Ok, so this is an odd one. Turn on computer and it gets to the XP screen (logo with black background and the blue load bar). There is some HDD activity and then it just sits there with the bar moving happily along. Everything is pretty much quiet except for the case fans. Then after 34min (i timed it) it loads into XP fine. There is nothing in the system logs to suggest anything wrong. I am perplexed.
Is the PC slow after booting? When it's booted, open msconfig (write into the run box) and go to the "boot.ini" tab. Highlight your installation and tick the "/noguiboot", "/sos" and "/bootlog" switches. Then reboot and check what file it hangs on. (It should now scroll all the drivers it's loading during boot.) You can also examine the boot log.
you sat and waited 34 minutes, dang after 2 minutes it would have got a hard restart. mind you this morning my laptop hung at boot but i just forced a restart and it booted fine.
you change any hardware recently? some good suggestions here already- usually caused from what I've seen with plug and play a new device, (or a device in your system is failing) also on a bios change.. maybe your battery is taking it's last swim hehe- you get any warnings on boot?
had something very similar with Vista but nowhere need as bad - turned out to be something with the USB printer I had connected (I suspect the card reader built into it) With the printer connected boot time was well over 5 minutes, disconnected it dropped to under two. After powercycling the printer the problem went away. Do you have anything similar connected? Mark
My first thought too, but if it's got to the Windows load bar it isn't trying to boot from USB first. This does however remind me of the problem I had installing an NVIDIA graphics card in my sister's pc while some ATI drivers were still installed.
This sounds eerily like an impending hard drive failure. Try checking your hard drive with chkdsk /f /x /r <drive:> from within Windows. Or better yet, in case you have the recovery console installed (and you should) use chkdsk /p <drive:> from there instead.
Check in device manager to make sure your HDD isn't in PIO mode (34 mins is a bit much for this kind of problem though). Can you hear any clunking from the HDD?
Thanks for your input, guys. Seems to have sorted itself out now. Think it was looking for an attached USB device. Had a similar problem earlier today when it was just sitting there, but plugged my phone in (at the xp screen) and it started loading fine.
It's not a hard drive problem just for a slow boot then normal performance - it's usually a driver not performing properly. I had a similar issue on a previous XP install, it would sit for 2-3 minutes on the XP screen for no apparent reason.
Ok, so it's doing it again. Even if i make sure I eject hardware properly. It seems to be holding on "giveio.sys". But why it sits there for 30mins before doing anything is still a mystery.
