Posted: 5/18/2004 9:20:54 AM EDT
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Ok, so my home computer is having serious issues. It will boot, but VERY slowly (like 20 min!!!) and it still wont get to Windows (XP Pro SP1). I finally got to the BIOS menu and looked at the PC Health where it listed the PSU voltages. It read as such: 3.3v = 3.29v 5v = 5.01v 12v = 11.30v!!!!!!!! Would this cause a slow or no boot situation? I would think that it just wouldnt even start if the voltage was that low, but I am so pissed that this machine right now, I cant see straight 
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Not really...if it boots THAT slowly, I'd check to make sure the hard drive was configured correctly, and that you didn't have some kind of other boot process running (like a trojan, virus, etc) Remember, these things are state machines...0 or 1, on or off. Not enough power = off. Do you have a network card/always-on internet connect? If so, unplug the ethernet cable; does the boot process speed up or slow down? What's your antivirus and other programs to remove trojans and spyware say? |
I'll check tonight, but I do have a fairly recently updated Norton AV. I do have a cable modem... I will be SO pissed if I got a trojan/virus. That means I am screwed!!!! |
"Fairly recently" ugh...they have updates like 2-3x a week sometimes.. They only auto-update once a month, but I can promise you, that's not enough. Every time you can think of it, just fire up their auto-update and let it do it's bit. Does the disk go absolutly nuts when you boot? Like, really, really nuts? Or when it's hung, is the disk not doing a thing? If the disk is going nuts...not good. If the disk isn't going nuts...not bad, but not great. It means the pc is waiting for something; either some hardware to respond (as in the case of if a drive died, it might sit there for a while before deciding it doesn't exist anymore), or for another program to respond (as in it is trying to contact something, and that something hasen't replied back yet...could be bad, could be worse.) |
Drive is inanimate... It just sits there. If I let is sit long enough, I get the Windows load screen (Start Windows in Safe Mode or Normally?), but then again, it just sits there. I get too impatient and start all over again. I think the drive is still OK, because I am getting to that Windows select screen, but I am at a loss. |
Wait...do you have it configured to drop you at that screen? Or does it just do that and you have no idea why? If it just does that...that is NOT normal. You shouldn't see that screen at all, unless there was a serious hardware or other problem.. It should immeadiatly boot up to the normal XP banner screen, and then shortly dump you off at either a login box, or at your normal desktop. If the disk is really that slow...I'd take a look at hardware causes at this point. Another quick way to test would be...if you have another pc somewhere, and even though it'll probably screw up XP (or at least confuse it), try booting on that pc with your hard drive. If it starts to come up fast..bingo, hardware's the problem. |
It normally boots without this option (IE it isnt "normal"), however I did try and boot without ANY HD at all and it still takes forever to tell me there is no boot disk. |
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Forever? Hm... What if you disconnect (just unplug the power, it's easier) all of the IDE devices on the pc? It should fail pretty damn quickly when it can't find a device of any kind. Check the BIOS, too...perhaps something is specifically configured that should be set to "Auto"? There's a bunch of PC diagnostic tools (many of them free, or at least free for a limited time/usage) that can probably help you troubleshoot this much quicker.. Without being there, it's difficult at best to pin the tail on the donkey, so to speak 
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I know... I did unplug all of the IDE devices and it was STILL slow. The only thing left in the damn box is the MB, RAM and vid card.... |
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You can also try loading a different os such as linux "slackware live" a self contained os on a cd. It wont mess with any of your windows settings and bios. d/l it and burn it onto a cd-rom per instructions from site. ( It wants you to burn it as an ISO format) If that loads faster then it might be a virus or hard drive problem since that os doesn't use your hard drive at all. |
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Assuming you do not have a virus or spyware problem and windows is functional. Is the PC normally on all the time? most severe slow down problems are heat related. especially if the system is crawling during post and bios operations. power off the machine and REMOVE AC power to the power supply for about 1 hr. try the system cold and see if it makes a difference. if so you likely have a processor issue from lack of airflow. If you have had the system over clocked it could also be heat damage to the processor as well. Try booting off your windows cd. Don't reinstall!!!! you just want to see if this is a disk or system related problem. you should boot the cd with resonable speed. if that works fine you have corruption in your OS or a disk problem. As was reccomended grab some free pc diags and test the system board, processor and disk. I doubt you have a memory problem as the system bios is not addressing external ram during bios operations. Your 12v out on your power supply is a little low. Most run between 11.5-12.6 volts. the 12v system supplies power to the drives. if that is not correct the drives will not spin at the correct speeds and WILL cause corruption and hardware failure. try disconnecting all devices except the hdisk and see what you get. cd and floppy as well as other disk drives. A 1v drop in power can give you problems depending on the drive. How many drives are on the system and what is the power rating of your power supply? Also how old is it? Power supplies are dust magnets and typically burn themselves out from lack of air. dust clogs the heat sinks and heat is a killer. hope this helps mike |
