Re: Dimension 8300 Very Slow Cold Boot

it is still unclear to me what is happening during this long delay during
startup... if the screen is simply blank then this seems like a registry
problem or a hard disk problem, not a motherboard problem. the disk may
have experienced a physical problem that was minor but resulted in
corrupting the windows system registry file. alternatively, it may be a
problem with a usb device (or two or three...) that is connected to your
system. try disconnecting all peripherals and see if the problem goes away.
and/or if you can remember a time when the system last worked normaly then i
suggest that your do a system restore to a data prior to that time. you do
this by clicking start-allprograms-accessories-systemtools-systemrestore.
this does not cause you to loose any data but if you have installed any
programs since that earlier date then they will need to be restored. also
you may find that your antivirus program needs to be reinstalled after doing
a system restore (but it may also work just fine), so check it by doing a
update. other than disk problems, or usb device problems, hardware problems
are really pretty rare. if the system restore or removal of usb devices
doesn't help to solve your problem then the next thing to do is to test the
hard disk using diagnostics and if it passes then to a windows
recover/reinstall...

"Marjorie Cunningham" <Marjorie@xxxxxxxxxx> wrote in message
news:ey2df.2811$th3.1034@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
> Thank you all for your suggestions. I did forget to mention that I ran a
> virus scan and have no viruses, and I also ran a CHKDSK which produced the
> statement that "System has recovered from a serious error." Whatever it
> was didn't seem to make a big difference in the boot time.
>
> In experimenting with the startup, when I turned off the computer and
> turned it back on within a couple minutes, it booted in 1 minute, 10
> seconds. Then I shutdown and left it off for about 15 minutes while I
> blew out some dust bunnies inside (it was not very dirty) and the boot
> time was 5 minutes, 10 seconds.
>
> If this is a motherboard problem, I know Dell isn't going to step up on a
> two-year-old expensive computer, and I really don't have a lot of money
> right now. If I just leave the computer on and not shut if off, what's
> going to happen? Will the motherboard blow up?? (Yikes!) As I
> mentioned, so far I haven't seen a degraded service, other than the cold
> boot time.
>
> Thanks again for help.
>
> Marjie
>


.

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