmacked.

Fysh

Sniipe wrote: »

I added in 2 hard drives and wanted to take them out to back them up on a separate machine. When I did this I restarted the computer and everything is running smoothly now... How is that so when neither had anything to do with the OS...

Gobsmacked.

Weird. If one or both of them were on SATA 1 or IDE interfaces, I can see that they might force the OS to throttle the throughput on the disk controller, but it's a bit strange if neither is an OS disk.

Mind you, I've an old desktop with Win7 installed and any time I connect my old Maxtor 120GB IDE drive to it the whole OS seems to be more unstable. Not sure if it runs more slowly though, I've just kind of gotten used to it being a bit creaky overall.

Glad you got the problem sorted though.

yoyo

Sniipe wrote: »

I added in 2 hard drives and wanted to take them out to back them up on a separate machine. When I did this I restarted the computer and everything is running smoothly now... How is that so when neither had anything to do with the OS...

Gobsmacked.

Had the same problem with a IDE hard disk on a newish motherboard, It turned out I had used (possibly whilst drunk!) a incorrect IDE cable (The older 32pin one I think) rather than the newer type, some pins on the hard drive bent, funnily though the hard drive worked fine on a older machine but on my new one it took ages for windows to load with it connected, so the problem your having is possibly related,

Nick