Lets see, normally there are: 3 HD's 1 CD/RW 1 DVD 1 3.5in Floppy Tornado 7 Fan On Board 6.1 Audio, Intel LAN and RAID controller USB, non-powered devices, such as: Keyboard Mouse Web Cam Remote Control The PS is a 400 watt CuntUSA special that is relativly new (under 2 years old) |
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based on the limited info you have posted here i am inclined to think you have a processor, system board problem or bios. most likely processor. kinda of a shotgun approach but have you tried resetting the bios? remove ac power and pull the battery for about 15 min. then replace battery and try to boot. Thats not a fix but if the bios has corrupted due to power issues it may reset it. mike |
Yeah, I have done all that. Before I go on, I wanted to say thank you for trying to "bench" diagnose this PIA problem for me. I really do appreciate it. Thank you. I am much more calm than I was yesterday. So hopefully I can communicate much better today.  My system. Intel P4 2.8 800mhz FSB Abit IC7-MAX3 MoBo 512mb Corsair RAM (1 stick) GeForce 4600 128mb video card On Board 6.1 Sound On Board Intel NIC (10/100/1000) On Board Silicon Image 4-port serial ATA RAID 3 HD's (1 SATA, 2 ATA) 1 Plextor 48x/12x/48x CD-RW 1 Pioneer 16x DVD-ROM 1 3.5in Floppy OS is Win XP SP1 updated regularly Norton AntiVirus 2004 last updated 05/10/2004 Zone Alarm Pro 4 personal firewall OK... So last night, I did very little to the computer. I tried to boot w/o the CAT5 cable attached, no go. So I just left it. This morning, I had an epiphany. I looked at my USB connectors in the back and they were all still attached (I forgot to unplug them )I unplugged everything (I even found the adaptors to convert my USB KB and mouse back to PS2), then tried to boot. It was booting normally!!!! I had it boot in Safe Mode, but again it halted. This time on the AGP440.sys drivers. I am once again thinking it might be a voltage issue. Otherwise, why would it have started to boot normally W/O all the USB devices plugged in? What do you think? |
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If you Google for AGP440.SYS error, you will get a ton of info on this particular error including the following one from the MS Knowledge Base: MS KB Link You can try the above solution to see if it resolves your issues, but my gut instinct says bad (or going bad) memory stick. For testing your memory, try Memtest (it's free) here's the link: Memtest Try testing your memory first. A bad memory stick can make it appear that you have anything from software/driver problems to hardware/motherboard problems. You can run around in circles for days updating your BIOS, updating drivers, swapping hardware, etc only to find that you had a bad memory stick and popping in a new one solves your problem. Good luck. |
Bingo! I think I suffered from a similar affliction about 4-5mos ago, and for the life of me I couldn't remember what I did to fix it...... It WAS a memory problem for me, I was running 1.5GB on 3 DIMMS.... I had all sorts of problems, then everything worked great once I pulled the 3rd stick.... I dont know if it was faulty memory or the fact that I was running 3 DIMMS on a dual-channel board, but I do know it works great now..... GIVE THIS A TRY BlackDog! |
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sounds like you found it. good job. for the record if it was my system i would go ahead and replace the power supply. That 12v output is low and sooner or later may cause you a bigger problem. that output will fluctuate with ac input voltage and a brown out will cause it to dip lower. mike |
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Sorry, diregard last. I saw in another post on the thread that you mentioned having a 400W power supply. Perhaps you should check with a friend about borrowing a power supply from their system and firing it up. If everything works, you've found your culprit. |
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i troubleshoot computers for a living... first i noticed you are running a dual channel board with only one stick of memory. while this is not the cause of your problem you are not taking advantage of the single most important feature of that motherboard. the voltages your reported are within normal ranges... what tempatures are the cpu and motherboard running at? what kind of hard drives are you running. you can download diagnostic programs from the manufactors that will tell you if there is a problem. (the western digital program is especially good; i would buy no other brand...) it is absolutely required to keep your windows xp up-to-date with regards to critical updates. a virus program alone will not keep worms off your system. unless you have an old fashion boot virus, however, i would rule spyware and virus out. you would not see these problems until windows has actually started. check the capacitors on your motherboard. the tops should be flat. if any are "swelled up and rounded" on the top you most likely have a failed motherboard. if you unplug the cd and dvd roms and unplug all the hard drives EXCEPT your c:/ drive and it still boots up slowly i would suspect either the motherboard or the hard drives (probably the hard drive...) run the manufactors diagnostic, if it finds nothing then boot from your windows cd, go to the repair console and run chkdsk /r you might want to try clearing the cmos and setting everything to default just to see what happens. i doubt if this will do anything but i would still try it if nothing else works. while i would suspect the motherboard or hdd it is possible for a bad stick of memory to be the problem. if you have another stick of ddr memory you can swap the memory out to test or take it to a professional. |